CANNES:

Angelina Jolie, who plays the widow of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in A Mighty Heart, said she was overwhelmed by Mariane Pearl’s inner strength and her ability to let go of hatred.

“For me, so much of why this film was important to do is because I highly doubt there is anybody in this room who has more reason to hold hate inside herself than Mariane, and she doesn’t,” Jolie said at the Cannes Film Festival, where she and partner Brad Pitt, the movie’s co-producer, were in town for the premiere.

“She is a very compassionate, thoughtful person who looks to dialogue to change things, to make things better. That is, I think, a lesson for all of us,” Jolie said.

The film, based on Mariane Pearl’s memoir of the same name, recounts the search for her husband after his abduction in Pakistan in 2002, where he was researching a story on Islamic militants. She was more than five months pregnant at the time.