If a screenwriter were to write a fictional drama about a 21st-century princess’s escape, recapture, imprisonment and release, it might be dismissed as too unbelievable. But the real-life story of Dubai’s Princess Latifa and her escape, recapture, imprisonment and release has inspired a new drama.
A four-part series titled The Escape will go into production next year. With a script by the award-winning British writer, Lindsay Shapero, it will tell the story of Latifa, who with the help of her close friend Tiina Jauhiainen fled Dubai in 2018, only for both women to be forcibly returned and interrogated.
The daughter of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Latifa used a rigid inflatable boat to reach a yacht anchored in international waters rented by a French accomplice. But while off the coast of India, the vessel was reportedly boarded by Indian commandos and she was returned to her father.
In a legal battle in 2020, a London high court judge, Sir Andrew McFarlane, accepted as proven a series of allegations made by Princess Haya, the sheikh’s former wife, including that the sheikh ordered Latifa’s abduction, although his lawyers rejected the allegations.
For months, Latifa’s fate had been unclear until she managed to smuggle out videos in which she said she had been kept in solitary confinement.
In further footage, she said: “All the windows are barred shut … There’s five policemen outside and two policewomen inside the house. And I can’t even go outside to get any fresh air. I’m doing this video from a bathroom because this is the only room with a door I can lock. I’m a hostage. I am not free. I’m enslaved in this jail.”
UN experts raised concerns with the United Arab Emirates government, warning that “her continued incommunicado detention … may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”. The UAE’s embassy in London issued a statement saying Latifa was being cared for at home by her family and medical professionals and would return to public life “at the appropriate time”.
The drama series is being developed by Yellow Film & TV, led by the Irish and Finnish producers Jackie Larkin and Olli Haikka. It will tell the story of Latifa’s “death-defying escape attempt”, including being hidden in the tyre compartment of a car driven across an armed border and the invasion of the yacht by “Indian special forces and Emirati officers who surround the princess and her friend with helicopters and military boats”.
Haikka said: “The women were kidnapped, imprisoned and interrogated, with Tiina eventually deported from the UAE, and Latifa kept a prisoner in her own country.”
Larkin spoke of the women’s fear in “being taken off the boat at gunpoint”.
Jauhiainen, a Finnish national, had befriended Latifa after teaching her capoeira, a Brazilian martial art and dance form developed by enslaved people. That friendship has ended because a condition of the princess’s release was that the two women never contact one another again, Larkin said. Latifa is believed to now live in Paris.
The drama will show at one point the former UN high commissioner for human rights Mary Robinson travelled to Dubai to see for herself whether Latifa was still alive. The film-makers said: “Robinson was misled into thinking that the princess was not a captive but was instead mentally ill. The truth of Princess Latifa’s captivity was eventually revealed when Tiina released secret video messages.”
Haikka said that for legal reasons and in the pursuit of accuracy, they had been working with independent investigators.
Larkin said: “It’s very complex legally, but also, naturally, we would, as professionals, do the in-depth level of research ourselves and – thanks to the Guardian – there’s been some fantastic articles and coverage of this case to date.”
Shapero is an Emmy award-winning and Bafta-nominated writer, whose previous productions include Enid, a BBC drama described by the Guardian as a “riveting portrait” of Enid Blyton, played by Helena Bonham Carter.
The UAE’s media office was contacted for comment.
• This article was amended on 28 and 30 November 2023 to revise a description of the series’ development.
