BUGONIA: A SINGULAR UNIVERSE BY LANTHIMOS
VENICE, AUGUST 2025
By Burcu Beaufort
Following his 2023 Golden Lion win for Poor Things, Oscar-winning director Yorgos Lanthimos returns with a delightfully bizarre sci-fi black comedy Bugonia, which proves itself a worthy successor to his previous work and becomes an immediate must-see.
The rather unknown word Bugonia (meaning “ox birth”) is of Greek origin and refers to a violent medieval ritual based on the belief that bees could emerge from a dead ox, helping beekeepers recover from the loss of their honey bees.
Image courtesy of Focus Features
Once again, Lanthimos reunites with his muse and fellow Oscar winner Emma Stone, who portrays Michelle Fuller, the ice-cold CEO of a major pharmaceutical company. The actress-director duo is joined by Jesse Plemons, who disappears brilliantly into his role as Teddy, a beekeeper particularly troubled by the decline of the honeybee population. He also carries a radical skepticism toward almost everything, fueled by his very own deep-dive internet research. Also in the cast is Aidan Delbis, an actor on the autism spectrum, who plays Teddy’s cousin Don; the two live together in Teddy’s remote childhood home somewhere in America.
Scene by scene, we face more of Teddy’s suspicions and his own narrative of his family’s fate and the state of Earth. Each time, we are more convinced that this man is not a mere oddball but a conspiracy-driven nutjob. This conviction is sealed when Teddy and Don kidnap Michelle, in full belief that she is an alien sent to destroy the world.
Teddy’s past unfolds slowly throughout the film, revealing the tortured soul behind this antihero, driven by an almost indestructible faith that he can heal his mother and, ambitiously, the world too Jesse Plemons delivers an incredibly strong performance, sure to generate awards buzz.
The film’s intensity rides on the mind games between Michelle and Teddy, almost like a high-stakes chess match of conviction, doubt, and psychological maneuvering, with a hilariously ruthless abuse of so-called nonviolent communication techniques by the hyper-polished corporate CEO Michelle. It is precisely this ambiguity between truth and conspiracy that makes Will Tracy’s screenplay brilliant whose previous work includes the TV series Succession.
Image courtesy of Focus Features
Co-produced by Ari Aster, whose own movie Eddington deals with a similar dilemma around truth and unfortunately landed low on Cannes’ official Screengrid ranking, Bugonia has already secured its place among the best films of the festival and the year.
This is one of the rare movies where Lanthimos was not involved from the very beginning, but instead worked with an already developed script. The film is a remake of the Korean cult movie Save the Green Planet!, an international hit back in 2003. However, none of the cast members watched the Korean version in order to approach their characters freely. Screenwriter Will Tracy said he watched the original “only once” to give himself the same creative freedom.
The director clearly states that his movie is not dystopian at all; rather, it reflects our world in its current state and is meant to provoke honest reflection. As the film closes, we hear Marlene Dietrich singing Where Have All the Flowers Gone—long time passing, when will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?