Vancouver prodco Screen Siren Pictures has optioned the rights to Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter, the bestselling memoir of Chilean-Canadian playwright and actor Carmen Aguirre.

Screen Siren president Trish Dolman and Christine Haebler will produce the project, with Aguirre attached to pen the adaptation alongside Indian Horse screenwriter Dennis Foon.

Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter tells the story of how a six-year-old Aguirre fled to North America following the 1973 Chilean military coup and later returned to South America as a teenager as part of the Chilean resistance.

The memoir is published by Penguin Random House Canada and won CBC’s Canada Reads competition in 2012, as well as earning the title Best Book by the National Post and The Globe & Mail and Book of the Year by Quill & Quire.

The option was negotiated by Dolman and business affairs manager Tony Cerciello for Screen Siren and Gersh’s Hannah Vaughn and Joe Veltre on behalf of literary agency CookeMcDermid’s Paige Sisley and Sally Harding.

Several production companies have tried to option the book in the past, according to a statement from Aguirre, but it went to Screen Siren after they ensured the author would be “fully involved as writer” and the adaptation won’t “water down the story’s political content.”

“Something Fierce is a powerful coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of a political thriller,” said Haebler. “Projects like this one help realize Screen Siren’s mandate to empower female and BIPOC storytellers and tell stories that change the conversation.”

Screen Siren Pictures is currently in production on the documentary Rock & Roll Revival (working title), directed by Ron Chapman, which tells the story of the historic Toronto Rock and Roll Revival concert in 1969.