Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó first worked with Ellen Burstyn on his 2020 drama “Pieces of a Woman,” and immediately knew he wanted to make another movie with her.
“She was [on set] for two or three days only, and I loved her,” Mundruczó tells Variety over Zoom from Budapest. “Of course, I love her movies, but just to work with her was on another level. I felt I was with a master.”
The Oscar-winning star of “The Exorcist” and “Requiem for a Dream” has built her 70-year career on roles in horror films and serious dramas, but Mundruczó envisioned something different. “I always wanted to give her a love story because her body of work is rather dark, you know?” he says. “I wanted to do kind of a light movie for her, that was also something very important and special for me, because I could easily be dark as well.”
Enter “Place to Be.” Premiering at Venice on Wednesday, the movie marks Mundruczó’s first time back at the festival since “Pieces of a Woman” — which wasn’t the “real Venice experience” due to COVID-19, he says — and is particularly special since Burstyn is being honored with a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.
In what Mundruczó describes as an “urban road movie,” Burstyn plays Brooke, a widowed woman whose children are trying to force her into a retirement home. When a pigeon flys through her window and refuses to leave, Brooke embarks on a cross-country road trip to return the bird to its owner, meeting divorcee Nelson (Taika Waititi) along the way. The two strike up an unlikely friendship with each other and the pigeon, learning that it’s never too late to start a new chapter in life.
