{"id":606432,"date":"2026-08-27T18:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T18:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/606432\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T18:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T18:02:09","slug":"bunker-director-florian-zeller-on-casting-penelope-cruz-javier-bardem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/606432\/","title":{"rendered":"Bunker Director Florian Zeller on Casting Pen\u00e9lope Cruz, Javier Bardem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen he set out to make his third film, \u201cBunker<\/a>,\u201d about a slow-burning conflict between two married people who have grown apart, Oscar-winning French director Florian Zeller<\/a> had Stanley Kubrick\u2019s \u201cEyes Wide Shut\u201d in mind.<\/p>\n

\n\tLike Kubrick, who cast then-married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as a couple whose relationship is unraveling, Zeller wanted to exploit the permeability between fiction and reality by putting Pen\u00e9lope Cruz and Javier Bardem \u2014 partners for nearly two decades \u2014 on-screen as husband and wife. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI loved \u2018Eyes Wide Shut,\u2019 this ambivalent proposition presented to the audience where you\u2019re not quite sure what you\u2019re being invited to watch,\u201d Zeller says. With Cruz and Bardem, he says, he wanted to use \u201cwhat they are to touch on something more authentic and more unsettling for the audience.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIs it fiction? Is it another version of fiction? Where is the line between reality and fiction?\u201d With Cruz and Bardem, he says, he wanted to use \u201cwhat they are, in the noblest sense of the term, to touch on something more authentic and more unsettling for the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, the prospect of bringing Cruz and Bardem together on screen came before the story. Zeller says he began \u201cdaydreaming about the idea of seeing them together on screen,\u201d rather than writing two characters and then wondering who might play them. Although the actors had appeared together before, Zeller was intrigued that they had never played a married couple. \u201cThat permeability between reality and fiction seemed to me a truly fascinating project,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tNursing sparkling water at Paris\u2019 posh Royal Monceau hotel,\u00a0Zeller\u00a0is discussing \u201cBunker\u201d for the first time, and there is plenty riding on the film. It marks his return to directing four years after \u201cThe Son\u201d and it\u2019s also his comeback to Venice, where that film received a far cooler reception than \u201cThe Father\u201d which had opened at Sundance and went on to win two Oscars (for actor Anthony Hopkins and screenplay shared by Zeller and Christopher Hampton). Both films were based on successful stage productions. <\/p>\n

\n\tSo \u201cBunker\u201d represents a reset. It\u2019s Zeller\u2019s first solo screenplay, written for Cruz and Bardem, and a film that feels personal, yet broadens Zeller\u2019s canvas beyond the intimate family dramas of his past two features. It\u2019s also the first film he\u2019s produced, with Federica Sainte-Rose, through his Mediawan-owned vehicle Blue Morning Pictures. <\/p>\n

\n\tZeller, whom I\u2019ve interviewed several times in recent years, is usually inquisitive, peppering me with thoughtful questions about my professional life and my son. This time, he seems more reserved, even nervous, as we sit down. Looking casually chic in a navy blue Zegna cotton jacket over a blue tee shirt, he speaks French with unusual precision and at one point stops to apologize for what he considers a meandering response: \u201cI\u2019m answering in a roundabout way \u2014 forgive me. I haven\u2019t slept much, so it\u2019s a little difficult.\u201d The apology is almost comical \u2014 even when Zeller thinks he is speaking in zigzags, his answers are lucid, each digression eventually finding its way back to the point.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd he does warm up. Somewhere around the midpoint of our conversation, he begins discreetly snacking on cashews, and the guardedness falls away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBunker\u201d arrives during an unusually busy year for Cruz, who stars in Olivia Wilde\u2019s \u201cThe Invite\u201d and has a cameo in \u201cLa Bola Negra,\u201d the Cannes prize-winning film that Netflix acquired in May. But it\u2019s her leading turn in Zeller\u2019s film \u2014 as a wife whose growing disillusionment becomes the story\u2019s emotional core \u2014 that could put her firmly in contention for a best actress Oscar.\u00a0Sony Pictures Classics, which worked with Zeller on his first two films, acquired \u201cBunker\u201d for North America and is likely betting that Bardem and Cruz\u2019s explosive performances will propel the film in the awards conversation, in multiple categories, following its run at Venice and Toronto. SPC previously campaigned for \u201cThe Father\u201d which scored six Oscar nominations, including best picture, in 2020. <\/p>\n

\n\tBardem plays Miguel, a celebrated architect tempted by a morally dubious but hugely lucrative commission to build a secret survivalist bunker for a reclusive tech billionaire, Andrew (Paul Dano). That leads his wife, the more idealistic Sofia (Cruz), to question her husband\u2019s values and the foundations of their 17-year marriage.<\/p>\n

\n\tLike Miguel, Zeller knows something about reaching a point of professional success and wondering where ambition should take you next. Now 47, the Paris-born Sciences Po graduate was a celebrated novelist and playwright when he leaped into filmmaking. His plays, translated by Christopher Hampton, have won Tony and Olivier awards for stars including Frank Langella and Kenneth Cranham.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRudy Waks<\/p>\n

\n\tHe jokes that the most incongruous offer to come his way arrived after \u201cThe Father\u201d screened at Sundance. His agent told him a major studio wanted him for a huge project.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was the story of a man who lost his dog. It was adapted from a book that was said to have moved every dog owner. And I\u2019m allergic to dogs. And in the story, the dog talked,\u201d Zeller says, laughing. \u201cIt was hard to imagine anything further removed from me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe turned it down. For Zeller, who writes his own films, directing has to begin with something that feels personal, even when the story draws on outside sources. He says he has never been tempted to direct a film he didn\u2019t write.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe dog story has an echo in \u201cBunker.\u201d Miguel recalls how Sofia fell for him on their first date after mistaking his allergy-induced tears \u2014 caused by her cat \u2014 for an emotional response to what she was telling him. When I ask Zeller whether the scene came from personal experience, he laughs. \u201cIt\u2019s a story that resembles my story,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the story of \u201cBunker,\u201d which was inspired by the 2009 movie \u201cThe Man Next Door,\u201d soon grew beyond the central couple. While \u201cBunker\u201d retains the psychological intensity that has become Zeller\u2019s signature, it is also more overtly political than his previous work, looking at how socioeconomic anxieties shape relationships and family dynamics.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt takes a look at the contemporary world and explores all these modern fears \u2014 about rampant individualism, fear of the future and environmental issues, the intensification of social injustice, and so on,\u201d Zeller says. \u201cBut rather than simply being a commentary on the world, it\u2019s an experience seen through the eyes of a couple.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the inspirations for the film came from an article Zeller read about how Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg was building a vast underground survival bunker for 30 people in Hawaii. \u201cI was fascinated by this story. This man had made his fortune connecting people with one another, yet at the same time was preparing a plan B to completely cut himself off from the rest of humanity,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe anecdote became, for Zeller, a metaphor for our era. \u201cIt addressed a political issue \u2014 namely, the folly of extreme wealth, which consists in believing that it can protect us from everything, that we can buy time, health and security.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat tension also shaped the film\u2019s visual language. Rather than shooting on location in London, Zeller built Miguel and Sofia\u2019s modern home in a studio in Madrid (where Cruz and Bardem live with their children). \u201cI wanted to build a house that would allow me to work on the viewer\u2019s perception,\u201d he says. \u201cAt first, you think it\u2019s a very open house with lots of glass. But the further you get into the story, the more it begins to resemble a bunker.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe studio became its own psychological experiment. \u201cWe experienced that bunker ourselves, in a studio without any light for several weeks,\u201d Zeller says, describing how the environment pushed the cast and crew toward the same sense of isolation and paranoia that permeates the film.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat meticulous approach extends to details viewers probably wouldn\u2019t register. Zeller describes filmmaking as composing \u201ca set of codes\u201d that are not immediately perceptible to the audience but quietly work to create meaning and poetry. Color, objects, books, costumes and music all become part of that hidden architecture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tReferences to \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d for instance, run throughout the film, from a sculpture of Odysseus in Miguel\u2019s office to Sofia reading Milan Kundera\u2019s \u201cIgnorance,\u201d another story of homecoming. When Miguel is being seduced by the bunker project, Zeller and composer Volker Bertelmann even weave voices resembling the Sirens into the score. \u201cIt\u2019s through poetic codes like these that you create a universe,\u201d Zeller says, \u201cand I think that\u2019s what is most powerful about a film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe attention to detail extended to his cast. Because Andrew and Miguel never meet in person in the film, Zeller ensured that Dano and Bardem never crossed paths during production.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe never see Paul Dano in full because he\u2019s on a screen. I remember there were long discussions about what shoes he should wear. Something about the shoes was going to inform his character,\u201d says Zeller, adding that Dano was able to create an \u201carchetypal tech billionaire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother secondary, yet crucial role in the film is Miguel\u2019s neighbor, which Zeller says he wrote specifically for Stephen Graham, the British actor and co-creator of \u201cAdolescence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s the story of a neighbor who instills fear in Javier Bardem,\u201d Zeller says. \u201cUsually, it\u2019s Javier Bardem who scares others.\u201d And although physically much smaller than Bardem, Graham possessed what Zeller calls both \u201ca menacing power\u201d and \u201can incredible humanity,\u201d making him the perfect foil.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe backbone of \u201cBunker,\u201d however, is Cruz and Bardem. Cruz was the first to read the screenplay, and before agreeing to star, she asked Zeller if he would still offer her the role if Bardem turned him down. \u201cI understood that this was really very important to them \u2014 to always be seen as independent artists,\u201d the director says. But had either actor declined, Zeller adds, he probably would not have made the movie at all. \u201cThe DNA of the film was the fact that it was them and the fact that they were a real couple.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tZeller was particularly interested in stripping away some of the distance Bardem often creates between himself and his roles. \u201cJavier has played characters who are sometimes very, very far removed from who he is, and he does that incredibly well,\u201d Zeller says. \u201cBut here, what interested me was trying to move silently closer to them \u2014 not toward their biographical truth, but toward the truth of their emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although \u201cBunker\u201d isn\u2019t sexually charged, Zeller says the ambiguity surrounding Sofia\u2019s relationship with an American writer played by Patrick Schwarzenegger, who auditioned for the part in London, was far more interesting than a conventional affair.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could have been a story about infidelity\u2026 But that story has already been told a thousand times. Here, it\u2019s a deeper, more subtle destabilization within a couple. It\u2019s the type of encounter that throws us off course, and we\u2019re no longer quite sure who we are or what we think,\u201d Zeller says.<\/p>\n

The uncertainty even prompted Cruz to press him for answers. \u201cShe said to me, \u2018I need you to tell me \u2014 what happened between them?\u2019 And Javier was standing right there, saying, \u2018I don\u2019t want to hear it. I don\u2019t want to hear it!\u2019 So she whispered in my ear what she thought had happened between them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn some level, the story of this couple facing a reckoning also mirrored Zeller\u2019s own life. He wrote the script after spending two years in Los Angeles with his wife, the French actress Marine Delterme, and their 14-year-old son. \u201cLos Angeles was a lot of fun. But at some point, there wasn\u2019t much room for her to thrive, and I had to ask myself: What are my priorities? What matters most to me?\u201d he says. \u201cWe came back to France so that she could continue to build her own professional life. From that perspective, the movie tells a similar story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe script\u2019s political dimension also struck a chord with Cruz and Bardem, both activists. Cruz strongly identified with Sofia\u2019s anger toward the tech billionaire at the center of the story. \u201cFor Pen\u00e9lope, those scenes came fairly easily, because she could really relate to her. She has a genuine anger toward the world embodied by these new masters, the tech billionaires. In fact, for her, there was an opportunity to express a rage that is her own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor all the political anxieties running through \u201cBunker,\u201d Zeller says the essence of the story is hopeful. \u201cIt\u2019s not about solving the problems of the modern world but figuring out how to find one\u2019s place as a family or as a couple in that world,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s what allowed my actors to really go all in, especially during the disputes, and to dare to say things to each other that were sometimes incredibly harsh, because they both knew that the destination was reconciliation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When he set out to make his third film, \u201cBunker,\u201d about a slow-burning conflict between two married people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[171762,321,93,257054,61,60,802],"class_list":["post-606432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-bunker","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-florian-zeller","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-venice-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}