Angelina Jolie, Louis Garrel and director Alice Winocour braved torrential rain at the San Sebastian Film Festival Sunday night for the European premiere of Couture.
U.S. star Jolie had San Sebastian whipped into a frenzy as hundreds swarmed the town’s Kursaal Theater for a glimpse at the Oscar-winning actress, famed for roles in Girl, Interrupted (1999), Mr & Mrs Smith (2005) and more recently, Maria (2024).
She was joined on the carpet by co-star Garrel and filmmaker Winocour, along with the rest of the film’s cast, including Ella Rumpf, Anyier Anei and Garance Marillier. The film earned its world premiere at TIFF earlier this month.
Couture stars Jolie as Maxine, a forty-something American film director tasked with making a short piece of work for a Paris Fashion Week show. Amidst the glitz and chaos of fashion’s most frenzied week on the calendar, Maxine is diagnosed with breast cancer.
The feature examines how her life intersects with two others: Ada, a young model from South Sudan (Anei) who escapes a fraught future only to end up in a more frivolous environment and Angèle (Rumpf), a French makeup artist who dreams of being a writer. Jolie also produced the film and presented it with Winocour in competition at San Sebastian this year.
“Those are my choices,” Jolie said at the film’s press conference when asked about her own decision to undergo a preventative mastectomy in 2013 given her family history of cancer. “I don’t say everybody should do it that way, but it’s important to have the choice. As Alice said, it’s uniting for not just women, of course, but anybody who’s gone through something [similar].” The Hollywood Reporter‘s review said Jolie’s “transfixing screen presence alone makes Maxine hold our attention” in the “wispy mood piece.”
The American star is not the only Hollywood heavyweight to hit the Spanish film fest this year. Edward Berger and his Ballad of a Small Player frontman Colin Farrell are due later in the week, as are James Vanderbilt for his new Rami Malek and Russell-starring World War II feature Nuremberg.
Elsewhere, British stars Tom Blyth and Mia McKenna-Bruce ushered in Claire Denis’ The Fence on Sunday evening, also screening in competition at the fest. Jennifer Lawrence, meanwhile, is set to pick up the coveted Donostia Award on Sept. 26 for her contributions to the film industry.
The San Sebastian International Film Festival 2025 runs Sept. 19-27.
