At the 78th Festival de Cannes, Ari Aster unveiled his latest film Eddington, a darkly comic and thematically urgent story set in a fictional small town in Oregon during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Premiering in Competition, the film is Aster’s most politically charged and narratively sprawling work, anchored by a formidable cast including Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, and Austin Butler.
A Town Divided
Eddington takes place in late May 2020, in a town of just over 2,400 people. Life under lockdown has deepened already festering divisions. When Sheriff Joe (Joaquin Phoenix), a belligerent, deeply conservative figure, refuses to enforce the state-mandated mask requirements, he comes into conflict with Ted (Pedro Pascal), the town’s popular mayor, who insists that “no one is above the law.”
There’s personal tension too: Joe, now married to Louise (Emma Stone), a fragile and withdrawn artist, has never emotionally disentangled himself from her past relationship with Ted. His refusal to follow pandemic guidelines spirals into political rebellion when he announces his own candidacy for mayor.
During the film’s Cannes press conference, Ari Aster explained that the project emerged from “a state of fear and anxiety about the world.” He continued, “I wanted to make a film about what America feels like to me — and it felt bad.” That feeling, he said, was inseparable from the time it was set: “That sense of isolation, of being cut off from the people around you… of people screaming at each other on the internet, in total disagreement about what’s real — that was the air we were all breathing.”
A Story of Algorithmic Madness and Historical Amnesia
Though the film takes place in 2020, it operates on a kind of surreal logic, blending realism, paranoia, and dreamlike imagery. Aster explained that the town of Eddington is less a literal place than a metaphor for the “algorithmic siloing and information warfare” of American culture.
“We’re haunted by history,” Aster said. “And we use history selectively — we weaponize it to support our own narrative. There’s no longer a shared story about what this country is or was.”
The film contains a striking sequence in which a character watches John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln, a moment Aster described as “a very idyllic dream of America” — a contrast to the chaotic and tribalized reality inhabited by the characters in Eddington.
Pedro Pascal, whose mayoral character is at the center of this ideological and emotional storm, called the script “all of my worst fears realized.” He added: “The truthfulness of every perspective in the film is what makes it so devastating. Everyone is right, and everyone is lost.”
Pascal also reflected on the film’s political resonance, noting, “My family escaped a dictatorship… and I want very much to live on the right side of history.”
The Characters: Ghosts, Symbols, and Extremes
Emma Stone described Louise as a woman “lost in trauma” and “a ghost in her own life.” Her role, she said, required deep vulnerability: “I related to her sense of detachment-of being surrounded by noise and fear, and just sinking into it.”
Joaquin Phoenix, known for his psychologically complex performances, portrayed Joe as a man driven by insecurity and isolation. “He’s someone who’s desperately seeking validation and connection,” Phoenix explained. “I have a lot of love for the character because of that. His sense of powerlessness makes him dangerous.”
Austin Butler, who plays Vernon — a mysterious drifter described his experience working with Aster as freeing: “From our first conversations, I knew we were entering a surreal space. I just took that and ran with it.”
Aster added that Vernon is “the embodiment of the internet — he contains every contradiction.”
Luke Grimes confessed: “I never felt like I knew what I was doing less than on this movie… but I think that was the point. My job in the film was to be lost.”
Behind the Lens: A Visual Language of Disorientation
Shot by renowned cinematographer Darius Khondji, Eddington is visually dense and immersive. Aster spoke of the collaboration with deep admiration: “Darius understood immediately the visual language I was reaching for — something bleak, but also lyrical. It was an effortless, easy collaboration.”
Khondji’s camerawork captures the physical claustrophobia of lockdown and the psychological fragmentation of the town’s residents. The palette is muted, the camera often floats — observing characters as if through a fog of confusion and suppressed rage.
A Fragmented Truth for a Fragmented Time
While Eddington is grounded in a very specific historical moment — the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic — Aster emphasized that the film is not about the pandemic per se. Rather, it’s about what the moment revealed: “The truth isn’t shared anymore. People live in different realities. Every character in this film has their own America.”
That multiplicity of perspective is central to the film’s ambition — and its danger. Pascal summed it up during the press conference: “This movie doesn’t let anyone off the hook.”
A Despairing, Necessary Mirror
With Eddington, Aster has created a film that is less horror in the traditional sense and more a cultural psychodrama — an allegory of a society coming apart at the seams. It is angry, elegiac, and at times darkly funny. But most of all, it is deeply sad.
“We need to re-engage with each other,” Aster said at the close of the press conference, “but that starts with looking at where we are, honestly. This film tries to do that.”
