Director: Jessica Palud
Before her name became permanently attached to a single controversial film, Maria Schneider was simply a nineteen-year-old trying to build an acting career on French sets in the early 1970s.
What is Being Maria about?
Being Maria follows the young actress in the months surrounding her sudden fame after Last Tango in Paris, tracing how a role that made her a public sensation also left lasting scars on her sense of control over her own image and career. Rather than staying inside the shoot itself, the film widens out to her strained relationship with her actor father, her friendships, and the years she spent trying to be seen as more than the part that made her famous. It is less an account of a scandal than a portrait of a young woman reclaiming her own story on her own terms.
Cast & crew
Anamaria Vartolomei carries the film as Maria Schneider, moving between fragility and defiance across a role that spans several years of her life. Céleste Brunnquell, Matt Dillon, Marie Gillain, Yvan Attal, and Stanislas Merhar fill out the surrounding cast of directors, family, and industry figures who shape — and often complicate — her path.
Context & significance
Director Jessica Palud, a French filmmaker who previously worked as an assistant director, based the film on accounts of Schneider's life and the years that followed her breakout role. Shot as a Belgium-France co-production and released in 2024, the film joins a small wave of recent European cinema revisiting how the industry treated young actresses in earlier decades, without dwelling on any single explicit scene.
Where & how to watch
Being Maria is available to stream on K-Time with a free account login, presented with a Farsi-friendly interface alongside Persian dubbing and subtitles for viewers who prefer to watch in Farsi.