Rewrite and translate this title How Cate Blanchett Landed in the Funniest Political Comedy of the Year to Japanese between 50 and 60 characters. Do not include any introductory or extra text; return only the title in Japanese.

When Cate Blanchett and Todd Field visited the Criterion Closet in 2022, the resultant YouTube video caught the attention of Guy Maddin fans, and also Maddin himself. Rifling through shelves of established masterpieces, Blanchett elatedly spotted a Maddin classic from 2007, then thrust it into Field’s face. “Oh my goodness,” Blanchett exclaimed. “My Winnipeg!”

Maddin, a 68-year-old Canadian filmmaker, saw the online clip in astonishment. A specialist in esoteric pastiches of 1930s cinema like The Saddest Music in the World and Cowards Bend the Knee, Maddin is a respected auteur but hardly a mainstream name. In fact, if Maddin is a filmmaker’s filmmaker, then one of them is Ari Aster, a Maddin devotee who subsequently passed on Blanchett’s phone number. The result is Blanchett starring in Rumours, Maddin’s 13th full-length feature and his third in a row made with co-directors Evan and Galen Johnson, two Canadian brothers in their early forties.

“I remember being scared of Cate at first,” says Maddin. “I was like, ‘Who’s going to be the one who tells her what to do?’” Evan says, “Cate was definitely up for weirder stuff than what we did. We could have made it even more experimental or abstract, and she wouldn’t have baulked at all.”

I’m speaking to the three directors of Rumours at the Sea Containers hotel during the London Film Festival. The previous night, they shared the stage for a raucous Q&A with the cast, including Blanchett. While they didn’t sit in with the audience this time, they’ve observed an enviable problem: viewers laugh so loudly that they miss the next line of dialogue. “At Toronto, I was annoyed,” says Evan, smiling. “I was like, ‘Shut up! There’s a better joke coming!’”

Set amidst an unexplained apocalypse, Rumours depicts a skewed, upside-down version of the G7 that is drolly absurd, yet just as ineffective as the real deal. Among them are the chancellor of Germany (Blanchett imitating Angela Merkel), the president of the United States (Charles Dance in an English accent), and Canada’s prime minister (Roy Dupuis as a man who curses himself for “loving strong women too much”). Also present, somehow, is a gigantic brain lying dormant on soil, a civil servant (Alicia Vikander) who speaks a mysterious language eventually identified as Swedish, and zombielike bog people who masturbate until they literally explode.

“The bog people were more tastefully written in the script,” says Evan. “They were jiggling obscenely, but we never said what they were doing outright.” Galen says, “If you leave contemporary dancers to their own devices, it’s very artsy stuff, and that wasn’t the vibe we wanted. I had to teach them how to jerk off properly.” Maddin: “We had to remove the ambiguity. I’m glad we got rid of the tasteful ambiguity.”

Lost in a forest without their assistants, the G7 leaders have little to do except write a joint declaration about the planet’s imminent destruction. Even so, without distractions, the politicians still struggle to agree on a single statement. By the time a subplot involving AI-generated text approaches, it’s apparent that Rumours is about the difficulty of multiple minds writing a single document – or, perhaps, a screenplay. The film’s title is an allusion to Fleetwood Mac, a band notorious for their infighting.

“It felt nightmarish,” says Maddin. “We were endlessly working on scripts, trashing them, and starting again. That exasperation made its way into the story.” Evan says, “It probably attracted us to the G7 as a group; this bunch of frustrating, ineffectual people.” Maddin: “Ineffectual people who are always figuring out excuses to stop writing. Then they remind each other to start writing again.”

The trio studied footage of G7 summits, and then found themselves in a similar position when Rumours premiered at Cannes in May. On the Croisette, the directors were photographed on the red carpet and interrogated by international journalists at a press conference. “That’s why everyone [in our version of the G7] gets a goodie bag at the end,” says Galen. “That’s a film festival thing.”

On The Forbidden Room (2015), their first collaboration, the writing was split between Maddin and the two brothers. On Rumours, though, the story was brainstormed as a group and then typed up by Evan, who has the screenplay credit. (Describing Evan as a fast typer, Maddin refers to himself as a “two-finger guy”.) As for why Rumours was the project out of many that got greenlit, Maddin calls it the easiest to pitch, noting, “The other ones required multiple elevators.”

Still, Rumours has a plot you might imagine was a prank if someone described it to you in a lift. Of course, the filmmakers are deadly serious in how un-serious they are. The trio’s previous film, 2017’s The Green Fog, was a found-footage remake of Vertigo that sounds like a one-joke idea but is actually exhilarating, hypnotic and laugh-out-loud hilarious. I note that Rumours, in contrast, has been repeatedly referred to by critics as their most “accessible” movie to date.

“It’s not like we tried to make The Green Fog inaccessible or alienating,” says Evan. “There are more outright jokes in Rumours. But we didn’t think of it in those terms. We thought about it more like a dream.” Maddin: “If it’s so accessible, what’s that brain doing there? I swear that when the lights went down at Cannes, I had no idea what we’d made. I expected no laughter, or maybe a couple of isolated chuckles. But now it seems to be defining itself as a comedy. I like to think it’s more. I want it to be smartly stupid, stupidly smart, and timelessly timely.”

When it comes to the more idiosyncratic elements, the directors have explanations largely related to plot. A gag involving an AI chatbot that catches child predators – it will either have you howling, or absolutely appalled – is what Evan refers to as a “good antagonist to introduce at the end of the second act when we need a turn”. As for the bog people, Galen describes their juxtaposition with AI as a clash between the past and future, like a “pincer movement destroying the present”.

Rumours is, also, a political comedy, albeit one without direct references to contemporary politics, unless you want to analyse why the Canadian PM – remember, the three filmmakers are from Winnipeg – happens to be the hero and a ladies’ man, or why the US president speaks like Charles Dance. It is, to quote Maddin, both smartly stupid and stupidly smart.

“The G7 is made to make leaders look legitimate by having them photographed with other leaders,” says Evan. “The empty spectacle of it is the essence. We’re leftist guys, but we weren’t going to get into real politics. Only a certain type of politician gets into the G7, and it’s satirising that kind of person.”

“The legitimising is a real thing,” says Maddin. “I first heard of the G7 when I was 20 years old, and I was going, ‘Wow, our prime minister is standing with these other world leaders.’”

“It’s like when we stand with Cate on the red carpet,” says Galen, laughing.

“Exactly,” says Maddin, chuckling even harder. “It brings her down a peg, but it brings us up way more.”

Rumours is out in UK cinemas on 6 December 2024.

When Cate Blanchett and Todd Field visited the Criterion Closet in 2022, the resultant YouTube video caught the attention of Guy Maddin fans, and also Maddin himself. Rifling through shelves of established masterpieces, Blanchett elatedly spotted a Maddin classic from 2007, then thrust it into Field’s face. “Oh my goodness,” Blanchett exclaimed. “My Winnipeg!”

Maddin, a 68-year-old Canadian filmmaker, saw the online clip in astonishment. A specialist in esoteric pastiches of 1930s cinema like The Saddest Music in the World and Cowards Bend the Knee, Maddin is a respected auteur but hardly a mainstream name. In fact, if Maddin is a filmmaker’s filmmaker, then one of them is Ari Aster, a Maddin devotee who subsequently passed on Blanchett’s phone number. The result is Blanchett starring in Rumours, Maddin’s 13th full-length feature and his third in a row made with co-directors Evan and Galen Johnson, two Canadian brothers in their early forties.

“I remember being scared of Cate at first,” says Maddin. “I was like, ‘Who’s going to be the one who tells her what to do?’” Evan says, “Cate was definitely up for weirder stuff than what we did. We could have made it even more experimental or abstract, and she wouldn’t have baulked at all.”

I’m speaking to the three directors of Rumours at the Sea Containers hotel during the London Film Festival. The previous night, they shared the stage for a raucous Q&A with the cast, including Blanchett. While they didn’t sit in with the audience this time, they’ve observed an enviable problem: viewers laugh so loudly that they miss the next line of dialogue. “At Toronto, I was annoyed,” says Evan, smiling. “I was like, ‘Shut up! There’s a better joke coming!’”

Set amidst an unexplained apocalypse, Rumours depicts a skewed, upside-down version of the G7 that is drolly absurd, yet just as ineffective as the real deal. Among them are the chancellor of Germany (Blanchett imitating Angela Merkel), the president of the United States (Charles Dance in an English accent), and Canada’s prime minister (Roy Dupuis as a man who curses himself for “loving strong women too much”). Also present, somehow, is a gigantic brain lying dormant on soil, a civil servant (Alicia Vikander) who speaks a mysterious language eventually identified as Swedish, and zombielike bog people who masturbate until they literally explode.

“The bog people were more tastefully written in the script,” says Evan. “They were jiggling obscenely, but we never said what they were doing outright.” Galen says, “If you leave contemporary dancers to their own devices, it’s very artsy stuff, and that wasn’t the vibe we wanted. I had to teach them how to jerk off properly.” Maddin: “We had to remove the ambiguity. I’m glad we got rid of the tasteful ambiguity.”

Lost in a forest without their assistants, the G7 leaders have little to do except write a joint declaration about the planet’s imminent destruction. Even so, without distractions, the politicians still struggle to agree on a single statement. By the time a subplot involving AI-generated text approaches, it’s apparent that Rumours is about the difficulty of multiple minds writing a single document – or, perhaps, a screenplay. The film’s title is an allusion to Fleetwood Mac, a band notorious for their infighting.

“It felt nightmarish,” says Maddin. “We were endlessly working on scripts, trashing them, and starting again. That exasperation made its way into the story.” Evan says, “It probably attracted us to the G7 as a group; this bunch of frustrating, ineffectual people.” Maddin: “Ineffectual people who are always figuring out excuses to stop writing. Then they remind each other to start writing again.”

The trio studied footage of G7 summits, and then found themselves in a similar position when Rumours premiered at Cannes in May. On the Croisette, the directors were photographed on the red carpet and interrogated by international journalists at a press conference. “That’s why everyone [in our version of the G7] gets a goodie bag at the end,” says Galen. “That’s a film festival thing.”

On The Forbidden Room (2015), their first collaboration, the writing was split between Maddin and the two brothers. On Rumours, though, the story was brainstormed as a group and then typed up by Evan, who has the screenplay credit. (Describing Evan as a fast typer, Maddin refers to himself as a “two-finger guy”.) As for why Rumours was the project out of many that got greenlit, Maddin calls it the easiest to pitch, noting, “The other ones required multiple elevators.”

Still, Rumours has a plot you might imagine was a prank if someone described it to you in a lift. Of course, the filmmakers are deadly serious in how un-serious they are. The trio’s previous film, 2017’s The Green Fog, was a found-footage remake of Vertigo that sounds like a one-joke idea but is actually exhilarating, hypnotic and laugh-out-loud hilarious. I note that Rumours, in contrast, has been repeatedly referred to by critics as their most “accessible” movie to date.

“It’s not like we tried to make The Green Fog inaccessible or alienating,” says Evan. “There are more outright jokes in Rumours. But we didn’t think of it in those terms. We thought about it more like a dream.” Maddin: “If it’s so accessible, what’s that brain doing there? I swear that when the lights went down at Cannes, I had no idea what we’d made. I expected no laughter, or maybe a couple of isolated chuckles. But now it seems to be defining itself as a comedy. I like to think it’s more. I want it to be smartly stupid, stupidly smart, and timelessly timely.”

When it comes to the more idiosyncratic elements, the directors have explanations largely related to plot. A gag involving an AI chatbot that catches child predators – it will either have you howling, or absolutely appalled – is what Evan refers to as a “good antagonist to introduce at the end of the second act when we need a turn”. As for the bog people, Galen describes their juxtaposition with AI as a clash between the past and future, like a “pincer movement destroying the present”.

Rumours is, also, a political comedy, albeit one without direct references to contemporary politics, unless you want to analyse why the Canadian PM – remember, the three filmmakers are from Winnipeg – happens to be the hero and a ladies’ man, or why the US president speaks like Charles Dance. It is, to quote Maddin, both smartly stupid and stupidly smart.

“The G7 is made to make leaders look legitimate by having them photographed with other leaders,” says Evan. “The empty spectacle of it is the essence. We’re leftist guys, but we weren’t going to get into real politics. Only a certain type of politician gets into the G7, and it’s satirising that kind of person.”

“The legitimising is a real thing,” says Maddin. “I first heard of the G7 when I was 20 years old, and I was going, ‘Wow, our prime minister is standing with these other world leaders.’”

“It’s like when we stand with Cate on the red carpet,” says Galen, laughing.

“Exactly,” says Maddin, chuckling even harder. “It brings her down a peg, but it brings us up way more.”

Rumours is out in UK cinemas on 6 December 2024.