She will star in “La vita davanti a sé” directed by his son Edoardo Ponti. The film is an adaptation of the novel “La vie devant soi” by Romain Gary. The book was also translated into the film by Israeli Moshe Mizrahi under the title “Madame Rosa,” with Simone Signoret as the lead. The film won the Oscar for “Foreign Language Film” in 1978.
Loren will play the same role as Signoret, though Ponti says the two adaptations are very different, writes Variety. The action of the film is placed in Bari, and the story is told from the point of view of the book, the Senegalese child Momo.
Madame Rosa is the survivor of the Holocaust and the head of the family. Her three children are a 35-year-old transgender woman, a 12-year-old Senegalese, and 10-year-old Romanian street children.
Filming began in Italy. Sophia Loren, who works 10 hours a day, said her son would only be content with the best.
“She knows me so well. He knows every centimeter in front of me, my heart and my soul. It will move to the next frame only when I have reached my deepest truth, “she said.
Ponti now directs for the third time a movie with his mother in the distribution. About her, she said she was in great shape.
The distribution also includes transgender Spanish actress Abril Zamora, Italian Renato Carpentieri, and Iranian Babak Karimi.
“La vita davanti a sé” is produced by Palomar and is scheduled to be completed in March 2020.
Most recently, Loren has seen in Rob Marshall’s “Nine” (2009) musical drama.
Sofia Villani Scicolone, on her real name, was born on September 20, 1934, in Naples, and she has been celebrating beauty contests at the age of only 14 years.
It is the director Vittorio de Sica who discovered it. In the six decades of cinematographic career, Sophia Loren starred in about 100 films, working closely with great directors including George Cukor, Charlie Chaplin, Mario Monicelli, and Ettore Scola at Robert Altman.
She began her acting career in 1950 at the age of 15, and her first major role was in De Sica’s L’Oro di Napoli (1954).
“Peccato che sia a canaglia” (1954) was the first film to star with Marcello Mastroianni, the actor who would become a constant collaborator on the big screen. Among them, “Matrimonio all’italiana” (1964), for which she was nominated for an Oscar, comedy “La moglie del prete” (1970) and “yesterday, oggi, domani”.
The moment that propelled her through the world’s cinema stars represented, in 1958, the signing of a contract with the Paramount studio in Hollywood.
In 1961, the dramatic role of Vittorio de Sica’s “La Ciociara” mother (1961) brought him 22 international awards, including one in Cannes and an Oscar, becoming the first actress to be awarded the statue of a foreign film and the first Italian actress to be awarded this trophy.
The last film in the long collaboration with Vittorio de Sica was “Il Viaggio” (1974), starring opposite Richard Burton. His latest appearance is in a short feature, “Human Voice” (2014), directed by one of her two sons, Edoardo Ponti.
Sophia Loren also starred with Cary Grant, Peter Sellers, Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, Gregory Peck, Jack Lemmon, Paul Newman, and Marlon Brando.
She was rewarded throughout her career and four Golden Globe Awards for Women’s Favorite Female Film, the prestigious Cecil B. DeMille Award, a BAFTA Award and holds the record of being awarded six David di Donatello Awards for Best Actress.
In 1991, she was honored by the American Film Academy for her entire career, being declared a “world treasure,” and in 1999 she was recognized by the American Film Institute as one of the great legends of the Hollywood golden age.
In 1972, musicians Mick Jagger and Keith Richards dedicated a song “Pass the Wine (Sophia Loren),” featured on The Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street album, and in 2014 the actress released a volume of memories – “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life”.
