Yorgos Lanthimos and his frequent star Emma Stone arrived at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday and unveiled their latest collaboration Bugonia, as part of the festival’s main competition. A reflection on what is “happening now” in society, as Lanthimos told the press earlier in the afternoon, the movie received a 6-minute, 50-second ovation inside the Sala Grande.
Stone stars with Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias and Alicia Silverstone.
A remake of South Korean filmmaker Jang Joon-hwan’s Save the Green Planet!, the film follows two conspiracy-obsessed men (Plemons and Delbis) who kidnap the high-powered CEO (Stone) of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.
After the screening, the crowd was enthusiastic, and Lanthimos and his cast bowed several times. They left holding onto one other’s shoulders in a line.
In his review, Deadline’s Pete Hammond called Bugonia, “a dizzying, batsh*t-crazy story that ranks right up there with the filmmaker’s best films: Poor Things, The Favourite, Dogtooth and The Lobster. Each has a surreality in common with this one, Bugonia (the title referring to an ancient Greek belief in the birth of bees from dead cows), that also is insanely pertinent to the misinformation age of today and conspiracy-theorist nutjobs living in the deepest crevices of the internet.”
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The last time Lanthimos and Stone collaborated on a Venice competition title was 2023’s Poor Things, which won the Golden Lion and went on to scoop four Oscars (including Best Actress for Stone) and two Golden Globes. Their other feature team-ups include 2024’s Kinds of Kindness and 2018’s The Favourite.
“I love working with Yorgos. I love the material that he’s drawn to and the worlds he wants to explore, and the characters that he’s been generous enough to let me try my hand at,” Stone said at this afternoon’s press conference.
Of Bugonia, Lanthimos added, “Humanity is facing a reckoning very soon and people need to choose the right path, otherwise, I don’t know how much time we have with everything that’s happening in the world, with technology, AI, wars, climate change and the denial of all these things.”
Bugonia is produced by Element Pictures’ Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe; Lanthimos via Pith; Stone via Fruit Tree; Square Peg’s Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen; and CJ ENM’s Miky Lee and Jerry Kyoungboum Ko. Focus Features will open the film October 24 in a limited engagement ahead of a wide break October 31.
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