Santa Barbara – February 4 – Angelina Jolie took home the Outstanding Performance of the Year award last Saturday at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) for her role as the wife of the murdered film journalist Daniel Pearl in the film A Mighty Heart. Clint Eastwood presented the award at a packed Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara.
Released in 2006, A Mighty Heart tells the story of Mariane Pearl and her journey in coming to terms with the death of her husband, who was researching a Wall Street Journal story on the shoe bomber Richard Reid when he was kidnapped and later killed in Pakistan in early 2002. The ordeal lead her to write the memoir A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl,” on which the movie was based. Marianne Pearl was six months pregnant with their son Adam when the kidnapping occurred, and said that she wrote the book to introduce Adam to the father he would never meet.
The 32-year-old Jolie attended the red-carpet event with her husband, Brad Pitt. Neither addressed recurring rumors that Jolie may be pregant with twins, but she had kind words to say about the 77-year-old Eastwood, her director in the upcoming feature The Changeling, calling him “a genuinely great guy.”
Running Jan. 24-Feb. 3, the SBIFF screened over 200 feature films and 50 short films and hosted a number of panels, special tributes and renowned international filmmakers before closing Saturday night.