 She caught the attention of such directors as Francis Ford Coppola, who gave her the first two of her widely seen film roles as the mother of Vito Corleone in "The Godfather Part II" (1974), and Franco Zeffirelli, who cast her as Martha, the sister of Lazarus, in "Jesus of Nazareth" (1977).In 1985, she was awarded, as songwriter, the Targa Tenco for dialectal/regional music.In the last years of her life, Maria Carta gave her time to the University of Bologna where she conducted a series of classes and advised student theses on which she had relevant personal, human experience and scholarly background.