Cannes 2025: Ari Aster on ‘Eddington,’ democracy and what scares him now

It was, France – Aryster says while sitting on the surface on the sixth floor on the surface on the surface on the surface of the Kasab Festival Festival Festival festivals, where most shows occur. It is the period of the afternoon in particular, and we strain the shadow.

Aster, 38 -year -old director “Hereditary” and “Midsommar,” It wears an olive suit and the baseball cover. It is indeed a familiar name between horror fans and the dead A24 fans, but the director is competing at Cannes for the first time with “Eddington”, a great movie in a new Mexican city from New Mexican. Like the West of the Modern Age, Joaquin Phoenix is ​​competing with the mayor (Pedro Pascal) in a tense confrontation while protests against the killing of George Floyd in the corners of the streets. Many people cough without their masks. The meators, mysterious drones, and judicial tensions turned the film into something more pynchonesque and surreal.

Before releasing the film on July 18, “Eddington” became a suitable flash point at Cannes Festival, firmly divided into opinion. Like previous ASTER, 2023’s “Beau is afraid,” It continues to expand in a wider psychological area, indicating a political dimension that is not yet packed by the recent events, as well as a motive to explore a different type of American fear. We sat with him on Sunday to discuss and receive the movie.

I remember what was the case in 2018 in Sundance with the “genetic” and being part of the first midnight fans, where I felt that something special was happening. How does this time feel compared with Which – which?

It is the feeling of itself. It is just a formulation of nerves and feels completely weak and exposed. But it is exciting. It was always a dream to show a movie at the Cannes Festival.

Have you ever visited before?

no.

So this must feel like this dream. How do you think he went on Friday?

I don’t know. How do you feel she went? [Laughs]

I knew you would run it.

This is what everyone asks me. Everyone comes saying [makes a pity face]”How are you? How do you think she has gone?” This is like, I am the least objective person here. I made the movie.

I know that you heard about those who suffer from the legendary Cannes Festival, where the fans have severe reactions and feel like for the first time “spring rituals”. Some people love her, and some people hate her. This is the best, right?

Oh yes. But again, I have no picture of the response.

Do you read your reviews?

I stayed away while pressing people and talking to people. So I can talk to the movie.

logical. I felt extreme love in the room for Joaxin Phoenix, who was rubbing your shoulder while applause. Have you spoken to the actors’ team and how do they think it has gone, or are they spending a fun time?

I think they are all really proud of the movie. This is what I know and it was good to be here with them.

In the context of your four features, “genetic”, “Midsommar”, “beau is afraid” and now “Eddington”, how easy it is to make “Eddington”?

They are all difficult. We are always trying to extend our resources as much as they can go, and therefore they were all difficult, in different ways.

Is it fair to say that your films have changed since “heredity” and “Midsommar” and now they are more absorbed by a greater group of political social materials?

I just follow my pulse so I don’t think this way. There is a very little strategy that occurs. This is only: What concerns me? And when I started writing, because I was in a state of fear and real anxiety about what was happening in the country and what was happening in the world, and I wanted to make a movie about what he was feeling.

This was around 2020?

In June 2020 she started writing it. I wanted to make a movie about what a feeling of living in a world where no one agrees on what is happening.

You mean no one agrees to what is happening in the sense that we cannot even agree on the facts?

Yes. There is this social power that was at the center of liberal liberal democracies for a very long time, and this is the agreed version of What is real. Of course, we can all discuss and have our own opinions, but we all agreed mainly on what we were discussing. This is something that was disappearing. It has been happening over the past twenty years. But for me Covid felt when the last link was cut, this old idea of ​​democracy, it may be a compensatory force against power, technology and financing. This is now completely.

At that moment, I felt that I was in a state of panic. I’m sure I am not alone. So I wanted to make a movie about the environment, not about me. The film revolves around the gap between politics and politics. Politics is public relations. Politics are the things that already happen. Real things happen very quickly, moving very quickly.

I think about “Eddington” as a horror movie. It is the horror of the floating political anxiety. This is what scares you now. We have no kind of control over that.

We have no control and we feel that we are completely powerless and we are led by people who do not believe in the future. So we live in an atmosphere of full despair.

During the lock, I was sitting on my phone. Is this what you were doing?

naturally. There was a lot of the major energy behind the Internet, this idea: it would bring people together, and it will link them. But of course, the financing, as is always the case, and whatever it was wrapped and placed on another path. He used to be something we went to. You went to your computer at home, and you may go to your email. Everything took to download forever. Then with these phones, we started living in the electronic space, so we live on the Internet.

She is owned by us, she consumes us and does not see her. The pernicious thing really in our culture and about this moment is that it is frightening and dangerous and it is catastrophic, which is ridiculous, ridiculous and stupid and it is impossible to take seriously.

Did this “funny and stupid” part pushed you aesthetically to make something that was a very dark comedy? I think “Eddington” sometimes plays like comedy.

Well, I mean that something happens. I wanted to make a good Western as well, and Westerners revolve around the American country and myths and the romance of America. They are very emotional. I am interested in tension between the ideal of America and the truth of that.

You have your western elements there, and your Gunther pistol palace, an armed ending paper often remembers “no country for elderly men”.

You have an atmosphere, a honest, he loves his wife and cares about his community. He is 50 years old, so he grew up with action films in the nineties, and in the end, he should live through one.

Let’s back down for one second around the place where you were and what you were doing while you started writing this. You finished “beau afraid”, right? How was your life after that? You were falling and watching the news and started writing a text. How was this process for you?

I was in New Mexico at the time. I was living in New York in a small apartment, but then I had to return to New Mexico. There was Kovid’s intimidation in my family and I wanted to be near the family. I was there for a few months and just wanted to make a movie about what the world felt, and what the country felt.

Were you worried about your health and safety during that time?

naturally. I am a very Jew. I am always worried about my health.

As well as the collapse of the truth. What are the reactions when you started sharing the text program with the people who ended up in your team? How was Jawakin’s reaction?

I just remember that he really took the character and loved Joe and wanted to play, and that was exciting for me. I liked to work with him on “beau” and gave him the text in the hope that he would like to do so. They all responded quickly and jumped. There was just a general excitement and a project. I had friendship with Emily [Emma Stone, whom Aster calls by her birth name] Indeed and now we are all friends. I really love them as actors and as people. It was a beautiful liquid process.

I haven’t seen many important films explicitly about the epidemic. Have you felt that you were abandoning a new floor?

I am not thinking this way, but I wanted to see some reflection on what was happening.

Even in the seven years that followed the “genetic”, do you feel that the work has changed?

Yes, it changes. I mean, everything seems to change. I think [Marshall] McLahan and how we are now as we move from one broker to another. The Internet was a prominent, dominant and dominant means, and this is not the scene of everything, and we move towards something new. We do not know what will happen with artificial intelligence. That is why we are now very longing about movies and 70 mm presentations.

Have you ever felt that you entered this work in the last minute?

definitely. I feel very lucky because I am able to make films that I want to make and I feel lucky because I was able to make this movie.

There is a lot of space in “Eddington” for any type of viewer to find a mirror for themselves and are also challenged. Do not preach conversion. Was that the intention for you?

[Long pause] Sorry, I just think. I have just started talking about the movie. I think I am trying to produce a movie about how we are all in the same situation and how similar is. Which may be difficult to see and I am not a sociologist. But it is important for me to make a movie about the environment.

I was asked recently, do you have any hope? I think the answer to this is that I have hope, but I have no confidence.

It is easy to be sarcastic.

But I see that if there is any hope, we must re -launch with each other. For me, it was important not to judge any of these characters. I do not judge them. I am not trying to judge them.

I would like to have a partner in A24 that mainly allows you to go to where you need to go as an artist.

They were very supportive. It is great because I managed to make these films without a compromise.

Do you have an idea of ​​your next wrath?

I have some ideas. I decide between three.

Can you not give me the taste of anything?

Not yet, no. They are all different types and I try to decide what is right.

Let’s hope to survive until this point. How are you personally, regardless of films?

I am very worried. I am very worried and I am really sad about the place of things. Otherwise, there should be another idea. A new thing should happen.

You mean like a new political model or something like that?

Yes. The system in which we are in is a response to the last system that failed. The only answer, the only alternative I hear is to return to this old system. I will only say even a collective idea is just a more difficult thing to imagine. How can this happen? How do we meet together? Can there be any kind of compensatory power of power? I feel increasingly impotence and helpless. And despair.

Ari, it is a beautiful day. It is difficult to be completely satiated from the world when you are at Cannes and sunnah. Even in just 24 hours, “Eddington” became a conversation movie, discussed and discussed. Do you not raise you that you have one of this type of movie?

This is what this is supposed to be. And you want people to talk about it and argue on this topic. I hope this is something that you must struggle and think about.