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Posted in: Focus Features, Movies | Tagged: bugonia, Focus Features, Yorgos Lanthimos
Bugonia Director Reveals Why He Enjoys Repeat Collaborators
Yorgos Lanthimos, director of the new Focus Features film Bugonia, reveals why he opted to work with familiar faces for the black comedy film.
Article Summary
- Bugonia sees Yorgos Lanthimos blend sci-fi and black comedy in a bold English remake of Save the Green Planet!
- Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons reunite with Lanthimos, driving the film’s tense and twisty central plot.
- Lanthimos reveals his love for working with familiar actors, emphasizing trust and creative chemistry on set.
- The film’s strong performances and offbeat tone have earned praise from critics following its Venice premiere.
Bugonia is Yorgos Lanthimos stepping into full sci-fi mode, while still keeping his love of uncomfortable comedy very close. The new 2025 film serves as an English-language take on the 2003 Korean cult movie Save the Green Planet! and follows a conspiracy-minded beekeeper named Teddy who becomes convinced that powerful pharma executive Michelle Fuller is an alien infiltrator. He and his cousin Don kidnap her, haul her to a hidden basement, and try to "interrogate" the truth out of her while the world above keeps turning. But there are plenty of twists and turns before the film comes to a screeching halt.
Emma Stone plays Michelle as a razor-sharp corporate figure who is used to holding the room, only to be stripped of that control once she is trapped. Jesse Plemons brings a tense, off-kilter energy to Teddy, a man whose terror about the state of the planet curdles into obsession. Aidan Delbis, as cousin Don, adds a raw, unpolished dose of honesty, while Alicia Silverstone and Stavros Halkias round out the ensemble in key supporting roles. The movie first premiered in competition at Venice in August 2025 before rolling out in theaters in October, and as of now, critics have largely praised the central performances and the film's peculiar mix of nastiness and melancholy.
Bugonia is also another chapter in Lanthimos' ongoing collaboration with Stone and, more recently, with Plemons after Kinds of Kindness. And, when speaking with Screen Rant, he explained why he keeps returning to the same actors.
Credit: Atsushi Nishijima/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved. © Focus Features
Bugonia Filmmaker on Working with Returning Actors
He tells the site, "I think it's as simple as finding someone you get along with and, of course, appreciate greatly as a talent. You trust them and build on the relationship afterward, so it allows you to not be afraid to go to places that you might not have gone if it were someone that you didn't know so well or couldn't rely on. They're both incredible actors, and they have great chemistry. With Jesse, it was almost like making three films back-to-back when we made Kinds of Kindness. It was three different stories, and he had to play three different characters, so it felt like there was already a troupe created."
Bugonia feels like the latest proof that this unofficial troupe can follow Lanthimos into stranger territory without losing its footing. If this is where their shared instincts have led so far, it is hard not to wonder what even weirder, wilder story they will tackle next.
The Focus Features film Bugonia is in theaters everywhere.
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