DUSE
Directed by Pietro Marcello (Martin Eden)
Starring: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (A Castle in Italy), Noémie Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Fanni Wrochna, Fausto Russo Alesi, Edoardo Sorgente, Noémie Lvovsky
TIFF SCREENINGS
Thursday, September 4 @ 5:00PM – TIFF Lightbox 3 – P&I
Monday, September 8 @ 9:00PM – Scotiabank 4 – Premiere
Tuesday, September 9 @ 12:30PM – TIFF Lightbox 1 – Public Screening #2
Friday, September 12 @10:45AM – Scotiabank 5 – Public Screening #3
Director Pietro Marcello will be in attendance.
After decades on stage, Eleonora Duse looks back on a legendary career that seems to have run its course. But in the savage days between World War I and the rise of Fascism, the Divine Duse heeds a call stronger than any resignation and returns to where her life began: the stage. It is not only the desire to act that drives her, but a deep urgency: the need to reaffirm herself in a world that is inexorably changing and that threatens to take everything away from her, including the financial independence she has won with her life’s work. Once again, Eleonora chooses theater as the only refuge for truth and resistance. Armed only with heart, he defies time and disenchantment, transforming every word and every gesture into a revolutionary act. But the price of holding up beauty against the brutality of power and history is high. Relationships seem to dissolve, and her health worsens. Yet Eleonora will face her last journey convinced that one can give up life itself, but never one’s true nature.
Directed by Pietro Marcello (Martin Eden)
Written by Letizia Russo, Guido Silei, Pietro Marcello
Starring: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (A Castle in Italy), Noémie Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Fanni Wrochna, Fausto Russo Alesi, Edoardo Sorgente, Noémie Lvovsky
Produced by Carlo Degli Esposti, Nicola Serra, Marco Grifoni, Benedetta Cappon
Sales: The Match Factory
2025 / Italy, France / 123 min