David Cronenberg Says Americans Are “Completely Insane” For Mainstreamed Alt-Right Politics & “All Art Is Political”

Chloe Okuno’s feature debut Watcher recorded the biggest opening weekend grosses ever for IFC Films and its IFC Midnight/Shudder label on 764 U.S. screens — also one of the distributor’s widest ever releases.

After the “Twilight” movie series culminated in November 2012 with “Breaking Dawn – Part 2,” co-stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson worked hard to leave their teen-romance roles behind. And they’ve been highly successful at it for the past ten years.

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson.The iconic director, who recently worked with Kristen Stewart on Crimes of the Future and had previously cast Robert Pattinson in Cosmopolis, has opened up about working with both actors together.“It was Robert who actually introduced me to Kristen,” Cronenberg told World of Reel.“They have developed beautifully, separately, as actors. Making arthouse movies and successfully carrying that off. Kristen and I had a great time and Rob and I had a great time.”On both Twilight actors and a potential forthcoming project, Cronenberg added: “For me, yeah, I can definitely think of a movie, or idea, that would be great to have them both together.“I don’t want to get into it because it wouldn’t be my next movie, however, it might be problematic since fans might expect a certain kind of relationship and that would get in the way of creating new characters for them.

David Cronenberg’s latest deep dive into body horror, “Crimes Of The Future,” had its world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this week (read our review here). And it looks like the Canadian auteur’s first film since 2014’s “Maps To The Stars” is another extreme offering.

Neon has acquired North American rights to Ruben Östlund’s buzzy satire, Triangle of Sadness, following its world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

Cannes debut yesterday (May 23), during which a number of viewers reportedly walked out – some of them within the first five minutes.The film stars Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux as performance artists who grow and remove organs onstage before a live audience, and contains a number of gory scenes.According to IGN, the film’s opening scene, in which a young boy is killed by his mother, prompted the majority of walkouts, with another scene involving Seydoux and an open wound leading to many others.Despite this, however, Deadline reports that the film still received a six minute standing ovation after credits rolled.“I’m speechless, really — this is the first time I’ve seen this movie on a screen this big,” Cronenberg said in a brief speech, “I’m very touched by your response. I hope you’re not kidding, I hope you mean it.

At a press conference for his new film “Crimes of the Future” at the Cannes Film Festival, Canadian director David Cronenberg was asked about the film’s politics and the abortion debate in America.

In David Cronenberg’s latest genre twister, Crimes of the Future, Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux plays partners who are performance artists, engrossed in performing surgery (largely on the former) for public nightclub spectacle. They’re enthralled with the freedom they can take on each other’s bodies. All of this in a governing society that’s not too fond of it.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film WriterDavid Cronenberg attended the Cannes press conference for his film “Crimes of the Future” and called the United States “completely insane” for potentially overturning Roe v. Wade, which has kept basic abortion rights legal since its 1973 ruling. The director’s new film, which is a return to his body horror roots, addresses “who owns who’s body,” Cronenberg said.“I did write [the script] 20 years ago but you could feel, even then, that this was coming,” Cronenberg said.

David Cronenberg has unfinished business with the future, which is tricky, seeing as it already constitutes a significant slice of his past. His new film — titled “Crimes of the Future,” as in committed by rather than during that span of time — finds the master on the other side of his extended sojourn in high-minded literary adaptation, biopic quasi-prestige, and Tinseltown satire, back to playing the body-horror hits on which he made his name.

Just when his fans may have figured that David Cronenberg had called it a career (he’s now 79 and hadn’t made a feature since the misfired Maps to the Stars in 2014), along comes a film that only the Canadian maestro of the perverse could have created.

There’s a lot of weird fetishes in this world, which we won’t go into, but for David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, the new sex is surgery.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticMost filmmakers who want to unsettle you in a horror movie will reach for a familiar set of tools: slashers, demons, shock cuts, soundtracks that go boom! in the night. But in “Crimes of the Future,” the writer-director David Cronenberg is out to provoke and disturb us with something far more traumatic than mere monsters.Am I talking about the fact that in the distant future where the film is set, human beings grow mysterious new organs in their bodies? Or that having those organs removed through surgery has become, for a creepy rebel aesthete named Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), a species of performance art? Or that people no longer experience physical pain, and will therefore stand in the street late at night cutting each other for cheap thrills, as if they were shooting heroin in a back alley? Or that surgery itself, as someone puts it, has become “the new sex”? If you see “Crimes of the Future,” you’ll witness all of these outrages, and a few more besides.

“Crimes of the Future” will be David Cronenberg’s final film — never believe a director who says they’re quitting — but it definitely feels like a closing argument, one that both reaffirms the filmmaker’s favorite themes and stylistic choices while also reflecting a shift in his point of view.We’ve been here before with Cronenberg; his 1999 “Existenz” also had the feel of a greatest-hits collection. But for audiences starved for brash choices from one of the cinema’s boldest living provocateurs, even a rehash seems fresher than corporate-assembled, focus-group-approved content.Should this be the Canadian auteur’s final feature, he won’t be leaving on a high note: “Crimes of the Future” won’t be remembered alongside masterpieces like “Dead Ringers,” “The Fly,” “The Brood,” or “Crash.” Nonetheless, as a writer-director, Cronenberg continues to plumb his obsessions, both narrative and visual, and he brings enough energy and bravado to the mix to make this an oft-told story that he’s recounting as though for the first time.Borrowing the title (but little else) from one of his earliest films, “Crimes of the Future” takes place in a near-future dystopia where pain has become a thing of the past and surgery is both a hot trend and the source of a new brand of performance art.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentSony Pictures Classics has nabbed “One Fine Morning,” Mia Hansen-Love’s critically acclaimed drama starring Lea Seydoux at Cannes on the heels of its world premiere at Directors’ Fortnight. Les Films du Losange, the indie film powerhouse, has now sold the film in 50 territories.The deal is for North American, Latin American and Middle East rights to the film.

Body horror king David Cronenberg is back with his erotic sci-fi thriller “Crimes of The Future.” The next screens at the Cannes Film Festival soon and NEON releases it domestically on June 8. And while Cronenberg gets a lot of credit for his own work that made it on the big screen, there are a handful of popular sci-fi projects that Cronenberg seemingly had a direct/indirect hand in helping develop–especially their body horror elements.

EXCLUSIVE:  NEON has taken the North American distribution rights to Mark Jenkin’s horror feature Enys Men, starring Mary Woodvine and Edward Rowe. The deal was hatched before Cannes, ahead of the pic’s world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight section.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaNeon has purchased North American distribution rights to Mark Jenkin’s “Enys Men,” ahead of the horror film’s premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival.The film, which sounds very shades of “The Wicker Man,” stars Mary Woodvine and Edward Rowe. Jenkin wore a lot of hats on this one.

Nobody does body horror better than David Cronenberg. And in his first movie since 2014’s “Maps To The Stars,” it looks like Cronenberg returns to what he does best: a visceral, extreme take on humanity as we careen into the future.