By: Pramod Thomas
ICONIC actress Sophia Loren is set to return in front of the camera for a feature film after a decade.
Loren’s son Edoardo Ponti co-writes and directs the film ‘The Life Ahead’ based on the novel The Life Before Us by French writer Romain Gary.
The film features Loren as Madame Rosa, a Holocaust survivor living in seaside Italy who takes in a 12-year-old boy without a home.
The other actors in the movie are Ibrahima Gueye, Abril Zamora, Renato Carpentieri and Babak Karimi.
Principal photography for the film began in July 2019.
The novel was previously adapted by Israeli filmmaker Moshe Mizrahi as “Madame Rosa,” starring Simone Signoret. It won the 1978 foreign-language Oscar.
Between Strangers was the first feature film wrote and directed by Edoardo Ponti. Human Voice (2014) was the latest film directed by Ponti.
His mother had acted in many of his films from the very beginning.
Netflix has acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film recently. The film is likely to be released by the end of this year.
“I couldn’t be more pleased to be working with Netflix on such a special film,” said Loren, 84, in a statement,
“In my career, I’ve worked with the biggest studios but I can safely say that none have had the breadth of reach and the cultural diversity of Netflix, and that’s what I love about them.”