'A Mighty Heart' Panel to Celebrate Daniel Pearl's Commitment

|PIC1|The Rev. Peter Laarman, Executive Director of Progressive Christians Uniting (PCU), will sit amongst panellists for a discussion on Paramount Vantage's A Mighty Heart.

The panel discussion, "Building Unity and Understanding in Today's World," will follow an exclusive screening of the film, and will be held 21 June in Los Angeles.

A Mighty Heart, is based on Wall Street Journal writer Daniel Pearl and the book of the same name by his wife Mariane Pearl. The panel discussion and screening event will celebrate Daniel's strong commitment to global truth and understanding and the principles in which he lived his life.

Arriving in U.S. theatres 22 June, the A Mighty Heart stars Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl and Dan Futterman as Daniel Pearl.

Other panellists will include Producer of the film Dede Gardner, who co-produced with Brad Pitt/Plan B Entertainment Hussam Ayloush, and Executive Director of CAIR - Greater Los Angeles Area (CAIR-LA) Rabbi Haim Beliak, founder of Jews on First.

On 23 January, 2002, Mariane Pearl's husband Daniel, South Asia bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, was researching a story on shoe bomber Richard Reid. The story drew them to Karachi where a go-between had promised access to an elusive source. As Danny left for the meeting, he told Mariane he might be late for dinner. He never returned.

In the face of death, Danny's spirit of defiance and his unflinching belief in the power of journalism led Mariane to write about his disappearance, the intense effort to find him and his eventual murder in her memoir. Six months pregnant when the ordeal began, she was carrying a son that Danny hoped to name Adam. She wrote the book to introduce Adam to the father he would never meet. Transcending religion, race and nationality, Mariane's desire to rise above the bitterness and hatred serves as the expression of the joy of life she and Danny shared.