The Taliban's assassination attempt on the 16-year-old Pakistani student will be the subject of a documentary
What comes after surviving being shot in the head, turning 16 and addressing the United Nations? Having a famous documentarian make a movie about it all. The Oscar-winning director of Al Gore environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth is to bring the story of teenage Pakistani women’s rights activist Malala Yousafzai, who survived an attack by the Taliban, to the big screen.
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Davis Guggenheim, who also directed the acclaimed documentary Waiting for Superman, about failures in the American public education system, will take charge of the cameras on the as-yet-untitled project.
Guggenheim will work with producers Walter F Parkes and Laurie MacDonald on the documentary. Yousafzai, who gave a celebrated speech at the United Nations last week about her hopes for the future on her 16th birthday, was targeted by a gunman as she rode home on a bus after school last October.
Militants hoped to silence the teenager and destroy her campaign for girls’ education in the troubled Swat valley in Pakistan.
But the bullet, which passed through its target’s head and neck before resting in her shoulder, failed to kill her. Malala was subsequently flown to the UK for treatment, and now lives with her family in Birmingham, where she attends school.
The blogger, whose book I Am Malala will be published in the autumn, was nominated for the international children’s peace prize in December 2011 and became the youngest Nobel peace prize nominee in history last year at the age of 15.u00a0