Maria
Italy/Germany/USA, 2024. Directed by Pablo Larraín. Starring Angelina Jolie, Pierfrancesco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher, Haluk Bilginer, Kodi Smit-McPhee. Running time 124′.
He celebrated last year the Best Screenplay award. Now Pablo Larraín is back on the Lido to present his latest film, Maria, in competition at the 75th Venice International Film Festival. The ideal conclusion to the trilogy dedicated to the significant female figures of the 20th century – completed by Jackie and Spencer (both selected by Alberto Barbera in 2016 and 2021, respectively) – which led him to leave Chile temporarily, Maria shows us Angelina Jolie transformed into the divine Callas, filmed in her Parisian years, the last before her death from cardiac arrest at the age of 53. It was precisely in the Ville Lumière that filming took place. The shooting began last October in Budapest, and for eight weeks, it also travelled to Greece and Milan (where the director shot inside La Scala). A production that, as Larraín himself said, ‘will make the extraordinary life and work of Maria Callas known to audiences all over the world, thanks to the exceptional screenplay by Steve Knight’ – the writer of the film about Lady Diana and Peaky Blinders – and that will allow the Latin American filmmaker ‘to unite his two deepest and most personal passions, cinema and opera’ and realise ‘a long-awaited dream’.
We also find Valeria Golino as Yakinthi Callas, the soprano’s sister, Pierfrancesco Favino and Alba Rohrwacher, called upon to play two faithful collaborators, Alessandro Bressanello (the entrepreneur Giovanni Battista Meneghini, her ex-husband), Haluk Bilginer (Aristóteles Onassis) and Kodi Smit-McPhee.
Some of the ‘performers of great stature‘ that embellish the film, as recently quoted by Paolo Del Brocco, Rai Cinema’s managing director, on the occasion of the announcement that 01 Distribution will bring to the theatres a film ‘that focuses on the myth of one of the most emblematic figures of our contemporary cultural history, whose memory and legacy are destined to remain in time‘. And this will make many people – perhaps young ones as well – discover a world icon, his incredible voice and irresistible personality that it will be up to Angelina Jolie to bring to life on screen. ‘I take the responsibility for Maria’s life and legacy very seriously,’ said the star. – I will give my all to meet the challenge. Pablo Larraín is a director I have admired for a long time,’ calling the chance to work with him (who will also be at the Lido as executive producer of the TV series M. Il figlio del Secolo, like Paolo Sorrentino) “a dream“. And perhaps also that of wearing costumes made from Callas’s original dresses, but without buying new furs – in compliance with what was agreed with PETA and other animal rights associations – and counting on vintage garments from the archive collection of costume designer Massimo Cantini Parrini.
