Jolie, Pitt get emotional unveiling Daniel Pearl film

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt spoke emotionally about love and family as they premiered their new film Monday about the murder of US reporter Daniel Pearl by Islamic extremists.
"A Mighty Heart" starring Jolie, produced by Pitt and directed by Britain's Michael Winterbottom, was warmly applauded at a packed screening, with some critics saying it was the actress's best work since her 2000 Oscar for "Girl, Interrupted".

Hollywood's golden couple was joined at the Cannes film festival by Pearl's widow Mariane, whose book on her husband's murder while researching terrorist networks in Pakistan in 2002 is the basis of the movie.

The 31-year-old actress said she was at about the same point in her pregnancy with Pitt's child when she began filming that Pearl had reached when she confronted her husband's kidnapping and subsequent beheading.

"I remember being six months pregnant and thinking 'I can't imagine at this time not having the father with me and being concerned about his life and trying to eat and trying to remember to get some sleep'," she said.

"So as a woman it just made me so much more connected to (Mariane) and aware of her and also knowing that carrying that life inside, that little boy that's half Danny that is so so amazing and her love -- I'm sure there couldn't also have been a greater gift at that time to help pull her through something like that."

Pitt, 43, said starting a family with Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, had pushed him to pursue work that mattered.

"As a father, too, I look at my kids and realise that they will inherit this world, and I know this is true for Mariane as well and we want to do everything we can to throw our weight in and make it a little bit better," he said.

Pitt, who is also in Cannes for the premiere of the all-star caper "Ocean's Thirteen" on Thursday, said he had been inspired by Mariane's courage and empathy for other terror victims.

"The strength of Mariane through this situation -- for me it was an epiphany. As Angie said, she had every reason to come out of this embittered and angry and full of hatred and instead has shown us another way," he said.

"It lights the way for me."

Jolie, who underwent a complete makeover to play Pearl, a Frenchwoman of Cuban and Dutch origin, said the film had also made her and Pitt reconsider the role of the media and the hounding they face daily by celebrity photographers.

"There were the scenes where there were paparazzi and I felt sorry for her (Mariane), thinking 'My god, what this must be like for somebody in that situation, that I really can't imagine -- going through that, having that kind of media coverage for something as difficult as that and for somebody who is not used to it...'"

The A-list couple also gently teased each other during the press conference.

When Pitt was asked to follow up on Jolie's remarks about religious conflict and reconciliation, the distracted actor apologised with a laugh: "I was wafting in the words of...what's her name."

Pearl said she had developed a friendship with Jolie and Pitt and was very pleased with the film.

"We've grown quite close," Pearl said. "I think of my son who will one day see this film -- it was a great moment of pain but it is addressed (in the film) by someone who loves me and that means a lot to me."

The film, which is screening out of competition at Cannes, recreates a scene in the book in which Pearl sharply attacks a CNN reporter who had asked at the time whether she had seen the video of her husband's beheading.

In a poignant exchange, the journalist appeared at the Cannes press conference to ask Pearl: "Could you forgive me now if you haven't yet?"

Pearl replied: "I accept your apologies."

Winterbottom said he saw the film as a continuation of themes covered in his 2006 feature "Road to Guantanamo," a docu-drama about three British citizens held at the US lockup in Cuba for several months without charge.

But he dismissed a reporter's question about whether his sympathy for the former Guantanamo inmates meant he empathised with Pearl's killers.

"They were in a sense caught up in the sort of post-9/11 conflict in the same way that Danny and Mariane were I think," he said. "Of course it's completely wrong...but it is part of the same situation."