Greece Thessaloniki The Film Festival ends this afternoon with the screening of The endthe latest feature film from the enigmatic filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer.

Best known for his intellectually rich and Oscar-nominated nonfiction works. The act of killing (2012) and The look of silence (2014), Oppenheimer’s latest is his first fiction project, and for it he has recruited one of the most impressive casts of the year. The protagonists are the Oscar winner Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton)Oscar nominee Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Path)BAFTA-nominated George Mackay (1917)and Emmy nominee Moses Ingram (The Queen’s Gambit).

Designed as a Golden Age Hollywood musical, The end is set in a post-apocalyptic world twenty-five years after environmental collapse left the Earth uninhabitable. A biological family and their companions (part found family, part hired help) live harmoniously in an underground bunker. But the arrival of a stranger breaks the synthetic veil of their strictly organized world. The struggle that continues to keep their lives uniform in the bunker uncovers secrets and anxieties that tie them inextricably to the world they have tried so hard to stop believing.

“The end “It’s really about how important it is to have the most inclusive and broadly defined human family and our interconnectedness with each other,” Oppenheimer explained of the photograph, which will be released in the US by Neon, from a hotel room in Thessaloniki.

In the conversation below, we further discuss the process of making The endhow the film’s financing was achieved through public funds in Europe, Oppenheimer’s extensive research for the film, which included guided tours of real-life billionaires’ bunkers, and the context of the release of a post-apocalyptic film with a second incoming Trump presidency.

DEADLINE: I saw your film in San Sebastián, which is a great festival. And it was one of the best screenings I’ve attended in a long time. The crowd there is very engaged and they really vibed with the movie. You could feel the excitement in the room.

JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER: That’s so cute. I’m glad because I know some people really love the movie and some people really don’t like it, which is maybe a good thing. Also with this film I have only experienced positive projections. But I remember the projections of The act of killing where entire rows would simply walk away. It would be like that was the third row.

DEADLINE: That’s surprising. I remember watching The Act Of Killing and it was very important for my generation of film friends. It was shown in London at the ICA for about a year. I didn’t realize it was a polarizing film. Does that reaction bother you?

OPPENHEIMER: I don’t think much about it. I have to think about what I need for the project. I went through this editing and post-production process feeling pretty clear about the film and I have a lot of love for it. He’s like a child. If anyone loves the child, I am delighted. But if they don’t, it doesn’t bother me.

DEADLINE: Are you based in Copenhagen?

OPPENHEIMER: In fact, I live in Malmö, just across the bridge from Copenhagen. But that’s only since the last few years. For much of that period I was filming and editing, most of which took place in Copenhagen and Germany.

DEADLINE: Do you consider yourself a European filmmaker? Because this movie feels very European.

OPPENHEIMER: I’m curious what you mean by that. It’s definitely an American story and it’s set somewhere in America. It’s like the entire American hegemony has imploded and this is the last underground black hole and we hear this music of denial. It’s also American in part because the genre is American. We’re not the only country that has deceptive and false forms of hope, but we’re pretty good at it. We do it better or should I say worse than anyone else. But at the same time I consider myself a European. I have British and Danish citizenship and have lived my entire adult life outside the United States. Parts of my family came from Germany and Austria. I would also say The end It’s really about how important it is to have the most inclusive and broadly defined human family and our interconnectedness with each other. When you keep people out, you are also committing an act of self-harm. The end It is a plea in favor of the public sphere.

It is a miracle that this was done. This is a musical with live singing filmed largely in a salt mine. With the current economy of the film industry, this film only exists thanks to European funding.

DEADLINE: Yes, I think what I meant was that viewing this film in a Hollywood context comes with important aesthetic and narrative concessions.

OPPENHEIMER: Yes, what you mean is important. I remember Michael Shannon saying to me at one point during production, when we were struggling to get something done, ‘I know we’re going to get it because you’re as stubborn as a mule.’ And it’s true. I’d rather bite my own arm off than commit to anything aesthetically, ethically, and narratively meaningful. Therefore, I don’t think I would work very well in a system where I don’t have the final cut and that’s the beauty of the European system, particularly in Denmark, where it is enshrined in Danish film law that the director has final control. cut in all projects supported by the Danish Film Institute. And Neon really couldn’t have been a more supportive and passionate partner.

DEADLINE: When I watch a movie I find interesting, I rarely think about the craftsmanship. But when I finished The End I couldn’t help but be surprised by how difficult it must have been to execute many of the things we see on screen. How did you work in those spaces?

OPPENHEIMER: We were all out of our comfort zone. This is my first narrative film. Excluding Michael, who is in a band, and Bronagh, who is a rock star in Ireland, this is not a cast of singers. Those long individual takes of big ensemble songs just required the stars to align, and sometimes it took many takes before you got there. It was very nutritious and energizing. There was immense pressure on everyone in those long takes and in those ensemble songs, but it created a sense of family and solidarity that was profound at the same time.

DEADLINE: I read that you did a lot of research on billionaire bunkers. What did you find? And where did you look?

OPPENHEIMER: This story arose from research because I wanted to make a third film in Indonesia with the oligarchs who came to power through genocide and got rich by exploiting an audience that was still terrified of them. But after The Act of Killing was published, I couldn’t return to Indonesia. So I started researching oligarchs who had created economically analogous situations. There was an oil tycoon from other parts of Asia who had been involved in significant political violence to secure his investments. I had this obsession with wanting to live forever. So he was investing his money in all these life-prolonging cures and research and part of his immortality project was to buy a bunker for his family. We went and visited this bunker. It wasn’t finished yet. It was a former Soviet command bunker in Eastern Europe. But they were planning many of the same features you see in The End, like an old wine cellar and an art vault. I found myself wanting to ask questions that I knew, given my relationship with this family, would be too provocative.

I left thinking that the movie I would really love to make with this family would be in this bunker 25 years after they moved there. I realized I wasn’t going to do that. So, on the flight home to get away from this experience for a bit, I watched The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, one of my favorite movies, on my laptop. After that, I knew what I was going to do. I would make a narrative film and it would be a musical. I visited Kansas, where these early underground nuclear missile storage silos have been transformed to create underground skyscrapers. They sold entire silos to the Saudi royal family and their entourage, but they also sold individual apartments and then built a kind of condominium community.

DEADLINE: This film will be released during a new Trump presidency. I suppose the film almost predicts much of the isolationism it preaches. Do you feel nihilistic about the future?

OPPENHEIMER: I never feel nihilistic. I’m a little anxious about releasing any film because my films will always be political and ethical reflections on what it means to be human and to release anything right now at a time when I’m terrified of what will replace the era of bourgeois democracy, and I say bourgeois democracy because it has been far from perfect, and especially American democracy, which I’m not even sure is democracy. But what Trump will try and what he will replace it with is not at all hopeful. Most of the writings on The end It happened when Trump was president and then Biden came along and there was a lot of refining and rewriting. We will now release the film during another Trump term. The film feels like home in a way I hadn’t thought of.

I hoped and worked desperately to avoid this electoral result: telephone banking from Europe. You said: Do I feel nihilistic? This film is about two forms of hope. There is the false hope that prevails in the story and that the family carries about how everything will be okay and therefore we can bury our heads in the sand and not look at our past and not look at the disastrous course we are on and just wait. for the best. Actually, that’s no hope. That’s desperation. Actually, that is nihilism. But true hope is the idea that if we come together and find our deepest humanity through solidarity and collaboration, we can discover the power of our voices through collective action and resistance when necessary. If we do so with a clear vision of the problems we are trying to overcome and with the greatest possible love for our fellow human beings and for this life-sustaining planet throughout our lives, we can change things for the better. It may be too late for the family in The end, but it’s not too late for us yet.