Twelve football-loving children from China's Uygur minority have been selected for stardom in a film about a competition in the country's westernmost region to see the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
"Mamat's 2008", which began shooting last week, tells the story of 12 Uygur youngsters in a small village on the edges of the world's second largest desert, who try to attend the opening ceremony of the Games, said Zhang Yigang, head of the Tianshan Film Studio based in Urumqi.
The children's football team representing their village must win the championship of a regional tournament to win a trip to Beijing.
"Uygurs living in southern Xinjiang are crazy about football and in many remote villages it is a popular game with all ages. This is where the first idea of this story came from," Zhang said.
The young stars, selected from Kashgar and Kizilsu in southern Xinjiang and Urumqi, the regional capital, were all first-time film actors, he said.
Ten-year-old Ailidana Aizimaiti is the only girl and a football fanatic.
"I have played football for five years. My favorite player is Sun Wen (the renowned Chinese female football player)," she said.
In the movie, she plays a village girl who contributes to the critical play in the final game.
"The movie will be happy and inspiring," Zhang said.
The shooting in Turpan of Xinjiang is scheduled to end by November and the movie will be released in April next year.
Source: Xinhua
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