Showing posts with label Without Blood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Without Blood. Show all posts

Monday, August 10, 2026







The Oscar-winning filmmaker tells PEOPLE why adapting Alessandro Baricco’s novel felt deeply personal and praises Salma Hayek’s “incredible work”

By Angelique Brenes Published on August 10, 2026 11:02AM EDT

Angelina Jolie is giving fans a new glimpse at Without Blood, and opening up about the deeply personal story she hopes audiences take with them.

Ahead of the film’s Sept. 18 theatrical release, the Oscar-winning filmmaker exclusively tells PEOPLE that her drama, starring Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir, is ultimately about “healing after trauma” and finding connection through honest conversation.

“I was drawn to Alessandro Baricco’s beautifully written novel because it examines universal truths about conflict, memory and what it is to be human,” Jolie, 51, tells PEOPLE of adapting the author’s acclaimed novel. “I chose to stay very true to it. My approach was to shape and edit more than to write.”

She says the story’s message extends far beyond its setting.

“The film is for anyone who seeks answers and healing after trauma,” Jolie says. “The book discusses how we often ‘return to where we break.’ That’s true for almost anyone. No one knows what someone else has gone through. To sit and talk with openness and honesty, is a beginning.”

The film also marks another collaboration between Jolie and Hayek, who previously starred alongside one another in Marvel’s Eternals. This time, however, Jolie is behind the camera directing her friend in what she says is one of the actress’ most transformative performances.

“It was wonderful,” Jolie tells PEOPLE. “I felt very fortunate to direct Salma, Demián and the rest of the cast and crew who worked incredibly hard.”

She says the emotionally demanding material required every actor to be fearless.

“It’s a very challenging piece for actors who had to be very brave and emotionally open,” Jolie says. “Knowing her well helped to direct her but there was so much about her as a woman and a performer I was surprised by still and so impressed.”

Jolie believes audiences will discover a side of Hayek they’ve never seen before.

“I am excited for people to see her incredible work,” she says. “To see her in a way she hasn’t been seen before.”

Without Blood, which Jolie directed and produced, is based on Baricco’s novel of the same name. Starring Hayek, Bichir and Juan Minujín, the drama unfolds in the aftermath of an unnamed conflict and explores themes of war, memory, trauma and healing.

The project has been years in the making. When production was underway in Italy in 2022, it also became a family affair.

At the time, Jolie’s sons Maddox and Pax worked behind the scenes in the assistant director department on the set. Reflecting on the experience, Jolie told PEOPLE, “We work well together. When a film crew is at its best, it feels like a big family, so it felt natural.”

Now, with Without Blood finally set to reach audiences, Jolie hopes viewers leave with the same sense of empathy that first drew her to the novel.

“No one knows what someone else has gone through,” she tells PEOPLE. “To sit and talk with openness and honesty, is a beginning.”


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Monday, March 31, 2025






DAL 10 APRILE SOLO AL CINEMA!
Il nuovo film scritto e diretto da Angelina Jolie, con Salma Hayek Pinault.
Tratto da "Senza Sangue" di Alessandro Baricco.

Siamo all'inizio del XX secolo e tutto scorre come sempre in casa di Manuel Roca, medico che vive con i suoi due figli in una fattoria isolata, nella campagna bruciata dal sole di una terra di frontiera. Quando quattro uomini armati imboccano la strada sterrata che conduce alla loro casa, in cerca vendetta. Roca tenta disperatamente di proteggere i suoi figli, ma nulla può contro la ferocia degli aggressori.Molti anni dopo, Nina, ormai adulta e unica sopravvissuta della famiglia, incontra Tito, un venditore ambulante. L'incontro potrebbe sembrare casuale, ma entrambi sanno che non lo è: Tito conosce il motivo della visita di Nina, e lei lo stava cercando. Mentre tra i due si accende un confronto carico di tensione, diventa chiaro che la guerra è finita per molti, ma non per tutti. Il passato continua a bruciare nel presente, e la vendetta, come un’ombra lunga e ineluttabile, assume forme inaspettate.




Like all her other films, the cinematography looks gorgeous.


It was shown during the Torino film fest. Alessandro Baricco is Italian. Vision is releasing in Italy.

It should also sell well in Latin America but no distribution deal announced so far.

The book received modest ratings on Amazon (3.9/5) and Goodreads (3.6/5).

IMDb ratings are very good from a very small sample. Critic ratings are not, but also from a very small sample.

She followed Baricco's advice and stayed faithful to the book's nebulous nature.

It's not about the specifics of the conflict or the protagonists. It was ultimately about the simple act of the two of them talking.

To gain wider distribution, she needs to explain what the book imparted to her and what she hopes audiences will draw from it.

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Sunday, November 24, 2024

































TURIN, ITALY - NOVEMBER 24: A general view as Angelina Jolie attends the 42nd Torino Film Festival 2024 - Day 3 on November 24, 2024 in Turin, Italy. (Photo by Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images)









TURIN, ITALY - NOVEMBER 24: (L-R) Carlo Chatrian, Director of TFF Giulio Base, Angelina Jolie, Alessandro Baricco and Enzo Ghigo attend the 42nd Torino Film Festival 2024 - Day 3 on November 24, 2024 in Turin, Italy. (Photo by Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images)

TURIN, ITALY - NOVEMBER 24: Giulio Base, Angelina Jolie and Tiziana Rocca attend the 42nd Torino Film Festival 2024 - Day 3 on November 24, 2024 in Turin, Italy. (Photo by Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images)



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Tuesday, September 24, 2024



In her new movie WITHOUT BLOOD, director Angelina Jolie returns to a topic close to her heart: the long impact of war. Following the film’s World Premiere at TIFF ‘24, Jolie — along with actors Salma Hayek Pinault and Demián Bichir — discussed adapting Alessandro Baricco’s novel, fighting for the ending she wanted, and why Hayek Pinault initially declined the film's starring role. Moderated by TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey. #tiff24 #angelinajolie #salmahayek


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Tuesday, September 17, 2024


An uncompromising adaptation of a book whose general truths about conflict are accessible thru a deep emotional understanding was never going to have it easy.

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Wednesday, September 11, 2024







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Tuesday, September 10, 2024








Angelina Jolie returns to the Toronto International Film Festival this year with a new film that she has directed, “Without Blood,” and the actress and filmmaker told TheWrap the film stands as a trilogy-capper of sorts to her films about war and conflict.

“Without Blood,” based on the novel of the same name by Alessandro Baricco, continues Jolie’s focus on the toll of war, which she explored in earlier films “In the Land of Blood and Honey” and “First They Killed My Father.” In this new film Salma Hayek Pinault plays Nina, a woman who has been impacted by war, who finds Tito (Demián Bichir), a lottery seller. At first their conversation seems innocuous, but soon harsh truths emerge as to the true intent of their interaction and the film largely plays out as a conversation between the two characters.

Jolie, Hayek Pinault and Bichir spoke with TheWrap’s Joe McGovern about the tricky adaptation at TheWrap’s 2024 TIFF Studio sponsored by Moët & Chandon and Boss Design.

“Certain pieces you find you at different times in your life,” Jolie said. “Most of the films I’ve directed deal with war and conflict and in a way, this is a final chapter to that. This is post-conflict, and what I loved is that, as I was reading it, I thought I believed one thing, I thought I wanted something, and then, as it changed, I realized it was correcting my points of view. It was helping me to understand something that I hadn’t anticipated. I don’t find that often. It’s not easy. I think it’s accurate to a lot of the post-conflict situations.”

And the unusual structure of the film, with much of it being a conversation between Nina and Tito, didn’t frighten Hayek Pinault. Not that she didn’t have other concerns. “I was not afraid of the dialogue. I was more afraid of the fact that I had to do an entire movie where every day I went to set, I had to go so deep into torture, and that I had to go through the entire day of work, and this couldn’t come out,” Hayek Pinault said. “I had to visit like places where trauma lies and hides and chokes you and makes you feel the most intense pain emotionally that anyone can feel, but you cannot let it out, because that was the character. That’s what she wanted. I was afraid to go there.”

Watch the full conversation in the video.




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Monday, September 9, 2024





For Salma Hayek Pinault, Angelina Jolie is more than just the director of her latest movie. She is “a family member,” Hayek Pinault, 58, tells PEOPLE on Sunday, Sept. 8, at the Toronto International Film Festival world premiere of Without Blood.

When asked about her longtime friendship with Jolie, 49, Hayek Pinault quips, “What do you mean friendship?” She then notes that the two are much closer than that — and “do things together as a family.”

And when not working, that includes “hang[ing] out sometimes with the kids, but also by ourselves,” the actress continues, adding: “I always find it super inspiring. A friend was telling me, ‘It's the same life whether you laugh or cry.’ And it's nice to have a friend where you can laugh and cry... and feel always safe.”

Without Blood marks the Maria star’s first follow-up collaboration with Hayek Pinault after the two starred in the 2021 Marvel Cinematic Universe installment Eternals.

"I was surprised, even though we are very close and stuff, but I was [surprised by] how warm and generous and kind she was as a director to the actors," Hayek Pinault said at the PEOPLE/Entertainment Weekly suite in Toronto. “I felt like she was my motherly figure because she would come to the set and run it like a family. She was a very efficient mother, but she was also there emotionally every step of the way.” She added at the time, "I've worked with great directors that are really focused, but maybe because she's also an actress. Everything that maybe she wished somebody would've done for her, she did for us."

Also starring Juan Minujín, Without Blood will be distributed by Fremantle and is awaiting a theatrical release following its world premiere. The Toronto International Film Festival runs through Sept. 15.






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Of the five films Angelina Jolie has directed, four have depicted war. But her latest, “Without Blood,” delves most directly into the haunting aftermath of the carnage.

“I think conflict tends to bring out absolutely the worst in our behavior toward each other and often the best, when those who fight against or rise above,” Jolie said during an interview at the Variety Toronto Film Festival Studio. “As artists, a lot of our work is this study of what it is to be human. So these extremes of the human condition are what we’re trying to understand sometimes and are drawn to. Certainly I’m somebody who, as I’ve traveled and done other [humanitarian] work in the field, I’ve always questioned why and how.”

Jolie was joined by the film’s stars Salma Hayek Pinault and Demián Bichir, who play Nina and Tito, respectively, two people who stood on opposite sides of an unspecified war years earlier. Hayek Pinault, for one, admitted that she was reluctant to sign on for her second collaboration with Jolie. (They previously starred together in the 2021 Marvel tentpole “Eternals.”)

“I was afraid to play this part. I was not immediately jumping in it because she suffers so much, my character, and I had to go there and suffer for the entire time of the shooting,” she said. “You cannot expel the pain. You have to keep it boiling, boiling, boiling for hours, for days, for weeks. So I was terrified and I didn’t want to do it. The more we talked about it … I started seeing myself, my own traumas, the traumas of people that I know, that are close to me, in this character that was so foreign at the beginning and where I didn’t want to go. I started realizing, ‘What do you mean you don’t want to go? You’ve always been there.’ I started seeing how it connected to so many women even if you’re not post-war. We’ve all been tossed aside and not seen or abused in one way or another.”

For Bichir, a best actor Oscar nominee for 2011’s “A Better Life,” Jolie offered the tools necessary to scale the film’s emotional heights.

“What you did was create the perfect atmosphere to let us get to that place,” he said as he turned to Jolie. “It was like going to Mount Everest for the first time, without knowing what you will encounter. What Angelina did was equip us really nicely and fully with the right footwear and the warm jackets and everything for you to go up there and be free.”

Jolie is also promoting her Venice darling “Maria,” in which the “Girl, Interrupted” Oscar winner plays iconic opera singer Maria Callas. That film is not part of the official TIFF lineup, but Netflix screened “Maria” for festival attendees on Sunday, with Jolie introducing it.

“Without Blood,” which is being shopped for a domestic distribution deal, will make its world premiere at TIFF tonight. Jolie noted that the film, which shot at Rome’s famed Cinecittà studios, poses questions about the endless cycle of violence followed by revenge.

“It was something that everybody, and especially these two extraordinary actors, had to come to the set very, very human,” Jolie added. “We all had to talk about what it was. After thinking about that pain, and thinking about that desire for revenge, and thinking about all of that hurt, and listening to the other side. Can you then let it wash over you? Can you really have heard [what the other side is saying], and can you let it transform you?”


This morning, Baricco tells Deadline exclusively: “I welcome the launch of Without Blood and wish the film all the luck in the world. Meeting Angelina was exciting but most of all it was great for me to spend time with her talking about the book, of which she is an intelligent and passionate reader. I will never forget the day I went to visit her on set: I watched parts of the film, and there, in the middle of the countryside, in the middle of nowhere, I saw for the first time the characters I had imagined come to life. It was amazing. Meeting Angelina, her talent, her courage, and her gentle strength, has been a privilege for me. The beauty of the film preserves much of what is so special about her.”

Prior to last night’s screening, Jolie received the TIFF Tribute Award for Impact Media in which she emphasized, “After pushing for basic human rights for all people, only to see the reality worsen for so many, I feel a part of the failure of the system.” However, Jolie ended her speech underscoring how world cinema provides a dialogue and an empathy among us.

Talking about the complexity about a woman who meets her family’s murderer, the guy who also spared her life, Jolie said, “One of the interesting things within it, is this idea: Well, who’s a bad guy? Who’s wrong? Who’s right? This idea that there’s some absolute and how important that is. And that the power, and how hard it is to sit at that table. It wasn’t easy for you to join them at that table; that is the hardest table to sit at, and the most important table for us to sit to get through this life.






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"I'm very happy he's healthy," she told Entertainment Tonight ahead of the premiere, noting that he had a job on the movie. Her eldest son Maddox, 23, also worked with Pax in the assistant director department. Pax is noted in the credits as having worked on the Electronic Press Kit.

After the screening, held at the TIFF Lightbox theater, Jolie — who also shares children Zahara, 19, Shiloh, 18, and 16-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne with ex-husband, Brad Pitt, 60 — and the film's stars, Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir, sat for a Q&A moderated by TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey.

When the brief chat wrapped up, Pax joined the audience in giving Jolie and the cast a standing ovation. He was seated in the audience near Hayek's husband, François-Henri Pinault.


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Random Fuzzy



Recall what she told Variety in 2022 while in the midst of filming Without Blood:
When Angelina Jolie read Alessandro Baricco’s short novel “Without Blood” — the basis for her next directorial effort — the Italian fable about the brutality of war and healing in its aftermath had an immediate therapeutic effect.

“I read it right as I was going through the beginning of a very dark time in my life. I read it in the month that followed my divorce [from Brad Pitt in 2016],” recalls Jolie, who shot the adaptation at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios. “It had the effect on me that it’s had on so many people,” Jolie says, noting that the blurb on the cover says that the book is about the complexity of the human condition.

“I didn’t understand that when I first read it. I just knew the book had a profound effect on me,” she says. “I think it’s one of those pieces of art, of somebody’s intuition and mind, that puts something forward that has so much truth in it about who we are as people.”

She talks to Variety in the midst of shooting on a bustling soundstage where a key scene following a shootout at an isolated farmhouse is being set up. Ironically for a movie titled “Without Blood,” the wood farmhouse floor built on the Cinecittà soundstage is strewn with blood and bullets, and final touches are being put on a bullet-ridden dummy lying on the ground. “A Western?” says Jolie, about the tone of the film. “We’ve embraced that.”

“We love dead bodies; we definitely have dead bodies,” says Emmy-winning production designer Jon Hutman, who recalls meeting Jolie in 2010 on the Venice set of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s “The Tourist.” He has worked on four of the actor’s five films since then.

“Having a lot of shootouts means you have to have multiples of the same costume,” says costume designer Ursula Patzak, who adds that the main visual reference she got from Jolie is “The Godfather,” which “has lots of black and white costumes.” The color palette of the film’s outfits is sober because “color distracts from the narrative of the story and from the actors.”

“My first film was about the war in the Balkans,” Jolie recalls of “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” saying she wrote it “trying to understand” how people who love each other can turn against each other. “How come in the beginning of the film they love each other and in the end of the film they’re killing each other?” she says. “The film is a study in how that happens.”

But “Without Blood,” which is told in a series of flashbacks, is a more complex work about violence, war and choices. “This film raises different questions; there is no clear good and bad in this film, even though there is clearly bad, horrible, horrific and criminal behavior.”

It complements her remarks at TIFF; helps to better understand her meaning:

"There is a time in our lives where we break. Something happens, something changes us, some relationships, some trauma, something happens. And we spend a lot of our lives trying to revisit that moment. It affects us for the rest of our life.

Sometimes we don't know how to sit at that table and address that issue or that person or have that conversation.

That is one of the most difficult things about the film. A lot of the gray area of life. A lot of the asking 'why?' A lot of the listening -- which is maybe the most important thing."

"I suppose I wish that we'd all sit together and keep talking. Just start the conversation that I don't really have an end to or an answer.

One of the interesting things within it, now that you've seen it, you understand the idea: 'Who's the bad guy?','Who is wrong?','Who is right?' This idea that there's some absolute, and how important that is.

And the power -- how hard it is to sit at that table, the hardest table to sit at, and the most important table to sit at for us to get through this life, for us to understand each other. And so much that's happening in this world because we're not able to do that. So I just hope that there's more conversation."



Without Blood (the book) has 3.9 stars out of 5 on Amazon. Not high. A parable on a thorny subject with no tidy conclusion, it was never going to be easily accesible, and neither will a film that is faithful to it.

Angelina told Scott Feiinberg in Telluride,
"I never read reviews. Not the good or the bad. I actually have read the bad in the past when I’ve directed, because I’m curious about what is or isn’t landing."

The reviews for Without Blood may keep her busy on that score.

Different views from the screening:













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Sunday, September 8, 2024





"There is a time in our lives where we break. Something happens, something changes us, some relationships, some trauma, something happens. And we spend a lot of our lives trying to revisit that moment. It affects us for the rest of our life.

Sometimes we don't know how to sit at that table and address that issue or that person or have that conversation.

That is one of the most difficult things about the film, is a lot of the gray area of life. A lot of the asking 'why?', a lot of the listening -- which is maybe the most important thing."




"I suppose I wish that we'd all sit together and keep talking. Just start the conversation that I don't really have an end to or an answer.

One of the interesting things within it, now that you've seen it, you understand the idea: 'Who's the bad guy?','Who is wrong?','Who is right?' This idea that there's some absolute, and how important that is.

And the power -- how hard it is to sit at that table, the hardest table to sit at, and the most important table to sit at for us to get through this life, for us to understand each other. And so much that's happening in this world because we're not able to do that. So I just hope that there's more conversation."










TORONTO, ONTARIO - SEPTEMBER 08: (L-R) Rutger Hoedemaekers, Lorenzo De Maio, Salma Hayek, Jorge Antonio Guerrero, Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Patricio José, Demián Bichir, and Juan Gervasio Minujín attend the premiere of "Without Blood" during the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Lightbox on September 08, 2024 in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo by Monica Schipper/EveryStory2024/Getty Images

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2024 Toronto International Film Festival - "Without Blood" Premiere



TORONTO, ONTARIO - SEPTEMBER 08: (l-R) Salma Hayek Pinault, Angelina Jolie, and Demián Bichir attend the premiere of "Without Blood" during the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Lightbox on September 08, 2024 in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo by Monica Schipper/EveryStory2024/Getty Images)



TORONTO, ONTARIO - SEPTEMBER 08: Angelina Jolie attends the premiere of "Without Blood" during the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Lightbox on September 08, 2024 in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo by Robin Marchant/Getty Images)






TORONTO, ONTARIO - SEPTEMBER 08: (L-R) Angelina Jolie and Pax Jolie-Pitt attend the premiere of "Without Blood" during the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Lightbox on September 08, 2024 in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo by Monica Schipper/EveryStory2024/Getty Images)

TORONTO, ONTARIO - SEPTEMBER 08: (L-R) Salma Hayek and François-Henri Pinault attend the premiere of "Without Blood" during the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Lightbox on September 08, 2024 in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo by Monica Schipper/EveryStory2024/Getty Images)

TORONTO, ONTARIO - SEPTEMBER 08: (l-R) Salma Hayek Pinault, Angelina Jolie, Victoria Aletta, and Demián Bichir attend the premiere of "Without Blood" during the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Lightbox on September 08, 2024 in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo by Monica Schipper/EveryStory2024/Getty Images)

TORONTO, ONTARIO - SEPTEMBER 08: (L-R) Juan Minujín and Angelina Jolie attend the premiere of "Without Blood" during the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Lightbox on September 08, 2024 in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo by Monica Schipper/EveryStory2024/Getty Images)

TORONTO, ONTARIO - SEPTEMBER 08: (L-R) Patricio José, Jorge Antonio Guerrero, Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie, Demián Bichir and Juan Gervasio Minujín attend the premiere of "Without Blood" during the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Lightbox on September 08, 2024 in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo by Monica Schipper/EveryStory2024/Getty Images)





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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 and former Special Envoy to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 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.



Deadline Studio at the Toronto International Film Festivial 2024 - Behind the Scenes - Day 3



Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie and Demián Bichir of "Without Blood" at the Deadline Studio held at the Bisha Hotel during the Toronto International Film Festival 2024 on September 8, 2024 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by KC Armstrong/Deadline via Getty Images)






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"I was surprised, even though we are very close and stuff, but I was [surprised by] how warm and generous and kind she was as a director to the actors. It was really something," Hayek Pinault, 58, says at the PEOPLE/Entertainment Weekly suite at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Without Blood is premiering on Sunday, Sept. 8.

"I've worked with great directors that are really focused, but maybe because she's also an actress... everything that maybe she wished somebody would've done for her, she did for us."

Hayek Pinault and Jolie costarred together in the 2021 Marvel movie Eternals. About their dynamics, Hayek Pinault says, "In [Eternals] I was a little bit of a mother figure to her. In this movie, I felt like she was my motherly figure because she would come to the set and run it like a family."

"She was a very efficient mother, but she was also there emotionally every step of the way," she adds.

"It was a life-changing experience for me making this film," Hayek tells PEOPLE of the difficult role completed with Jolie. "After so many years, to feel that somebody really listened, really saw me, really created a safe space for me, really embraced me, really admired my talent and let me know... I discovered things about myself as an actress. I was so proud of myself. I was doing things I couldn't believe I was doing and how easy it was."



"They work hard," recalls Hayek Pinault, 58, at the PEOPLE/Entertainment Weekly TIFF suite on Sept. 8. Seeing her longtime friend interact with Maddox and Pax at work, Hayek Pinault says Jolie was "very professional with them" on set.

"She's demanding. They got the respect of the crew, and they were good with the crew, and they were very in their place," the actress adds. "They were not treating me like they treat me outside of there. They were very, 'You have to come,' and I go, 'Okay!' It was kind of fun."

She adds of Maddox and Pax, "They work hard. They are very serious about what they do."

At the start of filming, Hayek Pinault says she was playful toward Maddox and Pax.

"It is kind of funny, I was teasing them at the beginning, but then I had to say, 'No. I have to separate and just treat them like professionals because it's disrespectful,' " she recalls.

Her daughter Valentina, 16, with husband François-Henri Pinault, was also a presence on set, Hayek Pinault says, and having their kids around made the process "feel just so comfortable and lovely" while handling subject matter in which the characters "have to suffer so much." The actress describes the atmosphere on Jolie's set as feeling "like home."

She and Jolie starred together in the 2021 Marvel movie Eternals. About their dynamics, Hayek Pinault says, "In [Eternals] I was a little bit of a mother figure to her. In this movie, I felt like she was my motherly figure because she would come to the set and run it like a family."

"She was a very efficient mother, but she was also there emotionally every step of the way," Hayek Pinault adds.


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