The new film directed by the renowned Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín titled Maria and featuring Angelina Jolie as the main protagonist, will signal the kickoff of the 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival.
Academy Award®-winner Angelina Jolie is Maria Callas, one of the most iconic performers of the 20th century in acclaimed director Pablo Larrain's operatic Maria. The film follows the American-Greek soprano as she retreats to Paris after a glamorous and tumultuous life in the public eye. Maria reimagines the legendary soprano in her final days as the diva reckons with her identity and life.
The Oscar® nominated film director, who has been awarded at the Cannes, Venice and Berlin film festivals, immerses us into the inner layers of a mythical figure called to cope with the burden of an immeasurable fame and legacy. Angelina Jolie, in a performance hailed and lauded at the recent Venice International Film Festival, embodies the woman behind the myth, a tragic heroine faced up against the specter of a long-gone and unsurpassable greatness, the fear of mortality, the open wounds of a lifetime of unprecedented triumphs and unhealed traumas.
Revolving around the final days of Maria Callas, the opening film of this year’s TIFF concludes Pablo Larraín’s informal trilogy featuring three stunning female personalities who left their indelible mark in the history and the culture of the 20th century, taking the baton from Jackie (portraying Jackie Kennedy) and Spencer (portraying Lady Diana).
Endowed with the mesmerizing operas performed uniquely by Maria Callas, and dotted with flashbacks in the most pivotal episodes of her tumultuous life, from the agonizing years of WWII, all the way to her tempestuous relationship with Aristotle Onassis, Maria sheds light on the human darkness nested behind the shiny showcase of universal appeal.
*The movie will hit the Greek theatres distributed by Cinobo and Faliro House.
