Brad Pitt presents the Ad Astra Space Odyssey

(Venice) Brad Pitt landed Thursday at the Venice Film Festival with James Gray's much-anticipated intimate space odyssey, Ad Astra, in which he interprets an astronaut in search of his father and that he defined as his film "the most difficult".

Posted on August 29 at 1:32 pm

Sophie LAUBIE
France Media Agency

Casual in t-shirt and cap, the American actor was greeted by fans as he descended from the boat on the Lido. He signed autographs, before going to the press conference in the early afternoon, which will be presented Thursday night in competition at the Mostra world premiere.

Brad Pitt is both the lead and co-producer of the film, and stars as astronaut Roy McBride, sent on a top-secret mission to the far reaches of the solar system in search of his father (Tommy Lee Jones), who had disappeared sixteen years earlier. an expedition. He learns that his father may be alive and could help him raise a mystery that threatens the planet.

Brad Pitt often plays alone in this seventh feature film by the director of Little Odessa, where the spectator follows what is happening in the head of his character.

"It's been the hardest film I've worked on, because the story James imagined is really difficult," said the 55-year-old actor during the press conference.

"It was a constant effort" to try to unfold "this story in a very subtle and delicate way," he added.

"Masculinity"

The actor Fight Club and Inglourious Basterds explained that he had pondered with James Gray the question of "masculinity" in this film, through the relationship between the son and his father.

"In retrospect, when we think about our conversations, the subject we were digging, without really naming it, was this definition of masculinity."

"As we grew up in a time when we were taught to be strong, not to show our weakness," he said, "I think we were asking the question: is there a better definition for us, is being more open allows us to have a better relationship with those we love? "

Slipping into the space suit of an astronaut after other American actors – Matt Damon in The Martian to George Clooney in Gravity – Brad Pitt jokingly explained that "playing in a movie in space was a bit like playing in a Peter Pan play, hanging on wires."

He added that he was not convinced by life in space, which he found through this "inhospitable" and "solitary" film, and "exchanged with George (Clooney) stories about the discomfort" of this experience.

"I am much more comfortable in nature, I feel at peace outside and surrounded by friends".

James Gray said he wanted to do with Ad Astra a film about the intimacy of a man, because, he said, "the tiny comes universal".

The director of The Lost City of Z said to have been influenced by such literary references as In the heart of darkness Joseph Conrad and Moby Dick from Herman Melville.