“The Phoenician Scheme”, interview with actors Mia Threapleton, Riz Ahmed and Richard Ayoade

1950. Anatole “Zsa-zsa” Korda (Benicio del Toro), enigmatic industrialist, one of the richest men in Europe, survives another attempt on his life (his sixth plane crash). Korda's wide-ranging, wildly complex, and ruthless business practices have made him an enemy to not just rival enterprises but also governments of every ideology across the globe -- and a target for assassins. Now he is in the final stages of a decades-long, career-defining project (Korda Land and Sea Phoenician Infrastructure Scheme), the expansive exploitation of a potentially-rich/long-dormant region. The risk to his personal capital has become incalculable. The threats to his life are ongoing. He chooses this moment to appoint and prepare a successor: his twenty-year-old estranged daughter Liesl (currently, a nun). With personal tutor Bjorn (Michael Cera) in tow, Zsa-zsa and Liesl sweep across Modern Greater Independent Phoenicia meeting their assorted partners on a mission to close The Gap (a rapidly expanding financial shortfall) which Zsa-zsa quantifies as: "Everything we got -- plus a little bit more."Along the way: Liesl investigates the unsolved murder, a decade earlier, of Zsa-zsa's first wife (her mother). In Zsa-zsa Korda, Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, and (especially) Benicio del Toro create an instantly iconic antihero. Inscrutable, compelling, worldly, and completely singular in Wes Anderson’s world. Del Toro's dominating, magnetic presence, on screen in nearly every scene, delivers a character for the ages. Exhilarating and hilarious, a work of pure pleasure, but also strikingly moving as a father and daughter find each other. Starring Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, and Michael Cera. The amazing ensemble cast also features Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright, and Scarlett
Johansson; plus Richard Ayoade as a helpful freedom fighter, Benedict Cumberbatch as Zsa- zsa's mysterious half-brother Nubar, Rupert Friend as the shadowy agent "Excalibur", and Hope Davis as Liesl's Mother Superior.