Maria Callas, Played by Angelina Jolie, will be Available on Netflix

In Pablo Larraín’s upcoming film Maria, Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie will play famous opera singer Maria Callas.

Jolie won an Academy Award for her role in Girl, Interrupted. She has since shown off her amazing versatility in films such as Maleficent, Changeling, The Good Shepherd, and Those Who Wish Me Dead.

Renowned Chilean director Larraín is well recognised for his work on Jackie, Spencer, No, Neruda, and El Conde (2023), which led to an Oscar nomination for well Cinematography for Edward Lachman’s chiaroscuro work.

Larraín explained, “I’m excited to partner again with the Netflix team who care so passionately about movies. This film is my most personal work yet. It is a creative imagining and psychological portrait of Maria Callas who, after dedicating her life to performing for audiences around the world, decides finally to find her own voice, her own identity, and sing for herself. I’m deeply honored to tell this story and share it with audiences worldwide like Maria did with her life.”

Maria is the beginning of a new partnership between Larraín and Lachman, who received two Academy Award nominations for Carol and Far From Heaven. It’s also Steven Knight’s second screenplay for Larraín after their collaboration on Spencer; Knight wrote Peaky Blinders and Dirty Pretty Things, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Original Screenplay.

Starring with Kodi Smit-McPhee, who is nominated for an Academy Award, are Alba Rohrwacher, Pierfrancesco Favino, and Valeria Golino.

What is Maria about?

As Larraín explained, Maria is a “creative imagining and psychological portrait of Maria Callas,” one of the greatest opera singers of all time, during her final days in 1970s Paris. Callas, whose life spanned from the 1920s to the ’70s, was famous for her incredible voice — the film looks at a period in her life when she had lost her voice, and tries to regain it. After dedicating her life to audiences around the world, she “decides finally to find her own voice, her own identity, and sing for herself.”

This is Larraín’s third film, after 2016’s Jackie and 2021’s Spencer, that explores famous women at turning times in their lives.

Who is in the cast of Maria?

The cast of Maria includes:

Angelina Jolie (Changeling; Girl, Interrupted)
Kodi Smit-McPhee (Dolemite Is My Name, The Power of the Dog)
Alba Rohrwacher, “Happy As Lazzaro, Hungry Hearts”
Pierfrancesco Favino (Adagio, Padrenostro)
Valeria Golino (The Beautiful Game, For Your Love)

When will Maria premiere?

On August 29, Maria will make its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.