Rain, Bees and Aliens: Yorgo Lanthimos Returns to Venice with “Bugonia”
It was long-awaited return for Yorgos Lanthimos at the Lido, almost a ritual renewed with every new work, as if the Greek director’s fate were intertwined with the Venice Film Festival itself. After “Alps” (2011), “The Favourite” (2018), and the triumph of “Poor Things” (Golden Lion winner in 2023), Lanthimos once again steps into the main competition with “Bugonia”, an English remake of “Save the Green Planet!”, a 2003 South Korean cult film. An adaptation that confirms his gift for navigating genres and bending them to his oblique, unsettling gaze.
For the premiere, Lanthimos walked alongside his muse Emma Stone, with whom he has built over the years a strong artistic bond. The actress drew the photographers’ attention together with the rest of the cast: from Jesse Plemons—we remember her intense and disarming role in “Kinds of Kindness” (2024)—to Alicia Silverstone. Among the evening’s guests, we met Willem Dafoe, Emanuela Fanelli in a striking red dress, the elegant Noomi Rapace and Silvia Braz.
“Bugonia” follows two conspiracy theorists convinced that a powerful CEO is, in fact, an alien poised to destroy the Earth: a plot that blends farce and paranoia, pop irony and ancient mythology, even referencing Virgil and the myth of the swarm born from a decomposing carcass. In Venice, Lanthimos did more than unveil a new film: he reaffirmed that cinema, to truly exist, must be excess, ritual, obsession. And that on the red carpet, as on the screen, the only possible truth is the one that unsettles us.
Text: Germano D’Acquisto
Photos: Ludovica Arcero
