Larysa Kondracki’s The Whistleblower has attracted a clutch of international headliners. The Canada/Germany coproduction, first announced at Cannes with Rachel Weisz in the lead, has now added Vanessa Redgrave, Monica Bellucci, David Strathairn and Danish star Nikolaj Lie Kaas to its cast. The screenplay is written by Kondracki and Eilis Kirwan.

Set to shoot in Bucharest, Romania on Oct. 26, the film tells the true story of Kathy Bolkovac (Weisz), a nervy and tenacious policewoman who risks her job and her own safety to uncover and bring to light a scandal involving both American contractors and the United Nations in post-war Bosnia.

The film is produced by Toronto-based First Generation Films, Germany’s Barry Films and two New York City-based companies, Primary Productions and Plum Pictures. E1 Entertainment is distributing the film in Canada. L.A.-based Voltage Pictures is handling international sales. It marks Kondracki’s directorial feature debut, following the 2009 short Viko.

First Generation is a familiar name in Canada thanks to its most recent production, Amreeka, which won the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight this year. E1 is opening Amreeka on Oct. 30 in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Winnipeg.

First Generation founder Christina Piovesan, lead producer on Amreeka, originally connected with Kondracki when they were students at McGill. The pair acquired the rights to the story of an American policewoman whose humanitarian work in the former Yugoslavia lead from investigating sexual assaults to uncovering a sex trafficking ring.

Weisz won the supporting actress Oscar for The Constant Gardener in 2006. Redgrave, the eminence of the acting dynasty, was last seen in Atonement. Strathairn is best known as the malevolent CIA bureaucrat in the Bourne franchise. Bellucci and Lie Kaas are better known in Europe: She has been seen in such films as The Passion of the Christ and The Matrix Revolutions and he appeared as an assassin in Ron Howard’s Angels & Demons.