TULA, October 20. /TASS/. Russian writer Eugene Vodolazkin will try his hand at screenwriting the future film based on his novel Laurus, to be shot by Serbian movie director Emir Kusturica.

The movie will be in Russian, Kusturica told the First Workshop of Film Critics in Yasnaya Polyana. "I came to Russia to make Russian movies in Russian. Vodolazkin himself will be the screenwriter, because he wrote a book that I like very much," Kusturica said in reply to a TASS query about who will write the script for the movie.

According to Vodolazkin, Laurus will be his first time writing a script for a movie. "I really avoid scripts, at least about my own stuff. But Laurus is probably the only novel where I realized at a certain point how it should be filmed. I have no ambitions to express myself in film art, it's absolutely not my domain, but it happens so that even on someone else's territory you sometimes understand how it should look," the author said.

Vodolazkin said that the first third of the script had already been approved by Kusturica. "Then with peace of mind I finished the remaining two-thirds - it was this summer. If Emir likes these two thirds, then we will work on this script, adapting it to the big screen," the writer added.

Earlier it became known that Kusturica and Vodolazkin agreed to adapt his book, Laurus. The movie rights belong to the Kino TV film channel.

Laurus was released in 2012. The novel is set in medieval Russia, where the protagonist, a doctor, has the gift of healing, but cannot save the woman he loves. After she dies, his undying love for her inspires him to do great deeds, to become a great man. This book brought Vodolazkin two major Russian literary prizes - the Big Book Award and the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award.

The First Workshop of Film Criticism is being held at the Leo Tolstoy Estate Museum from October 19 to 23, with the support of the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives and the Kino TV film channel.