Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Benicio Del Toro has been set to star in Jimmy Picard, a drama that will be directed by  Arnaud Desplechin. The project is adapted from Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian, by acclaimed ethnologist and psychologist Georges Devereux. It is the true story of a friendship between a Native American and a French psychoanalyst. The film will also star Mathieu Amalric and Gina McKee. Shooting begins June 18 in Michigan.

The film is being produced by Desplechin’s longtime partner Pascal Caucheteux of Why Not Productions (Rust And Bone), with Black Swan’s Jennifer Roth exec producing and Stephen Fontaine the DP.

Del Toro plays the title character, a Plains Indian member of the Blackfeet nation who returns from the WWII battlefield and experiences various medical symptoms, none of which can be explained physically. He travels to the famed Winter Hospital in Topeka, Kansas, where he encounters Georges Devereux (Amalric), a French ethno-psychiatrist considered to have a strong understanding of the modern Native American. Through their sessions, the two men, foreign to themselves and to their country, become friends.

Del Toro will next be seen in the Oliver Stone-directed Savages, and he directed a segment of the anthology feature 7 Days In Havana, which premiered at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section. Del Toro is represented by CAA and Rick Yorn.