The Cannes Film Festival opened this year’s star-studded event with a showing of The Dead Don’t Die — a “very anti-Trump film,” according to the festival’s artistic director — about “polar fracking” kicking off a zombie takeover of a small town filled with Trump supporters.
Replete with an A-list Hollywood cast including Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, and Selena Gomez, the satirical film sees “the residents of small-town Centerville, U.S.A. (“A Real Nice Place,” according to its road signs) come to terms with an environmental apocalypse caused by “polar fracking,” according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The political zombie comedy by director Jim Jarmusch is jammed front to back with attacks on Republicans including, but not limited to, President Trump. Indeed, one character played by Steve Buscemi has a dog named “Rumsfeld,” after George W. Bush’s former Secretary of Defense. Another character wears a hat reminiscent of President Trump’s campaign hat that says, “Keep America White Again.”
“It’s a very anti-Trump film,” Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémaux said at a press conference. “It talks about American hegemony. America is an extraordinary country. With Jarmusch, we can expect that he is not very happy with what’s happening at present.”
The film was not the only attack on American politics during the day’s opening festivities. Cannes jury president Alejandro González Iñárritu also attacked America saying that it is being led “with rage and angriness.”
Politicians “are basically ruling with rage and angriness…and are basically writing fiction and making people believe that those are facts,” Iñárritu said, according to the Reporter. “The problem is ignorance. People do not know [their history], so it is very easy [for politicians] to manipulate them.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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