Federico Grandesso talks with the Two-Time Palme d’Or Winner at the Svaneti Film Festival
Together Magazine sat down with Swedish Film director Ruben Östlund in the city of Mestia (Georgia) during the Svaneti Film Festival.
The public on site was able to enjoy a masterclass in a stunning mountain location and the entire filmography of the Swedish filmmaker two times winner of the golden palm.
Ruben Östlund has officially started principal photography in Budapest on his new satire movie ‘’The Entertainment System is Down’’. The film is set on a long-haul flight between England and Australia where the entertainment system fails and passengers are forced to face the horror of being bored.
The shooting in the Hungarian capital will take over a 70-day period from January to May 2025 and it will mark Östlund’s second English-language film. Hopefully the movie will be able to take part in the Cannes Film Festival 2026 where Östlund’s fans already dream to see him awarded with the 3rd Golden Palme.
Q: What about your idea of involving the film public through the pitching?
A: I moved to Maiorca two and a half years ago and had test screenings of my film ‘’Triangle of Sadness’’ in a small village called Campos. It was beautiful to tell people that doesn’t think they don’t have any knowledge about cinema: “Come and watch my film, and in the end tell me what do you think? What do you think is the problem? What’s good and what’s bad?”.
They were happy that I asked them these questions and the screenings became so fun. I think that’s what cinema is missing nowadays: when I go to the cinema the audience is treated like cows, you just go in, buy popcorn and once the movie is over you get out; you don’t feel like anyone cares about what you think or feel. I think the future of cinema must not have elitism, but openness.
Q: What about the idea of first and second class in the means of transport, the division it creates.
A: There is one thing I started to get aware when I was starting to travel business class for the first time, was that I was that I started to move slower, I was drinking champagne slower.
It’s a great setup for a micro universe. There are so many ideas, so many social contracts, so many roles at play. I love public transport, and I love spaces like in ‘’the square’’ because when something is happening who is responsible? Us as civilians or is the stare who should take care of this? It challenges us in so many ways in the spaces where we share responsibility.
Q: What will be the future of comedies in your opinion?
A: In the 70’s or a little later there were good filmmakers that were intelligent and comical at the same time like Bunuel or Lina Wertmuller. But all of a sudden in Europe we had all this film institute’s where you could apply for money If you did important movies, what happened then was that we were economically safe when we were getting money from the state so we could use the culture prestige of making cinema to get money and therefore a certain kind of genre happened that was disconnected from the audience.
That’s the problem of European cinema: we are economically safe when we get the money from the state, and in US they have to sell tickets otherwise they go bankrupt. I think that we have to understand the great things about having state fundings cinema but also to look at the downside of it and its side effects. There are a lot of movies dealing with important content but if you scratch the surface everything is shallow. So, to lose connection of the audience it is a little bit to lose connection with a content which is interesting.
Q: As it was a topic of your film ‘’The Square “. What about your opinion on contemporary art now?
A: In post modernism for a long time everything felt like: nothing matters why should I deal with it. Have you heard about post-post modernism in movies: you are distant, but you also feel emotions.
Contemporary art in many ways is following a lot of rituals and conventions becoming later on not that interesting, like bad cinema. What happened with the square was that some people were threatened by it.
Q: What about fashion then which is a topic of “Triangle of Sadness’’?
A: My interest comes from my wife that is a fashion photographer, so she told me a lot of things about that world. There was someone that was studying zebras in the savanna, asking himself about the meaning of their fur’s colours. He studied it and it turned out that following a single example in the heard was quite difficult, so he sprayed a little red dot on one of them and then he was able to. That red dot though, was also the reason why it was caught by lions. The conclusion is their fur colour is like that not in order to hide in the environment but in order to hide in the heard. And this scientist was drawing parallels with the human being, and how we are picking our clothes. We are very aware of the clothes we can wear in a certain social environment and picking them in order not to pop out too much. The fashion industry changes the camouflage every fall and spring. The capitalistic system was able to exploit one of our core instincts as human beings, fashion industry in many ways plays with our insecurities, with our fear of not fitting in.
Q: There’s a statement of yours that says, “If you want to understand me you have to understand Marx”. Can you explain it?
A: My mum and dad were teachers, young in the 60’s and very influenced by the leftist movement. My mother became communist in that era, my father too but doesn’t consider himself one anymore.
Marx was a part of my upbringing. That way of looking at the world that sees the context of the situation influencing our behaviour, the materialistic part of the world that is changing our behaviour. I got to know when I was in my 40’s that he was one of the founders of sociology, that shocked me.
Instead of pointing fingers at someone, sociology looks at the context and explains the situation, something in complete opposition with the neo liberalistic idea of looking at human beings: always focused on the individual (as in America) and never on the society.
- Photo credit: Featureflash | Dreamstime.com
