Venice Film Festival heats up with George Clooney and Emma Stone premieres

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos's new film "Bugonia," which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, presents a "funny" vision of the contemporary world, its star Emma Stone said on Thursday.

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Lanthimos and Stone have become one of the strongest director-actor duos in the movie industry and last joined forces in Venice in 2003 with their hit "Poor Things," which won the main Golden Lion award, as well as four Oscars. Their new film is a dark, comic thriller that offers a savage vision of our age of paranoia, delusion and decay. "I think it is reflective of this point in time in our world, and is told in a way that I found really fascinating and moving, funny and fucked-up and alive," Stone told reporters.

The thriller follows two conspiracy-driven cousins, played by Jesse Plemons and newcomer Aidan Delbis, who kidnap a powerful pharmaceutical CEO, portrayed by Stone, convinced she is an alien plotting humanity's destruction. As bizarre as the plot sounds, Lanthimos said his film was not a tale of a dystopian future but rather a mirror of present-day disconnection and disaster. "Unfortunately, not much of the dystopia in this film is very fictional," Lanthimos said.