MUMBAI: Freida Pinto has signed a Hollywood period film opposite Spanish actor Antonio Banderas.

Titled Black Thirst, the film is directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud of Enemy at the Gates and Seven Years in Tibet fame. It is the story of how America, in pursuit of oil, started targeting the Gulf as early as 1920.

The film that stars Tahar Rahim (of A Prophet fame) and Mark Strong is to be shot in Tunisia. Pinto plays an Arabian princess and is paired opposite Rahim, but she has a lot many scenes with Banderas.

The film is based on Hans R Ruesch‘s globally-acclaimed work South of the Heart: A Novel of Modern Arabia published in 1957.

The story is set in 1929 when an affluent Arab prince falls in love with a princess but his marital bliss is shortlived as tension and duty to protect his country after oil is discovered in the Gulf befalls on him.

The film is Pinto‘s sixth straight international film after Rise of the Apes, Immortals, Miral, You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger and Slumdog Millionaire.