COUTURE (2025)

Couture (2025) is a French drama with dialogue in both French and English languages. Fitting, as the lead character, Maxine Walker, played by Angelina Jolie, is an American filmmaker hired by a haute couture Parisian fashion house to create the moving picture backdrop for their Paris Fashion Week runway show.

Jolie looks as comfortable playing a filmmaker in the high fashion arena of Paris Fashion Week as one would expect, operating professionally in her real life within both industries. What’s really astonishing about her performance are the parallels from her own real world traumas present within the film – her character receives a breast cancer diagnosis – one of the cancers (the other being ovarian) that Jolie’s mother succumbed to in 2007 and that Jolie has since taken preventative measures to hopefully offset her own development of the cancers after genetic testing revealed she carried the same genes.

Jolie revealed that she wore her late mother’s necklace during production of Couture (2025) to feel her presence and act as ‘.. a way of communicating with her..’ and as a way to unite so many people around the world, not alone, in grief from cancer related death.

She went on to share that filming those scenes of Walker’s diagnosis and follow-up appointments, especially when doctors drew upon her body to prepare for the upcoming battle with the disease ‘.. was hard..’ for her, becoming visibly emotional during questions on film’s world premiere red carpet in Toronto.

The story also follows Ada, a character also drawing parallels from life portrayed by South Sudanese model Anyier Anei, marking her film debut alongside Jolie as an inexperienced runway model navigating her first show in Paris and the intensive expectations models often have to endure – including amongst the company of other models.

Anei (Ada) seamlessly makes the transition to the screen and delivers an impressive multi-layered performance that we sometimes don’t even get to see from seasoned actors – Alice Winocour, the director of Couture (2025), really delivers on this actor’s introduction to film while pulling top-tier performances from her other cast members.

Originally titled Stitches, Couture (2025) is a double narrative drama that Jolie says is ‘..not really about fashion’ that explores the contrast between beauty, pain, the threads that hold lives together and woman living within the industry.

All with an emotional, dramatic, and hauntingly beautiful chaos-filled ending that mirrors real life more than film.

Note:
Couture (2025) celebrated its world premiere during TIFF 2025 (September 4th – 14th, 2025). Pathé will release the film theatrically in France February 18th, 2026. A North American release has to date not been announced.