“I’ve been developing this script for about eight years and at some point, it’s just ready and then the film kind of chooses you,” Edward Berger said when he stepped into Deadline’s Zurich Studio during the Zurich Film Festival.
The Conclave director admitted that he was ready to focus on something “very different” after that film. “Ballad feels very different to me, the script was ready and Colin [Farrell] was a big reason to do it,” he said. “But also suddenly it felt more urgent than ever to me. I felt like it’s a story that fits in its time and I wanted to tell that story right now.”
The film, which is written by Rowan Joffe, is Farrell’s first collaboration with Berger and the pair had been discussing the project for a number of years before it came to fruition. The project, which also stars Fala Chen and Tilda Swinton, sees Farrell play a reckless gambler who is running out of luck in Macau, the world’s gambling capital.
“It’s a real sensory overload,” said Berger about shooting in Macau. “I was so blown away. I just wanted to shoot everywhere.”
He added: “It’s a beautifully, visually rich city that we haven’t really seen on film – not much anyway in Western cinema.”
Berger said that working on live casino floors was a particular challenge for the production because they knew that if a high-rolling gambler wanted to come in and play while they were shooting, they would have to stop filming. “We only cost money, we don’t pay money – or not much – so when high rollers come on, you’re out. So, you have to be quite nimble and flexible.”
When pressed about the film’s soundtrack, which features big, bombastic music from composer Volker Bertelmann, Berger said inspiration “usually comes from actors or the story.”
“You watch Colin and you go ‘Wow, this needs this type of music’, because we want to score whatever is going on inside his stomach, same with camera or the production design – it’s all to support Colin’s performance.”
He continued: “We have a dark story. It’s a tale of addiction and a tale of redemption…where a man who is spiritually empty is in search of some kind of higher purpose or meaning in life and hopefully he does find it. But that is a dark story and I wasn’t really interested in telling a dark movie about a dark character, that’s why I called it pop opera because it also mirrors, first of all the place but also Colin Farrell, who plays an exuberant, flamboyant Irishman pretending to be a British Lord. That itself comes with a bit of fun and some pop, so that needed to find its way into the music, the production design, the camera and the entire feel of the film.”
Berger also teased his next project, A24 drama The Riders, which he is gearing up to shoot in February 2026. That project, which stars Brad Pitt, will shoot in Ireland, Greece, Brussels and Amsterdam.
“It’s a big odyssey for the character,” he said. “It takes place in the 1980s and Brad is the main character. He picks up his daughter from the airport, expecting his wife as well but she doesn’t show up. Deep down inside, he knowns something terrible has happened – something emotionally terrible – and he goes on the odyssey with his daughter to look for his wife. It’s a wonderfully, beautiful dissection of this character’s masculinity.”
Check out the video above.