Angelina Jolie cries during eight-minute standing ovation for ‘Maria’ at Venice Film Festival

Angelina Jolie was moved to tears as she received an eight-minute standing ovation for Maria at its premiere during the 81st Venice International Film Festival.

The actress, 49, plays Maria Callas in Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s biopic about the opera singer’s life.

The film, written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, also stars Kodi Smit-McPhee and Pierfrancesco Favino.

Following the film’s premiere on Thursday (August 29), Jolie was seen wiping away tears as the audience at Sala Grande gave her and the film an eight-minute standing ovation. Early reviews have suggested that the actress delivers a career-defining performance.

In other news from Venice, Jolie was pictured leaving a hotel with UK rapper Akala, following reports that the pair have been seeing each other for “more than a year”. It has since been clarified, however, that the Oscar-winning actress and musician have been friends for “several years”, and Jolie is currently single.

The speculation surrounding the pair comes eight years after Jolie divorce from ex-husband Brad Pitt.

Jolie filed for divorce in 2016 following an alleged physical altercation on a private plane, with one of their children, Maddix, allegedly involved in the incident.

Elsewhere, at the end of July, Jolie and Pitt’s son Pax Jolie-Pitt was involved in an e-bike accident which reportedly saw him crash into the back of a car.

TMZ reported that he was taken to hospital with head injuries after the accident, which took place on Los Feliz Boulevard in LA. It was said that he was not wearing a helmet at the time of the crash.

At the beginning of August, Lola Cavalli, an eyewitness on the scene who reportedly gave assistance to Jolie-Pitt, revealed further details. She told Entertainment Tonight that Jolie-Pitt’s mouth was “filled with blood” following the accident.

“I didn’t see any broken bones, I did not see, like, profound bleeding, so to speak, and since I was directed to apply pressure at the site where it was bleeding, I did not see where I could apply the pressure, because it was on the head,” she added.

“And it was not a lot of blood. Like, you didn’t see like a fountain of blood rushing out.[But] his mouth was filled with blood. When [he] was trying to speak, I saw a little tiny stream of blood coming out of the mouth.”

Cavalli’s update came after Jolie-Pitt was believed to have been released from the ICU in a Los Angeles hospital following the accident.

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