Ten years after, the “Divine” will return to the top of the poster in 2020 in a long-film directed by Edoardo Ponti, the son she had with the producer Carlo Ponti (1912-2007). In an adaptation of the novel of Emile Ajar, The Life in front of oneself, Sophia Loren will play Madame Rosa, a survivor of the extermination camp Auschwitz, which will be used as a surrogate mother to a young muslim immigrant, nicknamed Momo.

With this novel, Romain Gary, who wrote, secretly, under the pseudonym of Émile Ajar, was received in 1975 a second prix Goncourt, almost twenty years after his first coronation literary for his masterpiece, The Roots of heaven (1956).

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In the footsteps of Simone Signoret

The Life ahead of itself has already been transposed to the screen in 1977 by Moshé Mizrahi. Simone Signoret in the role of Madame Rosa will be awarded the César for best actress in 1978. At the Oscars, the same year, the director was awarded the prestigious statuette for the best foreign film.

Sophia Loren, now aged 84 years, who has started working her first scenes in Italian, said to Variety that “it expresses its feelings in a very original way”. His son, Edoardo Ponti, who directed his mother for the third time, has not belied: “She definitely wants to be the deepest possible. The energy and the passion with which she approaches each scene is a marvel to watch.”

Transposed to the Italy of the Twenty-first century

The scenario is anchored in the Twenty-first century. The parisian decor of the book, Edoardo Ponti has substituted the port city of Bari, in the south of Italy, a place notoriously subject to an important migratory flow.

To accompany the “Divine”, one will find the Spanish actress transgender Abril Zamora, the Italian actor Renato Carpentieri, actor iranian Babak Karimi and finally a newcomer, who will make his major debut film, the young Ibrahima Guys in the skin of Momo, the protégé of Madame Rosa. This highly anticipated film due out on screens in march 2020.

Life ahead of Moshe Mizrahi, 1977, adapted from the novel La Vie devant soi (Emile Ajar, with Simone Signoret, Samy Ben-Ayoub, Geneviève Fontanel, Costa-Gavras…