reported before<\/a>, the film \u2013 which follows Palme d\u2019Or award-winning \u201cThe Square\u201d and \u201cTriangle of Sadness\u201d \u2013 stars Kirsten Dunst, Keanu Reeves, Daniel Br\u00fchl, Nicholas Braun and Samantha Morton.<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cWe are constantly distracting ourselves and it\u2019s a certain kind of pleasure when you have to switch the phones off [when you fly]. The lack of screens can reflect our behavior. We are so obsessed with them,\u201d he said at G\u00f6teborg Film Festival\u2019s Nordic Film Market. \u00d6stlund is the Honorary President of the Swedish event.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI checked if there was a similar experiment. There was one, so perfect I actually ended up shooting it \u2013 it\u2019s one of the first scenes of the film. It\u2019s called \u2018the challenge of the disengaged mind\u2019. It was done in 2014. Scientists asked people to go into a room, alone, and do nothing from 7 to 15 minutes. People had a hard time coping with that. They felt stressed and restless; some compared it to torture. After only 15 minutes?!\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a fundamental human state: we don\u2019t like to do nothing. Then they added one thing: they gave people the option to push a button and give themselves an electric shock. Painful, but not harmful. Two-thirds of the men pushed the button of their own free will. One-fourth of the women did too.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe are harming ourselves and we know it, and we still push the button,\u201d he said.\u00a0Admitting that he also had given himself an electric shock as well. \u201cOne person pressed it 120 times.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHe wanted to make a film in only one setting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t want to be disrespectful, but there are very few movies set on planes that are any good. It\u2019s difficult to establish dynamics in a confined space like that. I said: \u2018I want to have the whole airplane.\u2019 We\u2019ve been working with my producer Erik Hemmendorff\u00a0for a long time, we knew we could get the financing, so we bought one: a Boeing 747. They are not super expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u00d6stlund presented the behind-the-scenes footage during his talk and explained how the se \u2013 and the VR version of it \u2013 t was built. Hector Apelgren, who moderated the event, got to experience it via a VR set \u2013 much to audience\u2019s delight.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe director also opened up about specific storylines. <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAirplane movies really don\u2019t use the fact that you are surrounded by so many people.\u00a0One man, Daniel Br\u00fchl, has his whole family there, but he falls asleep when the entertainment system breaks down. His wife, played by Kristen Dunst, is bored, and then she sees his phone. But he changed his code! She uses his face to unlock it, but his mouth is too open, and then finds out he has multiple affairs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe thought: Let\u2019s put them in a most painful place \u2013 in the middle of the ocean. And they have to deal with this conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI put a young pregnant woman next to them, and a Muslim family in front of them to reflect on a different culture and what it means to be a Western man and a woman,\u201d he added. He enjoys dealing with people\u2019s shame because he\u2019s dealing with his own shame, too.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThis is the human condition. I point fingers at everybody and at myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u00d6stlund also talked about some final scenes. (Warning: spoiler ahead)<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI didn\u2019t know how to end it. I will tell you the ending now, because I have no problem with spoilers. We were working with these VR glasses and the idea came up: Maybe one passenger is completely immersed in this world? I knew the plane should crash in the Pacific Ocean. These technical issues become worse and worse, because of the human factor, which is how crashes happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cKeanu Reeves is going to play an electrician, and then they tell him they can\u2019t steer the plane anymore. He doesn\u2019t want to be the hero, but he has to do the job. He\u2019s trying to fix it, but it still goes down. It takes 15 minutes for this plane to go down. And then he fixes the entertainment system \u2013 by accident. I thought it was a beautiful image.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tStill, there was one thing missing.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cMy wife said: \u2018What if you put a VR person next to them?\u2019 This guy, he misses out on everything. They have to wake him up during emergency landing but instead [of escaping], he looks around and decides to put them back on. And we follow him into that world. He\u2019s playing a game called \u2018Real VR Fishing\u2019. This way, because he\u2019s young, I could have an ending that talked about the future generation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHe summed it up: \u201cThere is a conflict between humans and technology, which is very connected to my films and to the times we live in today.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI\u2019m so curious what will happen when I\u2019ll do the first test screenings of this film,\u201d he said, admitting he\u2019ll decide in February if the film will bow at Cannes in 2026 or in 2027. <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s this challenging aspect of it. All the distributors are so nervous.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar nominee Ruben \u00d6stlund opened up about his upcoming seventh feature \u201cThe Entertainment System Is Down.\u201d It follows passengers on a long-haul flight who are suddenly forced to confront their boredom when the entertainment system fails, as advertised by the title.\u00a0 \u201cSometimes [the film] starts with a scene \u2013 like with \u2018Force Majeure\u2019 and that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2256812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[437017,350313,421806],"class_list":["post-2256811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-goteborg-film-festival","tag-ruben-ostlund","tag-the-entertainment-system-is-down"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Ruben-Ostlund-Teases-The-Entertainment-System-Is-Down-at-Goteborg.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2256811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2256813,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256811\/revisions\/2256813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2256812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2256811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2256811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2256811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}