In case Hollywood has forgotten, when it comes to epic, Angelina Jolie defies the genre as a filmmaker. With Unbroken she made a holiday World War II blockbuster which appealed to the faith-based, grossing over $161M worldwide, and in the Fremantle/The Apartment produced Italian production of Without Blood she visually rivals Terrence Malick’s on-screen aesthetic seen in Days of Heaven in a movie that’s inspired by the Mexican western period. Without Blood is Jolie’s sixth feature film as a director.
Without Blood makes its world premiere here tonight at TIFF, however, just moments ago, the actress-filmmaker received the TIFF Tribute Award in Impact Media.
The Alessandro Baricco novel, which doesn’t have a specific setting, though indicates possibly a Latino and Hispanic backdrop, follows a woman, Nina, whose father was murdered by a gang when she was a child. Her father’s murderer, Tito, discovers her beneath a trap door as a child, and moved by her innocence let’s her be. Older, Nina (Salma Hayak) finds Tito (Demián Bichir) working in a news stand. The two sit down for a meal, and hash it all out.
Angelina Jolie told us earlier today in the Deadline TIFF studio, “When I read the book, I hadn’t read something in a long time, not in my memory, which was addressing that very complex gray area of human beings. Where it wasn’t defining who was good, who was bad, what was absolute, it was dealing with post conflict which I feel I studied a lot of conflict in films I directed and written, and this was an aspect of it, this after, this idea that it would end, or how it lingers with us, and what it does. It felt so true to what it is like for the many people that I know who’ve gone through war. When I read it, I thought it would go one way, I was surprised that it didn’t, and I was surprised that I was happy it didn’t.”
One of the motifs in the movie is “death in the light of day,” says Jolie. Watch our video above in which Hayak and Bichir also discuss the safe space that the actor’s director, Jolie, provided to them, the boundaries she pushed — even when they were ahead of production schedule.
Tonight at the TIFF Tribute awards, Hayak beamed that Jolie “Is the best actor director I’ve worked with.”
Jolie’s autumn is off to a great start with Netflix snapping up Pablo Larraín’s Maria in which she plays famed opera singer Maria Callas during her last days in the 1970s. Without Blood is also up for sale here at TIFF.
