Greek “Weird Wave” auteur Yorgos Lanthimos is a profoundly idiosyncratic filmmaker known for comedically bizarre and far-left-of-center films like “The Lobster” and “Dogtooth.” His 2018 period film, “The Favourite,” earned ten Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and Lanthimos is already plotting a follow-up with its Academy Award-winning star Emma Stone. Titled “Poor Things,” and co-starring actors like Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe, the film was shot late last summer, so there’s hope we’ll see the movie later this year somewhere on the film festival circuit. But the wait to see Lanthimos and Stone reunited will arrive much sooner than that, at least for lucky audiences in Greece.
Because before “Poor Things,” Stone will star in the already-shot short film, “Bleat” alongside distinguished French actor Damien Bonnard, known for the indie “Thirst Street” and recent smaller roles in “The French Dispatch” and “Dunkirk.” Formerly titled “Vlichi,” also known as “Bêlement,” the project was made for the National Greek Opera and the Greek NEON Culture and Development Organization (neon.org.gr).
According to Filmogia.com, “Bleat” is a comedy and was shot on the Greek island of Tinos in February 2020. The film’s soundtrack consists of works by J. S. Bach, Knut Nystedt, and Toshio Hosokawa,
“Bleat” will make its world premiere, accompanied by live orchestral ensembles, on May 6, 2022, inside the Stavros Niarchos Hall of the National Greek Opera, according to a recent NewsBulletin post (“Bleat” will also screen May 7 and 8).
As mentioned, Lanthimos’ next full-length feature is “Poor Things,” which co-stars Jerrod Carmichael, Margaret Qualley, Christopher Abbott and centers on a drowned woman who has her brain replaced with the brain of her unborn child by her father. Fingers crossed on a Cannes debut, but maybe the fall would make more sense given the time constraints and the “Bleat” short film that had to be finished first.
Watch the first trailer below, which doesn’t tell you much, other than a quick shot of Stone walking in a shawl on a windswept Greek Island, but as the title suggests, it does feature a goat.