A movie coming out in theatres in 2019, another in post-production and a shoot coming up: Monica Bellucci is on all fronts. “I make choices that are choices of the moment: I read the script and I feel, if it suits me, if I want to go in this story, and especially if I have something to say about that,” said the actress in an interview with AFP on the sidelines of the film festival of Marrakech.

“there are times where I turn, and after long moments where I am doing long breaks,” she said. The present time is very active. “I did Ten percent television series (produced by French Television and broadcast on Netflix, editor’s note), I have filmed in Australia, Nekromancer , a horror film, a movie gore, and after, there will be the film by Kaouther Ben Hania, in the year 2019. I’m also making a film with an israeli director, Eran Riklis with Ben Kingsley,” commented the actress, aged 54 years.

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In Nekromancer , the Italian played under the direction of Kiah Roache-Turner. Spider on the web , Eran Riklis, is a spy thriller in during post-production.

Why finally play under the direction of Kaouther Ben Hania in 2019? The young Tunisian “has made a movie that I liked very much, The Beautiful and the Pack , which was presented at Cannes last year” in the category “un certain regard”, explains Monica Bellucci. “When she presented me the project, I found the storyline very original, very interesting.”

The result of a man and A woman , “a magic moment”

“In my experiences at the cinema, I was rather turned with directors men and the idea of renewing the experience with women I like: I shot with Maria Sole Tognazzi Italy ( L’uomo che ama, 2008), with Alice Rohrewacher ( wonders , 2014), with Rebecca Miller ( The lives and dreams of Pippa Lee , 2009), and lo and behold… it’s going to be a new experience,” she enthuses.

Recently, the actress has also toured with Claude Lelouch in the result of a man and A woman , in the face of the French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant: “A magic moment” for her. “I have a lot of respect for Trintignant, a man and A woman is for me a legendary film,” she said. “I saw it with my mother when I was young, and I know that she was very attached to these films. Finding myself in a film with Lelouch, and Trintignant, this is a bit of a childhood dream that becomes reality”.

She described the story as “a relationship between a father and his family, and the emotion that derives from it”, his character is involved “in a moment the life of this man who does not remember too much of his life and through his daughter reviews a little of his life”.

Marrakech, the city of the meeting with Emir Kusturica

Invited to the closing of the Marrakech international film festival, Monica Bellucci said that this city symbolizes for her meeting with the Serbian director Emir Kusturica in 2012. From there is born the film On the Milky Road (2017), a love story on the background of the Balkan war, which required four years of shooting.

“It was a truly special and enriching experience”, she recalls. “This is a director who really knows how to tell the poetry, despite the violence. And this film we made together, it has allowed me to learn a little more about its culture, to return to his universe and speak Serbian: I don’t speak Serbian, but for the movie I learned.”

And after that? “I have ideas, of projects that interest me. I also like when things come to me naturally, and to be surprised”.

At 54 years old, the star who played the James Bond girl in 2015 to assume his image with simplicity: “There is an icon for others, but these are the eyes of others who see us a special look… there are the covers of the magazines, there are the films, but this is the image. The truth is that there is a woman, a mother, and it is true that I have children and I’m connected to the earth.”