Without Blood Intro + Q&a With Angelina Jolie & Salma Hayek | Tiff 2024

Good evening, welcome. Thank you so much for coming tonight. Welcome to the world premiere of the new film by Angelina Jolie, Without Blood. My name is Cameron Bailey. I'm the CEO here at TIFF. I'm glad to see all of you here. This is a very special night and a very special film and it is thanks to a lot of people and organizations that I just want to recognize right now. Beginning with the presenting sponsor of the festival, Rogers. Thank you to them and also our major sponsors, RBC and Visa, for their continued support. We also want to thank the government partners, Government of Ontario, Telefilm Canada, and the City of Toronto. Reminder, this film is part of the special presentations program, which is possible through the sponsorship of TikTok and it is eligible for our most important prize. That is the People's Choice Award and that is presented by Rogers and you get to decide what wins that award. So, please go online to tiff.net slash vote to vote for the films of your choice. We want to thank DeMayo Entertainment and Fremantle and Jolie Productions and The Apartment for providing us with this film. Also our partners at CAA and just want to kind of talk a little bit about Angelina Jolie as a filmmaker, as a director. She's of course an Academy Award-winning actor as well, but also a writer, producer, and director. Her credits as a director include In the Land of Blood and Honey, Unbroken, and First They Killed My Father, which was her last time at the festival. This is her latest film and you may have noticed that many of Angelina's films as a director are about the long impact of war. When we think of wars, we often think of the dates they started and the dates they ended. When you watch Angelina Jolie's films, you understand that wars last for a very long time and Without Blood is very much about the long-term impact of war. When I saw it, I found it to be a deeply moving film and a film that really created a lot of reflection because it's about a war that might have happened many years ago and the impact after that. But of course, we know there are many wars now happening as well. Very pleased that the team from the film has come to introduce Without Blood to you. So please join me in welcoming Director Angelina Jolie and her cast, Patricia Jose, Juan Minujín, Jorge Antonio Guerrero, Demian Beshear, and Salma Hayek-Pinot. Thank you so much. I'll keep this short. Sitting here a minute. Thank you. Well, just thank you for everybody. Thank you to the festival for allowing us to be here, for welcoming us, to all of you for being with us tonight. We have this extraordinary cast. I'm so happy to see everybody. It's been sometimes you don't see each other for a minute after you make a film, so we became a family and I'm happy to be proud to be standing there with these wonderful artists. Really, you'll see their work. It's extraordinary. And too, we have crew also, our composer, our editor, many are in the amongst you. So I'm happy you're here as well. This, thank you so much. Thank you so much. This, this isn't an easy film. It's, we all have, there's, in this book, in this beautiful book, Towards the End, there's a, he writes about that there was a time when we, 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 kind of trying to, we somehow revisit that moment. It affects us for the rest of our life. And sometimes we don't know how to sit at that table and address that issue or that person or have that conversation. And so that's what is one of the most difficult things about this film, is a lot of the gray area of life and a lot of the asking why, and a lot of the the listening, which is maybe the most important thing. So it's a hard table to sit at. It's a hard film maybe to sit through. But thank you for sitting through it with us. Thank you for joining us at the table. And I hope it inspires all of us. It's the reason for its being, is to have more conversation and more listening and finding that middle between us as human beings. So here it is. Thank you so much. Please join me in welcoming back to the stage the co-writer and director of Without Blood, Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, and Damien Béchir. Thank you so much for the film. You know, it's a serious film about a very serious subject, but what I really appreciated was how it gives the time to deal with the long-term impact of war. And I wanted to ask you first, Angelina, about adapting the book with the novelist and what choices you were making about where you wanted to keep the focus as you turned it into a film. He said to me when I first met with Berrico, he said, they're going to force you to change the end. They're gonna force you to pick a country. They're gonna force you to decide what year it is. Try to hold. Because it's intended, this is what it's intended to be, you know, but sometimes these things don't, we don't get to leave them because there's a, you know, there's an impulse or feeling that you have to finish something or explain something. So now I think back, I feel like he was almost challenging me instead of warning me. So I think it was that, it was the commitment to that it's universal. I think the book is so strong, but really it rested so much on what could be alive at that table. I shot, we shot so much because I didn't know how much until they gave their extraordinary performances, I didn't know how much I was going to be able to stay and how much I was going to have to reenact. And because they were so strong, I was able to stay and be pulled into, so really we were, I was in some way prepared to adapt in different ways. But then, but then it was them. And at what point did you choose your cast for the film? At what point did you decide that Salma and Damien were the ones that needed to be in these two roles? I thought of Salma early and I called her and she said no. What? Salma. You didn't know I was going to say that, did you? I was going to admit it. I love that you're saying it. Microphone. I got confused. At the beginning she sent me the script. I was looking for material and I always get confused. She sent the script and I said something, I said it's super interesting, but it's completely director dependent, so I don't know. And she is the director. I didn't know, yeah. And then she comes back to me. And she's, we're talking and it comes out that it's her directing. And she said, well if you really, really don't want to do it, which I don't understand why, who should I cast? And I go, but what do you mean? You're directing it? I thought you were just producing it? And no, no, this is my next. Now mind you, I was confused, but she always has a lot of projects, you know, in like so I thought it was going to be a different one going first, you know. And she was just producing. And all of a sudden it just went like boom. I know I'm producing it in two months. You better, you know, make a decision or something. And then I said, I'm afraid to suffer so much. I don't want to put myself through this character. I've suffered my entire life. Now life is good for a moment. I don't want to go to a movie. I just got to be okay the entire time. I don't want to go there. But you did. What made you decide? She convinced me. I don't even remember. I don't know. Before I knew it, I was already on the set loving it. No, in all our conversations about her movie, I realized there was so much more than that. So much more than one. And before I knew it, I still can't get rid of Nina inside of me. It's a haunt that she took over. Damien, can you talk a little bit about speaking with Angelina about the film and deciding to do it, but then also this is so much of the second half of the film is a two-hander and it depends so much on the connection that you have with each other. And can you talk a little bit about how you developed that and working on set with Salma also? I got an email from my agent, Tracy Brennan, and saying, yeah, lovely Tracy Brennan, and saying, Angelina, I would like you to read this story, this script. And that alone was a little bit crazy, right? It was an honor for me to just be able to read that. And knowing Alessandro Varrico's work, I did his monologue, Novecento, which the film that Tim Roth did was based. And then, of course, I knew Silk. But my first approach to Without Blood was with the script that Angelina sent me. And at some point, I couldn't continue to read because I was fully crying. And I had to stop and I called Tracy and I said, we have to do whatever is necessary to do to make this film. And then I wrote a long letter to Angelina, explaining what my feelings were about the work and the character and everything else. And I tried to explain what I was feeling, not only as a spectator, but also as an actor and the things that we could do together. And then we had the chance to talk about it extensively. And that alone was a gift. And that set up the whole thing for the future, for our future encounter and work on set. And when I knew that Salma was going to do it, I was so relieved. Because when you embark yourself into such a heavy type of work, you need someone to support you and to hold you back and to be there for you. And I've known Salma for many, many years. This is our third film together. And I knew she would be there for me. And I was jumping off a cliff with no safety net, but she was my safety net. And I don't know any more generous peer than Salma in many different ways. Because Angelina and Salma, they did everything possible. They moved dates, the personal, you know, things that they had to do. You wanted him badly. For me to be able to make it and go there. And this is the most difficult role that I played in my life. Me too. Me too. Yeah. And we were connected in that sense in many different ways. But we were there, sitting at that table for long, long hours. We wouldn't even move. And when you go into something crazy like that, you need a good soul and a beautiful artist and a free director, fearless director, brave director such as Angelina. And Angelina, I just want to ask you, on set with these two wonderful actors and a lot of dialogue and a lot of emotional peaks and valleys between the two of them, what are you saying to them on set? How are you guiding them through the dynamics of this relationship as it's evolving? I mean, there's so much they probably don't realize I said to them separately, so I wouldn't tell you everything. But it was almost like, you know, they had to come to the strongly. And then the table and the conversation had to actually, they had to convince each other through the days that would happen. And they would give space for each other and they would listen to each other. And then they would, the next day, have heard the other and ask different questions. And it kind of kept changing. And I had this privilege of being there, watching them and listening to them as they would kind of lead all of us through this and let it happen and be so open. So a lot of it, I was guiding a little, but I was listening a lot. And there are many other actors here that are in the film that I realize are not sitting with us. Don't be shy, but they're here. I want to correct myself on something. It's not the most difficult role. It's the most maybe most complex. But it was kind of easy in the way that if I really think about it, it seems really hard. I was surprised how fast we would get there. Honestly, it was like... It was moving very fast. Yeah, because he was so good. And she was so good. And everything was so right. And the crew and the rest of the cast, it was just something that kind of... I was afraid every day because she would ask for impossible things. And we would look at each other... Oh, you need your mic. From time to time, from time to time, she would ask for unexpected, kind of impossible things, or just beautifully strange things. And sometimes we'd look at each other and say, what? And to be specific, there's a range of things. But she was doing so well that she was ahead of time. It never happens. So you saw there's a lot of dialogue, right? And she would go, guys, good news. We're doing so well, we're ahead of time. So I will give you, what do you need? 45 minutes to learn the next five pages of monologues? While I move the lights? Because I think we can shoot it today. That was the good news. And we were so in awe of her magic and magnificence and so grateful because she's an amazing director. We'd look at each other and we'd go, okay. And then she would leave and she'd go, how the hell did we call her? I don't know, but let's start trying, you know? And it was fun. And all of a sudden, we would do it and we'd look at each other and, oh my God, I said, yes, yes. We were surprised of ourselves. That's fantastic. It's inspiring actually that you can get that from your actors. I just maybe want to ask one last question. Something that you alluded to in the introduction, that this is a film you kind of need to sit with. There's a lot of substance here, a lot of deep ideas, a lot of grappling with the impact of war and what it means for each one of us. As we sit with it, as we leave the theater and we sit with this film and what you've told us in it, what kind of, I don't know, words of direction do you have any that you would offer us in terms of how we sit with a film like this? Because you could think about it days and weeks later. I suppose I wish we'd just all sit together and just keep talking, you know? I think that's the part of it is it should just start a conversation that I don't really have an end to or an answer. I think one of the interesting things within it is this idea that now that you've seen it, you understand this idea of, well, who's a bad guy? Who's wrong? Who's right? There's 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, right? 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 to sit at for us to get through this life and for us to understand each other and so much of that's happening in the world because we're unable to do that. I just hope that there's more conversation and that's really it. Just to thank you for really sitting with us because I really know this isn't an easy one. In the beginning as this opens and I see the violence and the pain, I know that's not easy. It's intentionally not easy. Then I thank you for staying in your seat and continuing to listen. Thank you. Angelina, thank you for the film. Thank you, Salma. Thank you, Damien. Please join me in thanking the team from Without Blood.