Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman star in ‘The Railway Man’

The British/Aussie war-drama biopic The Railway Man is hoping to pick up a U.S. distributor when it premieres at the Toronto Film Festival this September.

The film is an adaptation from Eric Lomax’s autobiography of the same name. It is a searing account of a British Officer, played by Academy Award winning actor Colin Firth (The Kings Speech), who was captured in Singapore during World War II and placed in a POW camp.

The film is directed by Jonathan Teplitzky (Better Than Sex, Burning Man) with an adapted screenplay by Frank Catrell Boyce (Framed, and credited with penning the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics) and Andy Paterson (Girl With The Pearl Earring).

On the set with Colin Firth in ‘The Railway Man’.

The story is a bleak account of one victim’s war experiences working as a prisoner on the infamous Thai-Burma ‘Death Railway’. The movie relates how years later Lomax (who died in 2012) still suffered psychological trauma from his torture and his physical and mental brutality. Urged by his wife, played by Academy Award winning actress Nicole Kidman (The Hours),  he decides to track down and confront one of his captors. His goal is to let go of a lifetime of bitterness and hate and finally experience forgiveness.

Stellan Skarsgard (The Avengers, Thor, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo), Hiroyuki Sanada (The Wolverine, The Last Samurai), and Ben Rossberg (Mental, Sisters of War) also star, with Jeremy Irvine (War Horse, Great Expectations), playing Eric Lomax as a young man.

The Railway Man is produced by Chris Brown,  Bill Curbishley, Andy Paterson and Transmission Films.