A Talking Picture (Portuguese: Um Filme Falado) is a 2003 Portuguese film written and directed by Manoel de Oliveira. It stars Catherine Deneuve, John Malkovich, Irene Papas, Stefania Sandrelli and Leonor Silveira.

It is set in July 2001. Maria Joana and her mother, Rosa Maria (Leonor Silveira) go on a cruise from their home country of Portugal to Bombay, India, to see Rosa's husband who is an airplane pilot. At each port, a new person boards the ship. Catherine Deneuve boards in France, Stefania Sandrelli in Italy, and Irene Papas in Athens. The captain of the ship (Malkovich) invites the three women to dinner at his table, and they all speak in their own languages for the better part of the conversation. Later in the movie, Maria Joana and Rosa Maria are also invited to dinner and the captain presents Maria Joana with a gift.

At dinner that night, the captain is informed that there are two time bombs aboard the ship. The passengers are then ordered to evacuate. Maria Joana runs back to her and her mother's cabin to get the gift the captain presented her with earlier that evening. Rosa Maria realizes that Maria Joana is missing, runs to the cabin to find her, and takes her back on deck to board a life raft. Unfortunately, it is too late; all the life rafts have left.

Irene Papas (Greek Ειρήνη Παππά; born 3 September 1926) is a Greek actress and occasional singer, who has starred in over seventy films in a career spanning more than fifty years.

Irene Papas was born as Irini Lelekou (Ειρήνη Λελέκου) in Chiliomodi outside Corinth, Greece.

She sits on the board of directors of the Anna-Marie Foundation.

Papas began her early career in Greece (she was discovered by Elia Kazan), achieving widespread fame there, before starring in internationally renowned films such as The Guns of Navarone and Zorba the Greek, and critically acclaimed films such as Z and Electra. She is a leading figure in cinematic transcriptions of ancient tragedy since she has portrayed Helen in The Trojan Women, Clytemnestra in Iphigenia, and the eponymous parts in Electra and Antigone. She appeared as Catherine of Aragon in the film Anne of the Thousand Days, opposite Richard Burton and Geneviève Bujold in 1969. She co-starred in The Trojan Women with Katharine Hepburn, who once said that Papas was "one of the best actresses in the history of cinema".^{[citation needed]}

Manoel Cândido Pinto de Oliveira, GCSE (Portuguese pronunciation: [mɐnuˈɛɫ doliˈvɐjɾɐ]; born December 11, 1908) is a Portuguese film director born in Cedofeita, Porto. He began working on films in the late 1920s, but did not receive international recognition until the early 1970s. Since the late 1980s he has been one of the most prolific working film directors and continues to make an average of one film per year past the age of 100. In March 2008 he was reported to be the oldest active film director in the world, and is possibly the second oldest film director ever after George Abbott. He is also the only filmmaker whose active career has spanned from the silent era to the digital age. Among his numerous awards are two Career Golden Lions from the Venice Film Festival.

Manoel de Oliveira was born in Porto, Portugal, on December 11, 1908, to Francisco José de Oliveira and Cândida Ferreira Pinto. His family were wealthy industrialists and agricultural landowners. His father owned a dry-goods factory, produced the first electric light bulbs in Portugal and built an electric energy plant before he died in 1932. Oliveira was educated at the Colegio Universal in Porto before attending a Jesuit boarding school in Galicia, Spain. As a teenager his goal was to become an actor. At 17, he joined his brothers as an executive in his father's factories, where he remained for the majority of his adult life when not making films. In a 1981 Sight and Sound article, John Gillett describes Oliveira as having "spent most of his life in business...making films only when circumstances allowed."

John Gavin Malkovich (born December 9, 1953) is an American actor, producer, director and fashion designer with his label Technobohemian. Over the last 25 years of his career, Malkovich has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award nominations. He has also appeared in critically acclaimed films such as Empire of the Sun, The Killing Fields, Dangerous Liaisons, Of Mice and Men, Con Air, Being John Malkovich, and Red. He will produce the film version of the book The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Malkovich was born in Christopher, Illinois. His paternal grandparents were Croats, natives of Ozalj in Croatia. His mother was of Scottish and German ancestry. He grew up in Benton, Illinois, in a large house on South Main Street. His father, Daniel Leon Malkovich, was a state conservation director and publisher of Outdoor Illinois, a conservation magazine. His mother, Joe Anne (née Choisser), owned the Benton Evening News (a local newspaper in Benton, Il.), as well as Outdoor Illinois. Malkovich attended Logan Grade School,^{[citation needed]} Webster Junior High, and Benton Consolidated High School, in Benton, Illinois. During his high school years, he appeared in various plays and the musical, Carousel. He was also a member of a folk/rock musical trio, and was a member of a local summer theater/comedy project in Benton in 1972, where he co-starred in Jean-Claude van Itallie's America Hurrah. Upon graduation from high school, he entered Eastern Illinois University, and then transferred to Illinois State University, where he majored in theatre.