Ruben Östlund might not be competing at Cannes this yr — the two-time Palme d’Or winner (The Square, Triangle of Sadness) took his new, still-unfinished movie, The Entertainment System Is Down out of rivalry for the 2026 fest — however he nonetheless discovered time for a fast journey to the Croisette.
The Swedish filmmaker advised The Hollywood Reporter he’s nonetheless deep in post-production for the movie, and doesn’t anticipate or not it’s carried out earlier than the top of the yr. Kirsten Dunst, Daniel Brühl, and Keanu Reeves are among the many starry forged in Östlund’s new satire, set on a long-haul flight between England and Australia the place the leisure system fails and passengers are compelled to face the existential horror of boredom.
Östlund stated he continues to tweak the film, together with including a brand new sequence with Succession star Nicholas Braun.
“I’m going to Amsterdam. We’re going to shoot a little additional scene that came up during the editing,” he stated. “I got an idea during the editing that I think is really great so we’re going to put that in.”
Östlund started principal images on The Entertainment System is Down in late January 2024, capturing a exceptional 75 days on a single studio set constructed round an actual Boeing 747 acquired and outfitted particularly for the movie.
The sheer quantity of footage gathered throughout that prolonged shoot has made for a prolonged modifying course of. “I could just become completely mad and never stop editing the film,” Östlund quipped, earlier than rapidly reassuring his followers that the movie wouldn’t be too lengthy in coming. “I’m actually starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
The true cause for Östlund’s go to to the Croisette, nonetheless, was not his personal movie however a brand new enterprise he hopes will change the way in which individuals uncover cinema. Along with fellow Swedish filmmakers Felix Herngren, the director of The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, and Johan Kindblom, author and creator of the acclaimed Swedish sequence Cleo, Östlund has launched MyList — a movie advice platform constructed on the easy however more and more radical premise: That human style beats algorithmic curation.
The positioning, which has simply launched in Sweden , invitations filmmakers, actors, writers, musicians, politicians and atypical movie lovers alike to compile private lists of beneficial movies, organized by theme or class, with context and private reflections.
Östlund’s has corralled his well-known pals and collaborators to do lists. Dunst, Brühl and Reeves have all posted their prime 5 MyList choices, as has Polish auteur Pawel Pawlikowski, at the moment in Cannes competitors together with his new movie Fatherland, and Palme d’Or and Oscar winner Sean Baker (Anora). Baker’s record shouldn’t be your typical prime 5, however a collection of the movies he believes finest seize the expertise of heroin habit with a candid private account of his personal struggles with the drug.
The MyList founders say it was frustration with the dominant mannequin of movie discovery — whether or not pushed by streaming algorithms or aggregated scores scores — that drove them to launch their various website.
“Today you almost rate everything — you rate the beach, you rate streets, the restaurants, you rate your kids, your wife. It’s not a good way of looking at life,” stated Herngren. “With this site, a recommendation becomes meaningful, personal. It becomes more than just: was it a four or a five or a three?”
Östlund can be drawn to the platform’s potential to bridge the hole between movie business insiders and the broader public. “It’s interesting when you can mix professionals from the industry — actors, film critics — next to people working with something completely different,” he stated, noting that the positioning’s ambition extends effectively past cinema lovers. “MyList has a little approach of trying to reach the ones who maybe haven’t even considered themselves cinephiles.”
On the sensible facet, MyList will hyperlink every beneficial title on to obtainable streaming choices within the person’s area — fixing, as Herngren put it, the acquainted frustration of receiving a advice after which having no thought the place to really watch it. The workforce additionally has plans to ultimately incorporate hyperlinks to theatrical screenings, although that performance shouldn’t be but reside.
The positioning is ad-supported and free to customers, with a small referral payment paid by collaborating streaming providers when customers click on via to their platforms — Netflix, notably, has not but signed on. For now, MyList is on the market solely in Sweden, however the founders say an English-language model of the positioning is imminent, with a broader European and finally world rollout to observe.
“The internet has no borders,” stated Kindblom. “It will travel.”
