Venice Film Festival Premieres Elon Musk Documentary, Cruz-Bardem Thriller 'Bunker' Tuesday In Italy Contest

VENICE, Italy — A slate of high-profile films debuted Tuesday at the Venice Film Festival, headlined by filmmaker Alex Gibney's sweeping Elon Musk documentary, a psychological thriller starring real-life married couple Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, and a grief-focused drama from Casey Affleck.

Gibney's documentary, simply titled "Musk," runs nearly four hours including an intermission and offers a wide-ranging portrait of the world's richest man, examining both the origins and the scope of his influence across business, technology and politics. Gibney, an Oscar-winning filmmaker whose past subjects have included Enron, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and the Church of Scientology, told The Associated Press that he initially set out hoping Musk would agree to sit for an interview.

"Ultimately he didn't want to talk to me," Gibney said. "Then you start digging into the facts and you follow them where they lead. And where they led for me was to a place that upended the myth, I would say, of Elon Musk as a kind of modern Leonardo da Vinci."

The film is expected to arrive in North American theaters in October through Bleecker Street.

Cruz and Bardem, married since 2010, brought considerable star power to Tuesday's schedule with the world premiere of "Bunker," directed by Florian Zeller and playing in the festival's main competition for the Golden Lion. The film follows Bardem's character, Miguel, a successful London architect who accepts a lucrative but morally fraught offer to build a survivalist bunker for a tech billionaire, a decision that leads his wife, Sofia, played by Cruz, to question the state of their 17-year marriage as the couple is drawn into a world of extreme wealth, paranoia and fear.

Zeller, who won two Academy Awards for his 2020 feature debut "The Father," said he wrote "Bunker" specifically with Cruz and Bardem in mind, given both their individual talents and their real-life relationship.

"I wrote Bunker for Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, who were both the starting point and inspiration for this project — not only because they are among the most gifted actors working today, but also because they are an iconic couple," Zeller said in his director's statement. "'Bunker' touches on several times contemporary themes — fear of the future, ecological threats, rising social inequality, and rampant individualism — but it does so through a deeply personal lens: a couple struggling with each other. I wanted to explore love, fidelity and forgiveness while placing the audience in a position of deliberate ambiguity."

The French-Spanish co-production also stars Stephen Graham, Paul Dano and Patrick Schwarzenegger, and marks Zeller's return to Venice four years after his previous film, "The Son," received a considerably cooler reception than "The Father" had at the festival. Sony Pictures Classics has acquired North American and several international distribution rights to the film, continuing a relationship with Zeller that dates back to "The Father." Searchlight Pictures is set to release "Bunker" in theaters early next year.

Zeller has said the film's central marital conflict drew partly from his own experience, having spent two years living in Los Angeles with his wife, French actress Marine Delterme, and their teenage son before the family returned to France. He said the project's political undertones, including its focus on wealth inequality and individualism, struck a particular chord with Cruz and Bardem, both of whom have been vocal political activists throughout their careers.

Also debuting Tuesday was "Company," a meditation on grief and compassion directed and co-written by Casey Affleck, currently seeking distribution following its premiere. Set in the winter of 1975, the film centers on a mysterious woman who crashes a holiday gathering, unfolding into a broader story built around a moral debate at its core.

Affleck reflected on the personal philosophy underpinning the film in his director's statement.

"I spent a lot of my life looking over the ledger, keeping score, frustrated by the debt of kindness. Somewhere along the way I began to realize that the ledger is never balanced by the world. It's balanced by what you contribute," Affleck said. "That's what this film is reaching for."

"Company," which is also competing for the festival's top prize, the Golden Lion, stars Nick Nolte and Ben Mendelsohn, and features Affleck's own children, Atticus Affleck and Indiana Affleck, in the cast.

Both "Bunker" and "Company" are competing alongside other high-profile titles in this year's Venice lineup, including "Wild Horse Nine" and "Ink," positioning the films among the possible contenders for major festival honors and a subsequent run through the fall and winter awards season. Notably, Zeller's earlier film "The Father" went on to win Anthony Hopkins the best actor Oscar, along with a screenplay Oscar for Zeller himself, giving this year's "Bunker" premiere added significance given the director's track record with the festival and subsequent awards attention.

Winners for this year's Venice Film Festival, selected by a jury led by filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal, are scheduled to be announced Saturday, closing out the festival's 83rd edition after a slate that has included several closely watched documentary and narrative premieres throughout the week.

With "Musk," "Bunker" and "Company" all drawing significant attention on the same day, Tuesday's lineup underscored the breadth of this year's Venice program, spanning an expansive nonfiction examination of one of the world's most influential and controversial business figures alongside two star-driven narrative dramas exploring themes of marriage, grief and personal accountability, each now positioned as part of the broader conversation heading into the festival's closing ceremony later this week.