“It’s f–ing exhausting to make a superb airplane film,” Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund emphasised a number of occasions this morning in Cannes as he spoke to worldwide press about his plans for The Leisure System Is Down, the newest characteristic he has set to direct starring a buzzy forged led by Kirsten Dunst and Daniel Brühl.
His follow-up to the Palme d’Or successful satire Triangle of Disappointment, The Leisure System Is Down is one other social satire, this time set on a long-haul flight the place the leisure techniques fail, and an eclectic group of worldwide passengers are compelled to face the horror of being bored.
As we reported earlier this week, Östlund and his producer, Erik Hemmendorff, have bought a real-life Boeing 747 the place he informed the press right now he’ll mount the manufacturing over 70 days on a studio lot.
“We purchased the aircraft and it was fairly early within the means of the movie. So abruptly it was like ‘Oh, we’ve to make this movie,” Östlund mentioned on the presser hosted by Sweden’s Movie i Väst. Dunst and Brühl joined him.
“Being in a studio for 70 days looking for the power and the motivation if you’re in the identical setting goes to be robust.”
Digging additional into the plot of the pic, Östlund mentioned the movie’s jumping-off level is when a person falls asleep beside his spouse after the leisure techniques drop.
“His spouse is bored so after some time she sees her husband’s cellphone and decides to unlock it,” Östlund mentioned. “Seems, she doesn’t know the code, so she makes use of his face to unlock the cellphone with face ID. She then finds out he has had a number of affairs with younger girls. In order that they’re going to be coping with that through the flight. It’s an emotional curler coaster.”
Dunst and Brühl will play the doomed married couple. Additionally set to star are Keanu Reeves and Succession actor Nicholas Hoult.
Brühl informed the packed room of journalists that he was first unofficial forged within the movie some years in the past after he acquired speaking to Östlund at a barbeque he hosted at his residence in Majorca. Dunst, nonetheless, mentioned she auditioned for the Swede.
“I despatched a self-tape,” Dunst mentioned. “I did an improv of the entire cellphone state of affairs.”
A Scandinavian journalist later requested Dunst about her historical past working with filmmakers from the area and whether or not she noticed any similarities between Östlund and her Melancholia director Lars Von Trier. Nervously chuckling, Dunst mentioned she’d politely “move on the query” earlier than including: “I at all times wanna work with those that push the boundaries of cinema.”
Dunst was famously sat subsequent to the usually controversial Von Trier in 2018 through the Melancholia press convention in Cannes the place the director mentioned he “sympathized” with Hitler. After the feedback, Von Trier was declared “persona non grata” by pageant organizers. He returned to Cannes in 2018 with The Home That Jack Constructed.
Östlund later informed the room that he must be again at Cannes in 2016 the place he’ll debut The Leisure System Is Down. The challenge can be Östlund’s second English-language movie and seventh characteristic after The Guitar Mongoloid (2004), Involuntary (2008), Play (2011), Pressure Majeure (2014), The Sq. (2017) and Triangle of Disappointment (2022). The final two of those gained the director the Palme d’Or in Cannes, which means he’s one in all solely a handful of filmmakers to have gained the accolade twice.
The movie can be a Swedish-German-French co-production, and can reunite the director together with his longtime colleagues, producer Hemmendorff of Plattform Produktion and producer Philippe Bober from Paris-based Coproduction Workplace, which can also be dealing with world gross sales. The challenge is being shopped on the Cannes Market.
The Cannes Market ends Could 22.