DUSE
Feature Film Selection 2026
•
2h 5m
Italy, France
Fiction
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 theatre as the only refuge for truth and resistance.
Armed only with her art, she 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
Written by: Letizia Russo, Guido Silei, Pietro Marcello
Produced by: Carlo Degli Esposti, Nicola Serra, Marco Grifoni, Benedetta Cappon, Alexandra Henochsberg, Pierre-François Piet
Cinematography: Marco Graziaplena
Editing: Fabrizio Federico, Cristiano Travaglioli
Production Design: Gaspare De Pascali
Costume Design: Ursula Patzak
Make-Up & Hair: Mauro Fazzini, Samankta Giorgia Mura
Original Score: Fabrizio Elvetico, Marco Messina, Sacha Ricci
Sound: Denny De Angelis
Visual Effects: Arianna Capra, Andrette Lo Conte
Casting: Davide Zurolo
Cast: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (Eleonora Duse), Fanni Wrochna (Desirée), Noémie Merlant (Enrichetta), Fausto Russo Alesi (Gabriele D'Annunzio), Edoardo Sorgente (Giacomo Rossetti Dubois), Vincenzo Nemolato (Memo Benassi)
Production:
Palomar – a Mediawan company
https://palomaronline.com/
World Sales:
The Match Factory
https://www.the-match-factory.com/
Press/Social Media Agency:
Fosforo Press
https://www.fosforopress.com/
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