Freida Pinto’s next

I’ll be a lot of you out there have been wondering what SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE’s unrealistically gorgeous starlet Freida Pinto would do next — perhaps dreading she’d get churned in the gears of the Hollywood machine.

Not so — at least not yet. Pinto is heading toward even more heavy drama in MIRAL, a movie from award-winning director Julian Schnabel (THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, BASQUIAT).

The story, adapted by Schnabel from Rula Jebreal’s book, is about Hind Husseini, who founded an orphanage in Jerusalem in the wake of the 1948 partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.

Hiam Abbass (THE VISITOR, MUNICH) will play Husseini. The movie will film in Israel and the Palestinian territories, which is both appropriate and pretty ballsy.