Salma Hayek Pinault and Demián Bichir lead ‘Without Blood,’ adapted from a novel that came to Jolie at a key time in her life
Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty; Stefano C. Montesi
NEED TO KNOW
- Without Blood, directed by Angelina Jolie and starring Salma Hayek Pinault, is in theaters Sept. 18
- The close friends talk to PEOPLE about the origins of the project, which Jolie adapted from an Alessandro Baricco novella during what she calls “a difficult time in my life”
- “This book was something that for my own private healing, I penned the screenplay,” recalls Jolie
Angelina Jolie‘s new movie comes from a personal place and, in her words, “a very difficult time.”
Without Blood (in theaters this Friday) stars Salma Hayek Pinault and Demián Bichir as two people reuniting in the wake of war and trauma. As Jolie, 51, tells PEOPLE, writing and directing her emotional adaptation of Alessandro Baricco’s 2002 novella began a full 10 years ago.
“I had been given this book by somebody a decade ago,” says the mother of six. “I went through a difficult time in my life and this was one of the only things that I had in my luggage, was this book.”
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Jolie recalls that she “had to leave somewhere and then I just had my luggage, and this is what I had.” As it turns out, Baricco’s book, set in the aftermath of an unspecified war, was the perfect seed of inspiration at that time.
“I went through something difficult and this book was something that for my own private healing, I penned the screenplay just to kind of sit with it, be with it,” explains the Oscar winner, who “never really thought the film would get made. I didn’t do it to ever share it.”
When she was asked years later if she “had any material,” continues Jolie, she was reluctant to tackle it behind the camera. “I knew it would be a heavy one to approach and it’s not an easy film,” she says. “And I couldn’t do it without great actors.”
Credit: Brainstorm Media
Enter Hayek, who signed on after learning that her costar in the 2021 Marvel hit Eternals would direct. Calling Jolie an “amazing director, but also a friend,” she recalls that their conversations developing the nuances of Without Blood “were delicious.”
“I love her mind and I get her,” Hayek, 60, tells PEOPLE. “So I think when you know somebody gets you, you feel safe and you can be whoever you are in whatever circumstances.”
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Much of Without Blood centers on Hayek’s Nina and Bichir’s Tito confronting each other over an act of violence decades prior and its thorny ramifications. Conflict, says Jolie, “changes the course of your life. We return to where we break, in this endless cycle. And the more we understand that about ourselves as people, the more we can evolve or course correct or try to figure out where we need answers from.”
She adds, “So many of us would like to sit across the table from someone and understand them and beg for them to understand us more deeply. And so I think it’s very human. I think it’s something that a lot of people will resonate with.”
With a laugh, Jolie concludes, “Maybe we should ask people to take the person you have had problems with and go see the movie together and then go sit at a table. That should be the experiment for this film.”
When production on Without Blood was underway in Italy in 2022, Jolie was joined by two of the kids she shares with ex-husband Brad Pitt; Maddox, 25, and Pax, 22, worked behind the scenes in the assistant director department, as she told PEOPLE at the time. “We work well together,” said the actress-activist. When a film crew is at its best, it feels like a big family, so it felt natural.”
Following a premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, Without Blood is in theaters Friday, Sept. 18.
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