Washington [US], September 10: A slew of high-profile films debuted Tuesday at the Venice Film Festival, including Alex Gibney's Elon Musk documentary, a psychological thriller with Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, and a drama from Casey Affleck.
With a runtime of nearly four hours, including an intermission, "Musk" is a portrait of the world's richest man and an investigation into the scope of his power and influence. Gibney, an Oscar-winning filmmaker who has profiled powerful organizations and people before, from Enron and Elizabeth Holmes to Scientology, told The Associated Press that he started off as a kind of admirer and hoped that Musk might sit down for an interview.
"Ultimately he didn't want to talk to me," Gibney said. "Then you start digging into the facts and you follow them where they lead. And where they led for me was to a place that upended the myth, I would say, of Elon Musk as a kind of modern Leonardo da Vinci."
The film is expected in North American theaters in October.
"Musk" wasn't the only film that had billionaires on its mind. "Bunker," written and directed by Florian Zeller, is about an acclaimed architect (Bardem) who is approached about designing a survivalist bunker for a tech billionaire (Paul Dano) in Hawaii. His wife (Cruz), a literary editor, questions her husband for even considering such a project.
"'Bunker' touches on several times contemporary themes - fear of the future, ecological threats, rising social inequality, and rampant individualism - but it does so through a deeply personal lens: a couple struggling with each other," Zeller said in his director's statement. "I wanted to explore love, fidelity and forgiveness while placing the audience in a position of deliberate ambiguity."
Zeller wrote the film, inspired by a real story he read, for his stars specifically, who have appeared together in films many times going back to "Jamon Jamon."
"I think they are among the greatest actors working today," Zeller said. It was also, he said, a unique way to capture something true about a relationship.
Cruz said she was very happy that the film, which is in both English and Spanish, portrayed an authentic bilingual household. The family in the film, who relocated from Madrid with their kids, live in London but speak Spanish at home.
"It's amazing how much that has changed," she said.
Audiences, she said, were always ready for it but it was a challenge to get financiers and producers to agree until recently.
Stephen Graham and Patrick Schwarzenegger also star in "Bunker" which Searchlight Pictures will release in theaters early next year.
The film is playing in competition alongside titles such as "Wild Horse Nine" and "Ink," and, like them, it's one of the possible awards contenders in the Venice slate and is expected to have a qualifying run in 2026. Zeller's film "The Father" won Anthony Hopkins a best actor Oscar. He also won for the screenplay.
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Cooperation
