Angelina Jolie recently traveled to Rwanda to support a women-led farming cooperative. Simultaneously, her children Maddox and Zahara have filed legal petitions to remove Brad Pitt's surname from their names.

Four legal advertisements to erase the Pitt name

The estrangement between Brad Pitt and his children has moved from private tension to public legal record. According to the report, Maddox, 24, and Zahara, 21, each ran four legal advertisements in the Los Angeles Daily Journal to formally petition for the removal of Pitt's surname. This follows a pattern established by their sister Shiloh, 20, who legally changed her name last year, and Zahara and Vivienne, 18, who had previously adopted the Jolie name informally.

The shift is already visible in professional credits. as reported by the Daily Mail, Maddox was listed simply as Maddox Jolie in the 2024 film Maria, a departure from his credit as Maddox Jolie-Pitt in the Maria Callas biopic two years prior. Maddox has reportedly cited "personal" reasons for the official legal filing submitted in May.

The Imboni collective and the 1994 genocide survivors

While her children distance themselves from their father, Angelina Jolie has focused her public presence on humanitarian efforts in Kigali, Rwanda. Jolie shared images on Instagram of her visit to the Imboni cooperative farm, a collective managed by women, many of whom survived the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

The initiative is supported by the Legacy of War Foundation, led by British documentary photographer Giles Duley. The foundation assists the Imboni collective by funding the purchase of arable land, enabling suvivors of conflict to establish profitable, climate-smart farming operations. Jolie was photographed dancing with the women of the collective, signaling a continued commitment to African development.

The 2006 Namibia no-fly zone controversy

Jolie's current humanitarian image in Rwanda stands in contrast to the highly controlled celebrity bubble she and Brad Pitt maintained during their marriage. In 2006, the couple traveled to Namibia for the birth of their daughter Shiloh,an event marked by extreme security measures. The Namibian government enforced a no-fly zone over their accommodation to block paparazzi.

This era of the "Brangelina" brand was characterized by friction with the press and local authorities. A Namibian human rights group alleged that the couple's security detail and local police conducted door-to-door searches to find photographers,and the Namibian embassy reportedly restricted journalist visas unless the coupple consented. This history of intense scrutiny and control provides a stark backdrop to the current public disintegration of the family unit.

The silence of Brad Pitt's representatives

Despite the public nature of the name-change petitions and Jolie's high-profile trip to Rwanda, the perspective of Brad Pitt remains absent from the current narrative. The Daily Mail reached out to representatives for both Jolie and Pitt for comment, but no response was provided by Pitt's camp.

This silence leaves several critical questions unanswered. It remains uncclear how Pitt is responding to the formal legal petitions of Maddox and Zahara or if there have been any private attempts at reconciliation since the 2016 split. Furthermore, while the source details Jolie's accusations of abuse and Pitt's subsequent denials, the current status of their long-standing custody and property disputes is not updated in the recent reporting.