Maggie Betts is set to portray a reproductive rights activist and a bankrupt funeral home owner with her next directing gigs. The “Novitiate” director is set to helm a dramatic thriller about pro-choice champion Rebecca Gomperts, and Amazon’s “The Burial,” the story of a business deal gone bust and the ensuing legal fight.
Per Screen Daily, Olivia Hetreed (“Girl with a Pearl Earring”) will pen the script for the Gomperts pic. “The film will tell the true story of Gomperts, the Dutch doctor who recruited a band of women to sail around the world and provide abortions at sea for women who have no legal alternative through the Women on Waves initiative,” the source teases. “Facing threats from warships on the open sea, the women’s reproductive rights activist faced intrusions into her privacy, a relationship crisis, and division in the ranks over her latest campaign goals.”
Maven Screen Media’s Celine Rattray and Trudie Styler are among the project’s producers.
“Having always been attracted to stories of very courageous and bad-ass women breaking every rule for the sake of a greater good, Rebecca and her mind-blowing saga with Women on Waves truly encompasses everything that is exciting to me as a filmmaker,” Betts said. “It is such an honor to be able to work on this project alongside not only Rebecca herself, but such an extraordinary group of fellow creators. And the story itself could not really be more relevant or timely than right here, right now.”
Hetreed added, “It’s rare to come across a story as timely, powerful, controversial, and beguiling. Rebecca is a heroine for our times, clever, passionate, a radical thinker who charms and infuriates those around her and is not afraid to stand up to hostile and powerful opponents. She is not a nice girl but a fearsome woman and I am thrilled to be working with the fearsomely talented Maggie Betts to tell her story.”
According to Deadline, “The Burial” is an “off-kilter drama” based on Jonathan Harr’s 1999 New Yorker article of the same name. It tells the true story of a bankrupt funeral home owner who “decides to sue a rival businessman over a handshake deal gone wrong [and] hires a flamboyant attorney to handle the case.”
Betts previously helmed “Novitiate,” a drama centering on a group of nuns facing a crisis of conscience on the eve of the Vatican II, and “The Carrier,” a doc about an HIV-positive pregnant woman trying to prevent her child from being born with the virus. She scored a Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Director at Sundance for the former.
The cast and crew of “Novitiate” was largely female. When asked about this hiring decision, Betts said, “Talent should be the determinant, not gender. There’s nobody that I hired only because they were a woman. We had an all female crew with the exception of our set designer. I hired the most talented group of women. I like working with women, so I asked for a lot of resumes of women.” She continued, “It made the film better. We knew we were this group of women, a sort of sorority, and we all supported each other. The set almost mirrored a convent. We were a massive self-governing group that was all striving to do something together.”
