Stranger Than Fiction director Marc Foster was given the task of directing the adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner.With a fairly unknown cast, whith two of the core characters being children, Foster set off to film in China, which was to be Afghanistan.

How did you get involved in this film?
I read The Kite Runner for the first time in 2003. Rebecca Yeldham, one of the producers, handed me the book and wanted me to get involved. At the time I couldn’t do it because there was no script, but I loved the book. In 2005, while I was doing Stranger than Fiction, she sent me the first draft of the script. I loved it and thought that David had really cracked the book.
This is your second collaboration with the screenwriter David Benioff, after Stay.
David is a lovely, open, generous and welcoming person. He is very collaborative and likes to work with you. He understands the director’s vision and tries to work with it.
What attracted you to the story?

I was incredibly passionate about it because it was the first time I had really seen a story from that part of the world that was -above all- a human and family story.

What was your biggest concern about adapting Khaled Hosseini’s novel to the big screen?

My biggest concern was to make a film that truly honors the book and respects its culture, because I am not from there and wanted to make sure the details were captured and that the emotional complexity of the characters would be right.

How did he collaborate with you during the whole process of putting the film together?

I think Khaled is a lovely man and we became friends in this process. I wanted him to embrace the movie, because that would have meant that I had done my job well. We always wanted him to read the script, give his notes and have an input.

I also saw him as a cultural advisor, in case I had any questions. For instance, he gave me his own wedding video to help with the wedding sequence, and I based it on it: the way they dance, the way they move He gave me access to his life, his knowledge, his friends, his resources and everything really.

What did you feel when you first read the book?

I was overwhelmed emotionally and also felt I had been let inside a world I knew nothing about. But, at the same time, the emotional connection to these people I knew nothing about was so powerful and strong that it was just another example of how we are all connected in a way that goes beyond race and religion. And it was not just emotional, but also in a sense cerebral, because it touched me in many ways.

So, Afghanistan is a character in a movie that also has universal messages.

Yes, because it is a family story -and we can all relate to family- and it deals with archetypes of human emotion like friendship, betrayal and redemption.

In a way, you also had that universality on a set that was rich in different nationalities and cultures.

We were around three-dozen different nationalities and cultures on the set. The four main languages were Dari, Chinese, English and Uyghur: a language spoken in the Xinjiang province of China where we shot most of the film, right across the border from Pakistan and Afghanistan

When did you decide the film would be mainly shot in Dari, the language spoken in Afghanistan?

When I read the book for the first time and I thought of those kids flying kites in Kabul I couldn’t imagine that they would speak English to each other. They had to speak Dari! And later on in the film, when they moved to America, what would they speak? Broken English? That wouldn’t make any sense.

Why did you chose China as your main location for The Kite Runner?

We were looking at different locations in the world where there was a film community established and that could meet all our needs. We went to Morocco, India, Turkey and finally China, where we found Kashgar -on the silk road- in the Xinjiang province, which looked like Kabul in the 70’s.

What research did you do to prepare the film?

I researched the culture and tried to speak to as many people as I could. I also tried to look at as many books and documentaries of the time as possible and obviously go to the country, spend time there and get an understanding of the people and their suffering during the last thirty years.

But the book was your main reference
.

For me the book was always the star, and there have been plenty of examples of movies based on bestselling books that haven’t worked. If the people who love the book do not embrace the movie you will lose your entire audience. They are your first audience.

Where did you find the right kids for the roles?
The casting director Kate Dowd, who I also worked with in Finding Neverland, looked all over the world for them and saw thousands of kids. She went to Kabul a month and a half before me and took me to two schools where I met them. Then I got to know them and even flew kites with them.

Did the kids teach you to fly kites?

Well, actually I had a kite master who taught me to fly kites, and it was very rewarding.

Moving to the adult actors, why did you choose Khalid Abdalla for the leading role of Amir?

I saw him in United 93 and I thought he had an incredible charisma, though he couldn’t do much in that film because he was just sitting there -so still. I felt he really captured that role.

And was it director Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry that introduced you to the Iranian actor Homayoun Ershadi, who plays Amir’s father in The Kite Runner?

Yes, I saw taste of Cherry and I just love that film. It’s incredible how Kiarostami discovered him, because he basically knocked on the window of his car at a traffic light and asked him to be in his movie.

He was an architect and had never acted before, but he is a very talented man. So, we brought him into Kabul and he was the only actor I have ever met who has actually tried to sell me his other actor friends instead of himself, because he had read the book on the way over and found out that Baba was 6’ 8’’ and thought he wasn’t the right man for the role. But that wasn’t the point because, as I said to him: ‘You are 6’ 8’’ in your heart.’

The music and the photography also play an important role in the movie.

I adored the scores Albert Iglesias had written for Almodóvar and I also liked what he did for The Constant Gardner, where he was able to capture that culture so well, in an authentic but new way.

I felt that was exactly what I was looking for. And then Roberto Schaefer is a long time collaborator of mine, who has shot all my movies, and we worked very well together in trying to find the right look for the movie.

How did you shoot the kite dogfight flying scenes?

We had a kite master who helped us choreograph those scenes on a computer, and once we knew what we wanted to do we figured out how to shoot it. Basically, it is a mixture of ground kite shots with helicam shots and CGI.

What did the writer Khaled Hosseini tell you when he finally saw the film completed and, in a way, also saw part of his childhood reflected on the big screen with those kite scenes?

I think Khaled really likes the movie and was always very supportive. He embraced the film and the fact that we were honoring his culture and his book.

Was Khaled the person that, above all, you wanted to make sure enjoyed the film?

Yes, I always thought that the key element to me would be if he walked out of the movie feeling that I had given his book justice, because it’s his baby, his creation and his story.

The Kite Runner is released 26th December