Here are some photos of Angelina Jolie in NYC, where she turned out for a screening of Alice Winocour’s Couture. Her dress is reportedly Tom Ford? That kind of dress was everywhere twenty years ago, and it’s funny that she didn’t remove her aviator shades. Angelina filmed Couture in Paris in late 2024, and it’s been winding its way through film festivals and selected screenings for the better part of a year. The film is finally being released in the US next week. Angelina plays an American director who is diagnosed with cancer during Paris Fashion Week. I’ve read some reviews which claimed that Angelina’s part in the triptych of stories is the best and most resonant. Well, Angelina not only attended this screening, she also hosted a dinner for breast-cancer survivors in NYC.

Angelina Jolie’s new movie Couture is a deeply personal one for the Oscar winner. In the film written and directed by Alice Winocour, Jolie, 51, plays Maxine, an American film director who’s in Europe filming a segment for a fashion show when she’s diagnosed with breast cancer.

Jolie’s own mother Marcheline Bertrand, died of ovarian and breast cancer in 2007. Jolie herself revealed in 2013 she had a double mastectomy after testing positive for the “faulty” BRCA1 gene, increasing her chances of developing breast cancer by 87 percent.

Couture — which also features intersecting storylines involving young model and immigrant Ada (Anyier Anei) and makeup artist Angèle (Ella Rumpf) — “is a beautifully written piece about women from different countries,” Jolie tells PEOPLE.

“It has something to say that I thought could be useful to people, showing how everyone is dealing with things that make us very human, and that if we can figure out how to live through challenges by leaning on each other and having more empathy towards one another, the better and less alone we will be,” she adds.

In that spirit of community, Jolie hosted an intimate dinner — catered by the immigrant and refugee chefs of Eat Offbeat — on Monday, June 15, in N.Y.C., where guests honored the strength of cancer survivors. The 20 invitees who gathered at Atelier Jolie, the actress’s downtown creative collective, included Columbia University’s Dr. Rita Charon, a general internist and literary scholar, as well as Winocour.

“Alice is a wonderful director and approaches the stories of the women in Couture with sensitivity and hope. The film is not about an end for my character but rather about a renewed desire to live life until your last breath which particularly resonates with me at this time in my life,” Jolie adds.

“I am not sure I was strong enough even five years ago to do this. To be open and trusting to share and be vulnerable again,” says the mother of six.

“Things happen in life that take us off path. We lose ourselves and we feel isolated. I would have given anything to have my mother alive to be there for her grandchildren,” she says.

[From People]

It always makes me sad whenever Angelina references how hard this past decade has been on her. It really has been rough. She was still recovering from her double mastectomy and salpingo-oophorectomy when she filed for divorce from Brad in 2016. The stress of the divorce (and the abuse) caused Bell’s palsy, and it would not surprise me if it has reoccurred several times in recent years. But she survived and now she’s thriving. Her kids are almost all the way grown up, with the two youngest turning 18 next month. She was there to raise all of them, and now she’s coming back into her acting career in such interesting ways.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.