Angelina Jolie on Why She’s ‘Drawn’ to Making War Movies

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?”

The Variety Toronto Film Festival Studio is sponsored by J Crew and SharkNinja.