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In Emma Stone’s new film Bugonia, she plays a high-powered CEO of a major company who is kidnapped by two rogue conspiracy theorists who believe her to be an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.

So naturally, during the film’s press conference at the Venice Film Festival today, a journalist asked whether the creative team from the film believed that there are beings up above looking down on us humans.

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“I don’t know about looking down on us,” Stone explained, before adding that she has adopted the belief system of the late acclaimed mind of scientist philosopher Carl Sagan. “I watched his show, Cosmos, and fell madly in love with his philosophy and his science and how brilliant he seems to be. The idea that we are alone in this vast expanse of the universe — truly not that we’re being watched but that we’re alone out here — is a pretty narcissistic thing to think.”

She followed it with a more direct response, delivered in a tongue-in-cheek manner: “Yes, I’m coming out with it. I believe in aliens. Thank you.”

The two-time Academy Award winner joined frequent collaborator and close friend Yorgos Lanthimos, screenwriter Will Tracy, actor Jesse Plemons, and composer Jerskin Fendrix for the press conference inside the Lido’s Palazzo del Casinò marking their first official Venice Film Festival event ahead of tonight’s world premiere. Stone was polled on a wide variety of subjects that included how she felt shaving her head for the film (“So much easier than any hairstyle”), how she manages fame and success, and what it’s like to keep working with Lanthimos on such demanding projects.

“The opportunity to get to work on these things with him and everyone here, it has been just a dream,” she explained. “This film, specifically, there is so much that’s happening that I think is reflective of this point and time in our world, and it’s told in a way that I I found really fascinating and moving and funny and fucked up and alive.”

Bugonia also stars Stavros Halkias and Alicia Silverstone. Below is a teaser for the film, which hits theaters in October.

The Focus Features release is one of the more hotly anticipated titles here on the Lido as it marks a triumphant return to Venice for Lanthimos, who claimed a Golden Lion for Poor Things in 2023. The film, also starring his muse, went on to win four Oscars, including a second best actress prize for Stone; best achievement in production design for James Price, Shona Heath and Zsuzsa Mihalek; costume design for Holly Waddington; and makeup and hairstyling for Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier and Josh Weston. Bugonia follows a more recent partnership, Kinds of Kindness, which debuted in Cannes and went on to divide critics and audiences.

The 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival runs Aug. 27-Sept. 6.

More to come.

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