Please note: The screening of Eddington on Sunday, August 31 at 12:30 pm will be presented with on-screen captions.
With Eddington, his first film presented in Competition at Cannes, writer-director Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar) “delivers a psychological western with accents of paranoia, rooted in an America on the verge of imploding. Three years after Beau is Afraid, the filmmaker reunites with Joaquin Phoenix and directs Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal, and Austin Butler for the first time in an intense film blending community tensions, the pandemic climate, and the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.
The action takes place in May 2020, in a small town in New Mexico, with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating tensions. Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), the local sheriff, comes head-to-head with Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), the charismatic mayor whose decisions will lead the community into chaos. With a backdrop of fake news and collective anxiety, Aster sketches a society on edge.
Filmed in Albuquerque, in the director’s home state, Eddington unfolds with tight, elliptical direction, replete with silences and narrative gaps, with the director playing carefully with light and sound. ‘It suits me to be seen as a horror movie director,’ he admitted in 2023, ‘but I know this label will be more difficult to apply to my future projects.’ With Eddington, he delivers a transitional film, more philosophical than action-driven, where fear changes its face and becomes political.” – Benoit Pavard, Cannes Film Festival
