Cinema tip: "Bugonia" You have to see the most absurd movie of the year
Alien or human? Emma Stone is kidnapped in "Bugonia".
Image: Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
She plays the CEO of a biomedical company.
Image: Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Jesse Plemons plays an obsessed conspiracy theorist.
Image: Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Ready for anything in the battle with the aliens...
Image: Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Alien or human? Emma Stone is kidnapped in "Bugonia".
Image: Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
She plays the CEO of a biomedical company.
Image: Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Jesse Plemons plays an obsessed conspiracy theorist.
Image: Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Ready for anything in the battle with the aliens...
Image: Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
A conspiracy theorist kidnaps a biotech CEO because he believes she is an alien - and the movie theater laughs until it hurts. In "Bugonia", the director dissects the paranoia of our time in a comedy that is as absurd as it is clever.
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- Giorgos Lanthimos' "Bugonia" is a bitterly wicked comedy about conspiracy beliefs and delusions of power.
- A beekeeper kidnaps a biotech CEO because he is convinced she is an alien.
- Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons engage in an absurd duel of words between delusion and reality.
Let's briefly remember the pandemic: chat groups full of lateral thinkers, Telegram channels in which not only crazy theories about viruses were circulating, but also those according to which politicians were reptiloids in human form.
Anyone who found these fantasies grotesque even back then should enjoy Giorgos Lanthimos' latest film "Bugonia".
The Greek director, known for his absurd social satires, transforms the fear of conspiracies into a pitch-black comedy about self-deception and the fragile relationship with the truth.
The absurd movie takes place in a cellar
The absurd science fiction film is set in a basement somewhere in the USA. Teddy, a down-and-out beekeeper with aloof ambitions (Jesse Plemons), kidnaps the successful biotech CEO Michelle (Emma Stone).
Teddy is convinced that she is an alien who wants to wipe out humanity. Together with his cousin Don, he shaves her head - after all, he has read on the Internet that aliens communicate with each other via their hair and tries to force her to make a confession.
"Bugonia": name refers to bee superstition
Lanthimos stages this madness as a bitterly angry verbal duel between two characters who push each other to the limit. Michelle responds to the confused accusations with the cool, meaningless rhetoric of a corporate boss: "I hear where you're coming from and respectfully disagree."
Her phrases from the world of management roll off Teddy like honey on wax, while he slips deeper and deeper into his madness and takes his good-natured cousin with him.
The grotesque finale has a cleansing effect
The grotesque finale, which ends with self-exposing laughter in the movie theater, has the effect of cleansing one's own soul:
The movie doesn't provide any answers, but holds up a mirror to the audience. Which stories do we believe and which do we prefer not to examine?
Incidentally, the title "Bugonia" comes from antiquity: the term refers to the ancient superstition that bees could emerge from the carcass of a bull. The name could hardly be more fitting for this film.
"Bugonia" is an English-language reinterpretation of the South Korean cult film Save the Green Planet! (2003). The film celebrated its premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
"Bugonia" has been showing in blue Cinema cinemas since October 30, 2025.
