It must be great being Ruben Östlund. He’s just 48 years old and already has two Palme d’Or wins to his name. Now, he’s just complete a stint as Jury President for the 76th Cannes Film Festival.
Östlund is just the second Swede to be a Jury president at one of the three main film festivals, the other being Ingmar Bergman (Cannes, 1973).
Östlund has been teasing to a some media outlets about his next project, titled “The Entertainment System is Down.” He says that plans are to shoot it next fall, via CineEuropa:
Shooting starts next autumn, and at the moment, I’m writing. Casting will start soon. I’m having great fun, and I hope to show it in 2026, at Cannes.
The film will be set on a long-haul flight whose entertainment system loses power as passengers become “modern human beings that have to deal with boredom and their own thoughts.”
Östlund plans on including a scene where a young boy asks to borrow his older brother’s iPad and is told he has to wait five minutes. “And then I want to challenge the audience,” Ostlund teases. “You stay with the kid in real time. And he’s looking in the catalog, putting it back and the restlessness is coming. So he asks his mother, ‘How much do we have left?’ And she says, ‘Well, now it’s four minutes and 45 seconds, you have to calm down.’”
"When the audience starts to realise that this is a real-time shot, I think a lot of people are going to be very, very frustrated," he said, still chuckling. "I want to create history."
Östlund added that with this film he wants to cause the most walkouts in Cannes history. “And I think it’s going to be more provocative than any violent, any disturbing content,” he says. “Because to be left alone with your thoughts and challenging the audience to do the same thing, then it’s going to be very interesting.”
His last four films (“Play,” “Force Majeure,” “The Square,” and “Triangle of Sadness”), were all well-received, this upcoming fifth one will no doubt have some high expectations behind it.
Snyder has mentioned in the past how “Sucker Punch “never really got finished correctly,” and that it was “not really the correct cut.” The extra footage is actually already shot.