It is one of the great film news in Greece: Yorgos Lanthimos, its most international director, is back to its native Athens with a filming, Bugonia. In various Greek media, the day to day of a filming starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons is followed. And the thing was going well until the producer Eithher/or Productions asked to roll in the acropolis from April 10 to 14, from 6 in the morning to 12 noon. However, the Central Archaeological Council (KAS) rejected the petition on Tuesday. The reason: the sequences to film “are incompatible with symbolism and the values represented by the acropolis, and especially the part.”
Bugonia It is based on South Korean comedy Save the planet Earth (2003) in which the protagonist believes that the world is about to suffer an alien invasion, which he is chosen to lead resistance and therefore, helped by his girlfriend, kidnaps a businessman, because he may be the leader of aliens. It is a disturbing film, which passes from the most crazy comedy to terror in seconds, and that plays that the viewer spends a bad time without knowing what will happen next, with a delusional touch very close to the Lanthimos style. “I never took things too seriously,” the filmmaker told El País at the premiere in Cannes of his previous film, Kind of Kindness (2024).
That is why you have chosen a version in Athens Save the planet Earth. But who has been clear has been Kas. His rejection is because Lanthimos was going to place 70 corpses (It is not clear whether they were extras or dolls) between the propiles and the part, the temple of the 5th century. C. dedicated to the goddess Athena. In return, the Council proposed to roll near the acropolis, in the PNYX and Filopappou hills, or the Dionysiou Areopagitou pedestrian street. On Wednesday, the Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, received a letter from the Lanthimos team reiterating her request, previously rejected. According to ministerial sources cited in several Athenian media, the letter did not add enough reasons for the KAS to retract its position. On Thursday, the Ministry announced that they would wait for Eithher/or Productions to decide if he wanted to film in alternative locations. As committed to the filming of Lanthimos, they had previously resigned to collect the usual filming rate for acropolis, 1,984 euros per day.
Finally on Thursday night, the producer of Lanthimos resigned to shoot that sequence both in Athens and in the other locations, dismissed the extras and the additional technical team hired for those days. And the ministry put tickets to the public for sale for the hours previously reserved for filming, a few days – incentive of Holy Week – in which a large influx of tourists are expected.
While this was happening in Greece, in Las Vegas the Cinemacon was held, the annual convention of film room owners in the United States. There on Wednesday there were more clues about Bugonia. The script by Will Tracy (The menu and the series The regime y Succession) It follows two young people who kidnap the powerful executive director of a large company, convinced that she is an alien who tries to destroy the planet Earth. Together with Stone, Musa de Lanthimos, and Plemons (who has already collaborated with the Greek in Kind of Kindness), It was announced that in the cast are Aidan delbis, Stavros Halkias and Alicia Silverstone. In Las Vegas a brief advance was projected: a sequence in a garden that showed colored flowers and bees buzzing from one place to another. A voice in off details the “magnificent” pollination process. “The workers collect pollen for the queen,” he says. “A third of our food pollinates this way, but bees are dying,” he continues. “As the workers leave the queen, the colony is consumed.” In another sequence, Plemons appears as a technician, a worker without more. Then, the character of Stone leaving a mansion, with the appearance of powerful CEO. Later, from afar, I know how they kidnap her, and as in captivity she shaves her head. And finally another plane teaches Stone Calva, scared and pale.
That cocktail approaches Lanthimos to his beloved Luis Buñuel. As he told this newspaper in Cannes, “I love that his cinema is extremely fun, his escape from conventions, his audacity, his fight against structures, and at the same time he is an entertaining narrator, that he does not let the viewer give something for granted, much less he as director.” Bugonia It is already scheduled for premiere in the US: on November 7.