Allied is a 2016 romantic war drama thriller film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Steven Knight. It stars Brad Pitt as a Canadian intelligence officer and Marion Cotillard as a French Resistance fighter who fall in love while posing as a married couple during a mission in Casablanca in 1942. Jared Harris, Simon McBurney and Lizzy Caplan also star. Knight developed the script from a story told to him when he was 21. Principal photography began in February 2016 in London and continued in May 2016 in the Canary Islands, used to stand in for Morocco. Joanna Johnston designed the film's costumes, matching them to the characters' mindsets and situations. The film premiered in Los Angeles on November 9, 2016, and was released in the United States on November 23, 2016, by Paramount Pictures. It received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for its costume design, cinematography, and musical score, but saw criticism for its screenplay and the lack of chemistry between the leads. It grossed $40.1 million domestic and $119 million worldwide against an approximate $85–113 million budget, becoming regarded as a box office flop. At the 89th Academy Awards it was nominated for Best Costume Design. Plot In 1942 during World War II, Wing Commander Max Vatan, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot with intelligence duties, travels to Casablanca in Morocco to assassinate a German ambassador. He is partnered with a French Resistance fighter, Marianne Beauséjour, who escaped from France after her resistance group was compromised and killed. They pose as a married couple and grow close, despite agreeing that in their line of work feelings can get people killed. Marianne, who is trusted by the Germans, secures Max an invitation to the party where they plan to conduct the assassination. On the day itself, they have sex inside a car in the middle of a desert sandstorm, knowing they might not survive. However, the mission is successful and they escape. Max asks Marianne to come with him to London and be his wife. They marry, settle down in Hampstead, and have a baby girl, Anna, who is born during a bombing raid. A year later in 1944, Max learns from the Special Operations Executive that Marianne is suspected of being a German spy, having adopted her identity after the real Marianne was killed in France, and that the German ambassador they assassinated was a dissident