Kino Lorber has acquired North American distribution rights to Jessica Palud’s sophomore feature Being Maria, a moving portrait of the turbulent life and career of the late French actress Maria Schneider, starring Happening breakout Anamaria Vartolomei as the Last Tango in Paris star and Matt Dillon as Marlon Brando. The film will be released theatrically by Kino Lorber in 2025, followed by a digital, educational, and home video release.

Being Maria made its World Premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where it was the only female-directed film selected for the Premieres section. Directed by Jessica Palud (Revenir) and written by Palud and Laurette Polmanss, the film is loosely adapted from Vanessa Schneider’s memoir My Cousin Maria Schneider, and co-stars Giuseppe Maggio, Yvan Attal, Céleste Brunnquell, and Marie Gillain, alongside Vartolomei and Dillon.

Maria is a promising young actress struggling to break into film. When an emerging Italian director casts her to headline his new film alongside an American superstar, what seems like the opportunity of her dreams turns out to be the start of a living nightmare. The actress was Maria Schneider, and the now infamous film was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris. Being Maria traces the events of Maria Schneider’s life before and after the controversial production and wrenching fallout of Bertolucci’s film – a landmark that made Schneider an icon while locking her into a sexualized image she never could escape. Centering Maria’s perspective for the first time, Jessica Palud has crafted a stunning cautionary tale that, more than 50 years after the events, finally gives voice to one of the first victims of sexual violence in cinema who dared to speak out but was never heard.