Swedish filmmaker Ruben Ostlund may hold The Entertainment System Is Down, considered by the industry as a shoo-in for this year’s Cannes, and submit for the 2027 edition.
“We’re in the editing process now. It’s always completely crazy, hectic, but in the end of February we’re going to decide if we go for Cannes this year, or for 2027,” the two-time Palme d’Or winner told audiences at Sweden’s Goteborg Film Festival on Thursday (January 29).
The film is understood to be in a lengthy post-production process, having wrapped the 76-day Budapest shoot in spring 2025.
The satire takes place on a long-haul flight between the UK and Australia when the entertainment system fails and passengers are forced to face the horror of being bored. Kirsten Dunst, Daniel Brühl, Keanu Reeves, Nicholas Braun, and Julie Delpy are among the cast.
“The biggest walk-out in history of Cannes”
Ostlund, who said some of the actors returned each day to sit in the same plane seat for around 50 days during production, revealed an idea for a 15-minute shot in the middle of the film.
“During the script writing, I came up with a great idea that I should create the biggest walk-out in the history of Cannes Film Festival,” he said. ”The idea of the scene is this – we have the fighting couple [in the middle of the film], and the two daughters who are fighting over the iPad.”
The father tells the daughters they each get to have the iPad for 15 minutes, at which point, Ostlund said, “From being in a film that has been told in a normal dynamic pace, we end up in a real-time shot [for 15 minutes]. My hope is the audience will understand – it’s us that is challenged. I’m curious what’s going to happen when I do the first test screenings of this film… Let’s see if I have the balls to go through with this, the 15-minute shot. All the distributors are so nervous.”
A24 has US rights, Lionsgate for UK-Ireland, SF Studios for the Nordic region, and Memento for France. Coproduction Office handles sales, and the producers are Sweden’s Plattform Produktion, Germany’s Essential Films, and France’s Parisienne de Production.
Ostlund was last in Cannes with 2023 Palme d’Or winner Triangle Of Sadness. He said he doesn’t start seriously considering his next project until the day after a Cannes premiere. “When we have had the premieres in Cannes, we have a little cafeteria that we go to the day after the premiere,” the filmmaker said. ”We sit down and we discuss what is going to be the next project. That’s the point… It has been a beautiful tradition.”
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