Ari Aster Calls Cate Blanchett & Alicia Vikander’s Cannes Comedy ‘Rumours’ “Stoopid, Hilarious & Wonderful” As Official Image Revealed

Andreas Wiseman
·3 min read
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EXCLUSIVE: Hereditary and Midsommar director Ari Aster, an exec producer on upcoming Cannes ensemble comedy Rumours, has called the film “stoopid and hilarious and wonderful” as the production reveals an official first look.

Oscar winners Cate Blanchett and Alicia Vikander star with Roy Dupuis, Charles Dance, Denis Ménochet, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rolando Ravello, Takehiro Hira and Zlatko Burić star in the movie that follows seven leaders of the world’s wealthiest liberal democracies at the annual G7 summit after they become lost in the woods and face increasing peril while attempting to draft a provisional statement regarding a global crisis.

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Some sites have been reporting the provisional statement is about the climate crisis, which we hear is inaccurate.

The intriguing official first image (above) shows Roy Dupuis as the Prime Minister of Canada and Alicia Vikander as the President of the European Commission. The other roles are being kept under wraps.

The film was written and directed by Canadian auteur Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg) with longtime collaborators Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, all of whom most recently collaborated on The Green Fog.

The collaborators on the project are in playful mood about the film: “The fact that Guy Maddin, the most idiosyncratic and original Canadian filmmaker of the ‘20s and ‘30s, found Evan and Galen Johnson, the most idiosyncratic and original Canadian filmmakers of the moment, is miraculous,” Aster said.

He continued: “The fact that they have departed so freely from their brilliant work of the last decade, while still retaining their prodigious gift for hyperbolic wordplay and their endless comic and aesthetic invention, is more miraculous yet. Rumours is stoopid and hilarious and wonderful, and it features the best cast ever assembled. The spirit of Buñuel and Monty Python and overwrought ‘70s television (and of course the Maddin/Johnson sensibility, which has no real analogue) is alive and strange.”

Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson added: “Compelled by the looming doomsdays with which we are become too familiar, seduced by the eschatological sinuosities inscribed provocatively across our sulphur-clotted skies, with nothing but hopelessness to console ourselves, and with our chill-blasted souls much in need of the warmth sometimes only nostalgia can provide, we directors have turned our despairing attentions, rosary beads chattering like teeth in our skeletal fingers, to the quaint old customs of diplomacy — namely the G7!”

Bleecker Street is releasing in the U.S.; Protagonist is handling international sales at Cannes where the movie debuts out of competition. Bleecker is planning a 2024 theatrical release.

It marks the second collaboration between Bleecker Street and Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen’s Square Peg, following Sasquatch Sunset which expands nationwide this Friday.

Rumours is a Canadian-German co-production, with financing from Telefilm Canada and Manitoba Film & Music, Orogen Entertainment Ltd. and Minnow Productions, in association with ZDF/ARTE.

Producers are Liz Jarvis for Buffalo Gal Pictures, Philipp Kreuzer for Maze Pictures and Lars Knudsen for Square Peg. Executive producers include Andrew Karpen and Kent Sanderson for Bleecker Street, and Ari Aster for Square Peg, Jörg Schulze for Maze Pictures and Phyllis Laing for Buffalo Gal Pictures.

Executive producers for Orogen Entertainment are Blair Ward, Anders Erden, Lauren Case and Eric Harbert. Executive producers also include Gillian Hormel, Mary Aloe and Stefan Kapelari. Laokoon Film Group’s Judit Stalter is co-producer along with executive producers Gábor Sipos and Gábor Rajna. Elevation Pictures is distributing in Canada, and Plaion Pictures in Germany.

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