Looks like our favourite man, Ewan McGregor, is finally back in our lives, in a few great upcoming films, and believe it or not, a television show. But the movie that everyone is looking forward to, is Salmon Fishing In The Yemen. A British comedy directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt and Kristin Scott Thomas, Salmon Fishing In The Yemen is a film about believing in the impossible. It premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and will be in cinemas soon.

Based on Paul Torday’s debut novel, the film tells the story of a fisheries scientist, who finds himself caught up in a mission to bring salmon fishing to the Highlands of Yemen. Adapted for the screen by Simon Beaufoy, and produced by Paul Webster, the movie was shot in London, Scotland and Morocco during the last months of 2010.

Dr. Alfred Jones (played by Ewan McGregor) is a middle-aged scientist working for the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence in London, and he is offered to join a project which plans to introduce the sport of salmon fishing into to the Highlands of Yemen. Although to begin with, he refuses, British politicians find the project interesting and pressure him to take the offer. Dr. Jones finally joins this scientifically absurd plan and registers all the events of the Yemen Salmon Project on his diaries, which pretty much work as a report on political spin, devilish bureaucracy and governmental malfunction.

The cast, including Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt, Amr Waked, Kristin Scott Thomas, Rachael Stirling, Pippa Andre, Catherine Steadman and Tom Mison, offer engaging performances, and Lasse Hallström’s direction very effectively conveys the claustrophobic, lonely and stressful feeling that is sent across when one becomes in any way involved in politics. At the same time, however, the film offers a warm love story and a highly optimistic –and absurd — sense of humour to counter the unhappiness that politics always tends to create. Salmon Fishing In The Yemen is definitely something to look forward to for many reasons, but chiefly, the fact that it’s bringing our favourite Scot back.