By LINDSEY BAHR AP Film Writer
VENICE, Italy (AP) — A slew of high-profile films are debuting Tuesday at the Venice Film Festival, including Alex Gibney’s Elon Musk documentary, a psychological thriller with Penélope 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.
Cruz and Bardem play a married couple
“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 “Jamón Jamón.”
“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.
Casey Affleck’s meditation on grief and compassion
Also debuting is “Company,” a meditation on grief and compassion with a gothic element, which Affleck directed and co-wrote. The film, which is seeking distribution, begins in winter 1975, when a mysterious woman crashes a holiday gathering. The story then opens itself to several others.
“It’s not explicitly a political movie,” Affleck said. “But I’m not impervious to the world around me, so I was responding in part to all of the sort of raging conflicts in the world, and to things inside myself.”
The film stars Nick Nolte and Ben Mendelsohn, and features Affleck’s children Atticus Affleck and Indiana Affleck.
“Neither one of them really wanted to be a part of this production,” Affleck said of his kids. “I think that they grew up around it and had some interest in it and a sort of innate understanding of what it was. …
“They were amazing and it made it the best professional experience of my life by far because I got to go to work every day with my kids and hang around and I would do it over and over again if I could. I don’t think that they will let me but I’m gonna try.”
Affleck dedicated the film to his parents, who both also appear in “Company” and who died this year. He said they never got the chance to see it.
“Company” is also in competition for the Golden Lion. Winners chosen by the Maggie Gyllenhaal–led jury will be announced Saturday.
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