Godard mulls Holocaust book for next film

Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard listens to question during a press conference for his film entry 'Notre Musique' which is screened out of competition at the 57th Cannes Film Festival, May 18, 2004.

NEW YORK/PARIS (Hollywood Reporter) - Jean-Luc Godard, who turns 79 in the fall, is working on his latest film and eyeing material for the one after that.

The icon of the French New Wave has been toiling away on "Le socialisme," a political story that could be ready as early as this year.

Now there's word that he's interested in directing a film adaptation of "The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million," a Holocaust-themed investigative memoir by New York Times writer Daniel Mendelsohn.

Mendelsohn's book, a best-seller when it came out three years ago, traces the writer's quest to determine his relatives' fate in the small town of Bolechow, Poland, during World War II and expands into larger questions of guilt and collective responsibility.

"Lost" won a National Book Critics Circle prize in the U.S. and made a splash in France, picking up the country's prestigious Prix Medicis.

Godard never has taken on the Holocaust directly, but many of his films -- including the Algerian war picture "Le petit soldat," the antiwar film "Les carabiniers" and his most recent work, the 2004 triptych "Notre musique" -- deal with complex political and philosophical questions.

As for "Le socalisme," an unofficial French-language trailer shows that it mixes documentary and narrative footage from countries throughout Europe, much of it with political themes.

(Editing by Sheri Linden at Reuters)