Duse

Between the wars and the rise of fascism, Eleonora Duse makes a dramatic return to the stage at more than sixty, turning her veteran body into a living instrument of theater. The film follows a woman who refuses to surrender her art to fear, even as a hostile world closes in around her. As political turmoil intensifies, Duse clings to a vision of utopia and to acting as a defiant form of truth. The drama probes the price of keeping faith with one voice when love, health, and companionship slip away. Without revealing where the story ends, it charts her stubborn determination to stay true to her nature.

Directed by Pietro Marcello and released in 2025, Duse derives from an original script by Letizia Russo and Guido Silei, drawing on the life and legend of Eleonora Duse rather than a single source text.

Box Office: Worldwide gross of 827,331 against a budget of 11,002,819, reflecting a modest performance beyond art house circuits.

The film invites reflection on art as resistance in a turbulent Europe. It centers aging, ambition, and the ethics of a life lived for performance, with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi anchoring scenes that blend historical detail with intimate, probing emotion.