Antonio Banderas Brings Daughter Stella to the TIFF Red Carpet for ‘Up Against It’ Premiere
The Toronto International Film Festival is where a film’s fate can be shaped in a few days, and where families sometimes turn up to support the cast. This year, one father-daughter pair stood out on the red carpet outside Roy Thomson Hall. It was a warm moment in a week of premieres and panels.
The occasion was Trudie Styler’s new film ‘Up Against It’, a British comedy-drama built around an unusual family dilemma. Antonio Banderas stars as Álvaro, a noted conductor, opposite Eva Birthistle as his about-to-be-ex-wife Saffron. Their teenage daughter Rose, played by Eden Hamilton, faces a returning childhood cancer that puts the couple in an impossible position.
That brought Antonio Banderas and his daughter Stella to the red carpet on Thursday, September 17, for the film’s TIFF gala. Stella, who recently turned 30, wore a black long-sleeved midi dress with an asymmetric neckline and draped detailing, along with sunglasses. Banderas, 66, matched her in a black suit and a black shirt patterned with white stars, and the two smiled together for photographers.
Stella isn’t a regular on major red carpets, which made the outing notable. E! News described it as one of her relatively uncommon major-event appearances. She is the daughter of Banderas and Melanie Griffith, and has shown more interest in working behind the camera than in acting.
Her acting credit dates back to childhood. She played Marilyn in ‘Crazy in Alabama’, the 1999 film that marked her father’s feature directorial debut and starred her mother. Banderas and Griffith have stayed on friendly terms since their split, and he is also stepfather to Dakota Johnson, who stars in ‘Verity’.
The premise is high-concept. With Rose’s leukemia returning, doctors propose an extraordinary treatment that would require her divorcing parents to consider having another child together. Deadline described the film as a sly comedy with drama that plays like a twisted version of ‘The Parent Trap’.
The cast is deep. Forest Whitaker plays the doctor, while Úrsula Corberó and Arinzé Kene play the new partners in the parents’ lives, and Richard E. Grant and Mickey Sumner also appear. The screenplay is by Chloe King and Camille Griffin, and the film was previously known as ‘Rose’s Baby’.
Styler, who is also a producer along with Celine Rattray and Piers Tempest, has said the story has a personal pull. Variety reported that her sisters are both nurses, and that she moved the setting from the U.S. to the U.K. She also said Banderas has been in her life since the 1990s and that she thought he would knock the part out of the park.
Banderas described the film as a story that is sometimes painful and sometimes funny, like life. He explained that the daughter’s illness is only one of several problems in the story, with the parents’ relationship carrying its own troubles. That balance of humor and heartbreak is the film’s central challenge.
Early reviews have been mixed. Deadline praised Banderas and Birthistle as excellent and called Styler’s screenplay smart and free of clichés. Screen International, on the other hand, called it an aggressively sentimental tearjerker that glosses over its bigger questions.
Variety’s review also argued that the film ignores its own conundrums. Still, the film has drawn attention for its portrayal of step-parents, and Dream Saga called it one of the festival’s more polarizing entries. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution, with CAA handling domestic sales and Beta Cinema handling international.
The premiere also marks a return to the big screen for Banderas. Hola noted that he spent recent years heavily involved in theater and producing. He has been a familiar TIFF presence before, and ‘Pain and Glory’ earned him an Academy Award nomination.
Alongside the red carpet, there was a celebratory reception attended by Styler and her husband Sting. The film also screened again at the festival in the following days. It was a busy week for a cast eager to introduce the film to audiences.
For fans, though, the image that stuck was the one of father and daughter posing side by side. It’s a small human moment amid the festival’s business. It also underlines how much family remains at the center of Banderas’s story, on and off the screen.
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