Bugonia: Emma Stone Leads Venice Film Festival 2025 Premiere with Darkly Comic Sci-Fi Thriller
- Taylor Lynn
- Sep 2
- 3 min read
Yorgos Lanthimos Latest Film 'Bugonia' Blends Paranoia, and Satire at 82nd Venice Film Festival
The Venice Film Festival 2025 welcomed one of its most anticipated premieres with Bugonia, a surreal, darkly comic thriller directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and starring Emma Stone in a role that stretches her formidable range. The film continues the collaboration between Stone and Lanthimos, following the critical triumphs of The Favourite and Poor Things, pairing her once again with the Greek filmmaker’s sharp, unsettling storytelling.
Logline: Two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major corporation, convinced that she is secretly an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.
A Premise Rooted in Paranoia
Bugonia takes its title from an ancient Greco-Roman myth about bees spontaneously born from the carcass of a dead bull, which is an image that resonates with themes of rebirth, delusion, and the human search for meaning. In the film, the mythology underpins the outlandish beliefs of the two young men, whose spiraling paranoia fuels the plot.
The narrative begins at breakneck pace, dropping viewers straight into a world where conspiracy theories run rampant, feeding distrust in governments, corporations, and technology. When the protagonists set their sights on Stone’s character, a sleek and commanding CEO whose global influence makes her an easy target, they cross moral and psychological boundaries that blur reality and delusion.
Emma Stone’s Transformation
Emma Stone delivers a performance pitched between icy command and darkly comic vulnerability. As the supposed alien CEO, she embodies authority and menace while also destabilizing audience expectations: Is she truly otherworldly, or simply a woman demonized by male fear and paranoia? Her duality shapes the entire film, turning every scene into an unstable negotiation between truth and madness.
Lanthimos’ Signature Style
Lanthimos leans into absurdist tension and biting satire, crafting a tone that shifts rapidly between comedy, horror, and surreal allegory. Much like his earlier works, Bugonia traffics in uneasy laughter—viewers find themselves questioning not just the characters’ motives but also their own complicity in a world where disinformation thrives. The film’s claustrophobic settings, angular cinematography, and jarring bursts of violence magnify the sense of chaos.
Early Reception at Venice
Premiering to a packed house at Venice’s Palazzo del Cinema, Bugonia earned one of the festival’s most electrifying ovations. Critics praised Stone for bringing nuance and unpredictability to a role that could easily have tilted into caricature. Many also noted the film’s relevance in an age of rampant conspiracy theories, corporate distrust, and the erosion of truth in public life.
For Lanthimos, Bugonia marks yet another bold exploration of human fragility and societal absurdities—an allegory about paranoia that mirrors the hysteria of our times. Venice Film Festival 2025 The Venice International Film Festival, organized by La Biennale di Venezia and officially recognized by the FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers Associations), is the world’s oldest film festival, held annually on the Lido di Venezia. The festival’s goal is to raise awareness and promote international cinema in all its forms as art, entertainment, and industry, in a spirit of freedom and dialogue. The 82nd edition runs from August 27 to September 6, 2025, featuring world premieres, restorations, and a range of competitive and non-competitive sections that spotlight the finest achievements in global cinema.