Chilean-Canadian playwright, actor, and author Carmen Aguirre’s #1 international bestselling memoir Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter has been optioned for the screen by Screen Siren Pictures. The award-winning book is a rare first-hand account of revolutionary life that will be brought to the screen with Aguirre attached as writer alongside screenwriter Dennis Foon (Indian Horse) and Screen Siren’s Trish Dolman and Christine Haebler as producers.
“I am thrilled to be working with Screen Siren Pictures on this screen adaptation of Something Fierce. Although several production companies across North America have wanted to option the book since it was initially published ten years ago, I have waited for the perfect partnership: one in which I am fully involved as a writer, and one that doesn’t water down the story’s political content. Screen Siren is who I’ve been waiting for. I have known Trish Dolman for over twenty-five years and am honored to be working with this renowned company of powerful women who have created unforgettable, timely, important, and politically relevant film and television,” says Carmen Aguirre.
Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter; winner of the hugely popular CBC Canada Reads competition, was named Best Book by The National Post, The Globe & Mail, and Book of the Year by Quill & Quire. The memoir follows six-year-old Aguirre who flees to North America with her family following General Augusto Pinochet’s violent 1973 coup in Chile and their eventual return to South America as Chilean resistance members. At 18, Aguirre becomes a militant, plunging further into a world of terror, paranoia, and euphoria. Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter; a dramatic, suspenseful, and darkly comic memoir, takes the reader inside war-ridden Peru, dictator-ruled Bolivia, post-Malvinas Argentina, and Pinochet’s Chile between 1979 and 1989.
“I am continuously blown away by Carmen’s talent as a multidisciplinary artist, author, and playwright. I loved reading her memoir — at once touching and hilarious — and couldn’t be more excited to be working with my friend to bring this incredible Latinx story to the screen,” says Screen Siren President and producer Trish Dolman. Producer Christine Haebler continues, “Something Fierce is a powerful coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of a political thriller. This is a story that continues to resonate today and we are eagerly looking forward to working with Carmen to adapt it. Projects like this one help realize Screen Siren’s mandate to empower female/BIPOC storytellers and tell stories that change the conversation.”
Screen Siren Pictures is an internationally acclaimed film and television production company with a focus on international partnerships, elevating female and underrepresented voices, and a motto to make media that “changes the conversation”. Their credits include French Exit, The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel, Indian Horse, and Hector and the Search For Happiness and the soon-to-be-released British Columbia: An Untold History.
The book option for Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter was negotiated by Screen Siren Pictures President Trish Dolman with Business Affairs Manager Tony Cerciello and Hannah Vaughn and Joe Veltre at Gersh on behalf of Paige Sisley and Sally Harding at CookeMcDermid Agency. The book is published by Penguin Random House Canada.
Images provided by Pender PR
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