Angelina Jolie dons brown pencil skirt to meet with UN Secretary General António Guterres in NYC
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- Published on Friday, 15 September 2017 11:40
- Written by Daily mail
Following the Toronto Film Festival premiere of her fifth directorial effort, Angelina Jolie met with United Nations Secretary General António Guterres at the Manhattan headquarters on Thursday.The Special Envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees easily defied her 41 years in a white silk blouse, brown pencil skirt, and nude pumps selected by stylist Jen Rade.Hairstylist Adam Campbell blew out the Oscar winner's naturally brunette locks and she finished off her business attire with diamond earring and a crimson pout and manicure.Rather than taking vacuous selfies or developing clothing lines, Angelina has made over 60 trips to the field as part of her work with the do-gooding intergovernmental organization.On Wednesday, Jolie gave an update on her tough divorce from estranged third husband Brad Pitt after 12 years together. 'None of it's easy. It's very, very difficult, a very painful situation, and I just want my family healthy,' the By the Sea director admitted to the New York Times.'They're getting better.'The former Hollywood wild child's big blended brood - including Zahara, 12; Shiloh, 11; and twins Vivienne & Knox, 9 - attended the TIFF premiere of First They Killed My Father on Monday.It currently holds a 76 percent critic approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a 70 percent approval rating on MetaCritic, and a 6.7/10 on IMDb.The Khmer-language drama - which begins streaming Friday on Netflix - is based on human rights activist Loung Ung's 2006 memoir about the 2M lives lost during the Cambodian genocide 40 years ago.Angelina's 16-year-old son Maddox (born Rath Vibol) received an executive-producing credit for the film and her 13-year-old son Pax shot still photography for it.'They really help me so much. We're really such a unit,' Jolie gushed.'They're the best friends I've ever had. Nobody in my life has ever stood by me more.'Earlier this month, the Kung Fu Panda 3 actress confirmed she would soon begin production on the sequel to the hit Disney villain origin story Maleficent.'I am now the breadwinner for the family so it’s time,' Angie told Deadline on September 3.'We have been working on the script and this is going to be a really strong sequel.'But first, Jolie executive-produced the Afghanistan-set animated feature The Breadwinner, which hits US theaters November 17 and UK theaters May 25.Nora Twomey's flick, based on the 2001 novel by Deborah Ellis, centers on a headstrong girl who disguises herself as a boy to provide for her family after her father gets arrested.
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Angelina Jolie on 'First They Killed My Father': "I made it for Cambodia"
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- Published on Friday, 15 September 2017 00:00
- Written by Screen Daily
Angelina Jolie, actress, filmmaker and human-rights activist, makes her most personal work yet with a 1970s-set drama about the Cambodian genocide. She talks to Screen about her Toronto international premiere First They Killed My Father.Angelina Jolie chanced upon Loung Ung’s bestselling memoir First They Killed My Father in a Cambodian market some 17 years ago while shooting Tomb Raider — “a two-dollar paperback you find when travelling” that was as far removed as one can get from Lara Croft leaping across temples in the steaming jungle.For Jolie, the book and the stirring yet unsentimental film adaptation it would inspire seemed to crystallise so much of the dignity and despair she had witnessed in the stricken Southeast Asian country she would return to again and again as a humanitarian activist and, later, a citizen and resident.Ung and Jolie met through their activism work when Jolie went back shortly after Tomb Raider. One night they found themselves swaying in hammocks in the middle of a monsoon, talking through the night. “We bonded and she’s been in my life ever since,” Jolie says.Ung was five when the Khmer Rouge emerged from the jungle in 1975 to overthrow Lon Nol’s military rule and turn a once-prosperous former French colonial outpost into an isolated death chamber. She and her middle-class family were marched out of the capital Phnom Penh and into the fields, like millions of city-dwellers across the country. When invading Vietnamese troops overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979, the young girl had lost both parents and two of her six -siblings. Around two million people — nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population — had been wiped out.The two women adapted the screenplay years ago. After several more drafts, Netflix agreed in 2015 to fully finance and produce the project. In June of that year, Jolie enlisted the support of Rithy Panh, the Cambodian director of Khmer Rouge documentary The Missing Picture. Panh became a producer on the Khmer-language project and took the lead in months of meetings with the authorities and NGOs to establish permission to shoot the film on Cambodian soil.The filmmakers had to tread carefully. This was not Thailand, Jolie reminded herself, where The Killing Fields had shot many years before. “You are bringing a film to a country and asking the people who lived through it to recreate a history with you. I really didn’t know if [the authorities] were going to say yes.” Reliving the past.Jolie was prepared to scale back the production and work within whatever framework the authorities would provide. However, she got what she wanted and the 50-day shoot in Siem Reap and Battambang finally got underway in November 2015.
“Then, of course, you get to the set and you’re standing there with your friend and you have to recreate scenes of her father being taken and killed, and you have to try to walk through the steps of somebody’s life.” Jolie pauses and her voice fades a little. “You bring back. You bring back the people who passed. You bring back her sisters. And, of course, it was always the happy scenes that seemed to make her the most upset.”Jolie and her international heads of department and crew trained local counterparts, corralled large numbers of extras, braved tarantulas and snakes in the jungle, and avoided landmines and other unexploded ordnance. “Luckily, we were able to complete the film without a single incident on set,” she says.Navigating through complicated emotional terrain was harder. The local crew helped to communicate with the largely inexperienced cast, which included Sareum Srey Moch, the nine-year-old -newcomer who played Ung without acting classes and impressed her director.Moch took part in a casting process that came under scrutiny in a recent cover story in Vanity Fair, which suggested that the filmmakers had used emotional manipulation during child auditions, triggering angry comments online about Jolie.The UN goodwill ambassador and mother of six issued a firm rebuttal with Panh. When the subject is mentioned, Jolie says she regards the matter as closed, but stresses that guardians and parents were present at all times during child auditions, and all parties knew the process involved make-believe.Throughout filming, her goal was to foster a therapeutic and cathartic environment for her cast, employing NGO staff, educators, de-miners and a therapist. “The country really doesn’t talk about this time and everybody in their mid-40s remembers,” Jolie says. “So when you have a scene where suddenly everyone comes dressed in Khmer Rouge outfits with guns, people were having experiences, they were remembering. Some people were talking for the first time.”First They Killed My Father has enabled Jolie to feel even closer to a country she has lived and worked in for 14 years. “When you direct a film it is very different from when you act in a film, when you try to give your all and it’s a few months of your life and you have your part to play,” she states. “When you direct a film, it’s years of your life and it has to really matter to you because it’s all-consuming.“For me, these are the things that matter and these films are about trying to understand man’s inhumanity to man and how the human spirit overcomes, how you can go through darkness and come out stronger and still whole,” she continues. “When you do a film about history and culture, you’re allowed into something so special.“With this particular film all the more so because although Maddox [Jolie’s adopted eldest son, a native Cambodian] goes back often with me and we have a foundation there, this was the first time he was able to spend months there and study the history of his country, really understanding, going deep into what his birth parents most likely went through, and coming to terms with that and knowing who he is.”
Giving back.Sixteen-year-old Maddox served as an executive producer on the film and was there from the start, working long hours on drafts and physical production, and acting as a sounding board. “I wanted him to work hard and give back himself to his country,” says Jolie, who is in no doubt about who she made the film for. “I made it for Cambodia. I made it as a kind of thank you, a love letter. There hadn’t been a story on this scale that would reach people in their language, with them being the hero.”Did she every worry that as a non-native the Cambodians would question her right to make a film like First They Killed My Father? “You’d probably have to ask the Cambodians. It was 2005 when I became a citizen. I’ve been there about 14 years, coming and going, doing my work. We feel… I am a Cambodian. We are a Cambodian family. We’re a Namibian family, an Ethiopian family, an American family. That’s who we are,” Jolie says, referring to the nationalities of her adopted and biological children. “I don’t feel outside in that country. And I didn’t feel I was there to take their history and tell their story. I was just a vessel for them to tell their story.”The drama received its world premiere in February, outdoors at the Angkor Wat complex. Jolie and Ung could not sleep the night before, but they need not have worried — the screening and those that followed across Cambodia in the following weeks “sparked a bigger discussion in the country among families who have not discussed [the genocide]”.Netflix will launch First They Killed My Father worldwide on September 15, following a brief theatrical run in Cambodia. Jolie likes the idea it will be on a streaming platform, there for viewers to watch when they feel ready. “On my first film [as director on 2011’s In The Land Of Blood And Honey], a lot of people who were Bosnian said they needed to stop, take a break and come back, so I was very aware of that.”She is not exactly sure what’s next. Family, probably acting. She signed on to Disney’s Maleficent sequel, and laughs when Bill Condon’s Bride Of Frankenstein reboot is mentioned. “There has been a discussion, but we’re not quite there. How many monsters can one play, really?”
Angelina Jolie’s ‘First They Killed My Father’ opens Cambodia Town Film Festival in Long Beach this weekend
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- Published on Thursday, 14 September 2017 04:16
- Written by Pasadena Star News
The lineup varies from full-length films that touch on the deadly Khmer Rouge regime, horror, comedy and even a live stand-up show.But in one way or another, all of the films in the upcoming Cambodia Town Film Festival aim to celebrate both the resilience and the vibrant artistic spirit of the Cambodian community.“I’m am so happy to see Cambodian film moving forward at such a fast pace,” said praCh Ly, a Long Beach hip-hop artist who co-founded the festival along with filmmaker Caylee So.“It’s a whole collection of different stories and vivid tales,” he added.The fifth annual festival takes place at the Art Theatre in Long Beach with about a dozen films screening Sept. 16-17.It launches on Sept. 14 with a private filmmakers’ reception followed the next day by a public launch party.The films begin at 11 a.m. Saturday with the Angelina Jolie-directed drama “First They Killed My Father.”The movie is an adaptation of Cambodian author and human rights activist Loung Ung’s memoir of surviving the Khmer Rouge regime as a child.Ung will be there after the film for a Q&A session.“It’s going to be a full house on our opening screening,” Ly predicted.Besides full-length features, the Saturday lineup also includes shorts like the 24-minute long “Float,” co-directed by Seattle-based couple Tristan Seniuk and Voleak Sip.The first-time directors call the story a love letter to the 1990s, since it’s set in that era.It follows a Cambodian-American named Rocky Mang. He’s a bit of a wannabe gangster and “man of the streets,” who is just too family-oriented and sensitive for a full-on life of crime.Plus, he’s trying desperately to hook up with a girl who works at a coffee stand.“We’re pretty excited about it (being part of the festival), because it’ll play in front of an audience that has a lot of, hopefully, Cambodian viewers,” said Seniuk, noting that the film includes jokes and family dynamics that Cambodian-Americans will instantly recognize.“It’s a family story but there are some very specifically Cambodian moments in there,” Sip added.
The first day closes with an all Cambodian-American stand-up show dubbed “The Khmers of Comedy.” Ly said the comedy is yet another way to showcase the diversity of Cambodian art, and this will be a little edgy.“The live stand-up show is a bit explicit, but it’s going to be hilarious. It’s a great way to end Saturday night,” Ly said.The festival starts at 11 a.m. the following day with a gripping documentary called “A Cambodian Spring.” Shot over the course of six years, the film offers a look at modern-day Cambodia through the lives of three people caught up in land-rights protests and other issues that come with the development that’s now shaping the country.Ly said this is one of his top two favorite documentaries in the festival, with the other being the film that follows it called “Surviving Bokator,” by Canadian filmmaker Mark J. Bochsler.The documentary looks at Cambodia’s ancient martial art of Bokator, which was nearly eradicated by the Khmer Rouge 40 years ago.Bochsler followed the efforts of genocide survivor San Kim Sean as he returns to Cambodia after learning that Bokator was unknown to many young Cambodians.He eventually opened the Bokator Academy in the capital city of Phnom Penh.Bochsler found out about Bokator while working on another film project in Cambodia and became fascinated by the long history of the relatively little-known martial art.He said one of the goals of the film was to expose those not familiar with Cambodia to this aspect of the culture.“The goal is just to provide a different face to Cambodia. Because until visiting Cambodia and stumbling on to the story my perception of the country, like many people, was the association with the genocide and the poverty and these sorts of things,” he said, referring to the country’s violent past.“I shot the film over five years and really got to know the country well and really saw a side of Cambodia that was full of life, full of positivity, with a positive outlook on the world,” he said.
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Angelina Jolie Reveals Her Hopes For Her Six Children
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- Published on Wednesday, 13 September 2017 19:13
- Written by Just Jared
Angelina Jolie arrives for the Women in the World summit on Monday (September 11) in Toronto, Canada.The actress, director, and humanitarian spoke about her six children, who joined her at the Toronto Film Festival for her premieres this week.“I hope they’re being raised to see the value of diversity, the value of other people. They ask the questions we’re all asking. They see what’s happening in Syria or in Myanmar and they ask why, and we’re all trying to find the same answers,” Angelina said. “I will look for all different ways to communicate about their histories and really to teach them.” “We homeschool and I’m very very aware of their education, mostly very aware of what’s lacking. For example it’s very important to me my daughter Zahara doesn’t start learning about her history through the civil rights movement in America, that’s not how she begins to learn about herself as a young African-American,” Angelina continued. “She needs to learn about the great history of Africa and who she is…and not start with the civil rights (movement).”
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Amal Clooney Did NOT “Reject” Angelina Jolie “Peace Offering,” Despite Reports
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- Published on Wednesday, 13 September 2017 10:42
- Written by Gossip Cop
Amal Clooney did not “reject” a “peace offering” from Angelina Jolie, nor did the Oscar winner extend an “olive branch” to the human rights lawyer. These are false claims being spread online by two sister outlets. And now Gossip Cop can expose them both.On its website, Star is announcing, “Dissed! Amal Clooney Rejects Angelina Jolie’s Peace Offering.” In the article, the tabloid declares, “Amal Clooney does not want to be friends with Angelina Jolie. George Clooney’s wife has snubbed mother-of-six Jolie after she reached-out to her.” According to the gossip magazine, the actress “tried to mend their friendship,” but Clooney was “not interested.” A so-called “insider” is quoted as saying, “Angie went out of her way to try and mend fences, reasoning there’s a lot of water under the bridge and life’s too short for petty grudges. But Amal was bemused at the suggestions she would want to socialize with a woman she barely knows – let alone has any respect for! She turned her down flat!” For a similarly-written story, RadarOnline is blaring, “Cold Shoulder: No Thanks! Amal Clooney Snubs Angelina Jolie’s Olive Branch For Friendship.” The post is penned almost the exact same way, with the subtlest of word changes. For instance, instead of just “George Clooney’s wife,” as Star says, this piece uses the phrase, “George’s Clooney’s British lawyer wife.” But line by line, the claims are the same. Like its print counterpart, the webloid goes on to assert, “This snub infuriated Jolie who thought that her approach would be warmly welcomed at a time when she admitted that her divorce from Brad Pitt has been very difficult.” And both outlets quote the “insider” as claiming, “She’s got no idea why Amal and George for that matter have an issue with her. Angie wanted them to be friends since they have so much in common and Brad’s not standing in the way anymore. But now she accepts it’s not going to happen.” Absurdly, RadarOnline ends its version by saying, “To make matters worse the Clooneys were recently photographed with Matt Damon and his wife Luciana Barroso in Italy recently,” as if the actors promoting a movie with their spouses should have any bearing on Jolie. More importantly, though, is that both publications are peddling the same allegations because they were seemingly made up by the same company, in which the staffs of its individual outlets apparently share resources, including manufactured claims. Though the tabloids have spent years trying to push a Jolie-Clooney feud narrative simply because the women aren’t close friends, there’s no truth to these two new stories about the movie star extending a “peace offering” and “olive branch,” only to be “rejected” and “snubbed” by the attorney. A rep for the Clooneys even confirms to Gossip Cop that the articles have no merit and are fictional.
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