Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt managed to avoid seeing each other at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
The contentious exes have not been in the same room as each other – or even on the same red carpet – since their split in 2016.
How then, at one of the most high profile Hollywood events of the year, did Brangelina avoid a run-in?
Careful planning or a stroke of serendipity?
Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie Both At The Venice Film Festival At The Same Time
Angelina was expected to attend to support her next big film, Maria, in which she plays the titular character, opera singer Maria Callas. Brad, on the other hand, will reunite with his pal George Clooney for the premiere of Wolfs.
It probably comes as no surprise that the powers that be stepped in to make sure both Oscar winners and former spouses were well taken care of.
But to what extent might shock a few.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera said the fest took special care to keep the famous exes’ films from overlapping on its schedule.
“Angelina will be on the first day, on Thursday [Aug. 29], and she will leave right after with [‘Maria’ director] Pablo Larraín” for the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, Barbera said. “So Brad will arrive only on Saturday, to Venice. There is no way that they can cross each other at the Lido,” the famed island on which the fest takes place.
So then, from the very start, it was decided that what was best for everyone was to keep Brad and Angelina well away from each other.
Honestly, it’s for the best.
Brad and Angelina Still At War
In an interview with Vogue in 2021, Angelina said she split from Brad for the “wellbeing” of her family. “It was the right decision,” she said at the time.
But that decision has been costly for her, both emotionally and financially.
The couple still find themselves in a legal battle over their assets from the time they were married, in particular the Chateau Miraval Winery.
A nine hour drive from where the Venice Film Festival is held, the Winery was purchased during Brad and Angelina’s marriage.
A Vanity Fair article in June 2023 revealed that Jolie contacted Pitt in January 2021 about her decision to sell her interest in the winery because it was a business focused on alcohol.
“Even now impossible to write this without crying,” Jolie wrote. “Above all, it is the place we brought the twins home to, and where we were married over a plaque in my mother’s memory. A place…where I thought I would grow old…. But it is also the place that marks the beginning of the end of our family.”
For reasons that remain unconfirmed, Brad did not accept Angelina’s offer to sell her portion of the company/estate. When talks fell through, she sold her interest to Russian oligarch Yuri Shefler for $67 million.
And that’s where the real trouble began – and why they still can’t be in the same room as each other.
Angelina Jolie At Venice Film Festival For ‘Maria’
Brad’s ex Angelina Jolie was the talk of the fest on the Lido following her well-received performance in Maria.
Pablo Larraín’s biopic follows the life story of the world’s greatest opera singer, Maria Callas, during her final days in 1970s Paris.
Angelina apparently sings in the film, though her voice is synced with that of the famous Callas, but as she told reporters, she still had to go through extensive training.
“Everybody here knows, I was terribly nervous,” she said of learning to sing opera at the film’s press conference. “I spent almost seven months training because when you work with Pablo you can’t do anything by half. He demands, in the most wonderful way, that you really do the work and you really learn and train.”
Brad Pitt Will Get His Turn
Meanwhile, Brad Pitt will be in town for the premiere of his movie with George Clooney, Wolfs, on Sept. 1.
The action comedy will find the friends reunited in the action-comedy flick as two “fixers” hired to kill the other.
The movie drops on AppleTV+ this fall.
So by the time Brad arrives for his premiere, Angelina will be no gone.
And never the two shall meet, perhaps ever again.
