Animal rescuer Pen Farthing who was accused of prioritising pets over humans has vowed his new film will tell the true story behind the evacuation of Kabul in Afghanistan.
Operation Ark will tell Farthing’s account of the evacuation of rescue cats and dogs from the country during the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021.
The nonprofit charity Nowzad, which Farthing founded 10 years prior while serving in Afghanistan, had been taking care of strays, military dogs and animal victims of war.
During the evacuation, the rescuer had just a few days to save the animals and workers at the charity, raising a million pounds in private funding to get them on one of the final flights.
The mission sparked huge controversy after some workers were left behind amid devastating scenes of despair and stampeding at the airport.
Pen and Hannah Farthing with two rescue dogs from the charity Nowzad
A photo taken on August 15, 2021 shows the inside of Reach 871, a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III flown from Kabul to Qata
The animal rescuer was accused of valuing ‘pets over people’ and leaving humans at the mercy of the Taliban.
Critics of Farthing included Tom Tugendhat, the Tory MP and Afghanistan veteran, then chair of the foreign affairs committee. He said: ‘We’ve just used a lot of troops to get 200 dogs out, meanwhile my interpreter’s family are likely to be killed.’
Following the evacuation in 2021, a whistleblower claimed soldiers were put at risk by the decision to evacuate the animals
Raphael Marshall told MPs he agreed with the military that it was wrong that Farthing’s charity was given priority when translators were being left to their fate.
Mr Farthing said he endured abuse and death threats despite getting 67 people out through the funding.
He has now sold the film rights of his book, Operation Ark, to Clear Pictures Entertainment.
Mr Farthing said the film, which will see hundreds of dogs and cats cast alongside major actors, will tell the truth about what happened.
The animal rescuer told The Telegraph: ‘It is a story that needs telling. ‘There had never been a priority of pets over people.
Operation Ark will tell Farthing’s account of the evacuation of rescue cats and dogs from the country during the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021
‘During the evacuation of Kabul in August of 2021, I never hesitated in my mission to evacuate my Afghan staff and their families as the West abandoned Afghanistan.
‘With the kindness of thousands of supporters from the Nowzad charity, we raised the funds to charter our own aircraft where our people could sit in the passenger cabin and our animals could go in the cargo hold.’
One of the film’s producers, Elizabeth Fowler, said people would be left to make up their own minds over what happened.
The script has been co-written by Joshua Michael Stern and Travis Lively.
One year after escaping the horrific chaos of Kabul, Farthing said he was ‘one push’ away from giving up entirely. ‘I was in a despair so total that I couldn’t see how to live with it,’ he told the Mail.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk