Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem grew emotional as their new film "Bunker" received a 15.5-minute standing ovation at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday, September 8, 2026.
The real-life married couple watched the production come close to one of the longest standing ovations with the public in recent festival history, an honor held by Pedro Almodóvar's "The Room Next Door," which was applauded for 17 minutes at the 2024 edition of the festival.
"Bunker" was inspired by reports about a technology billionaire secretly building a survival shelter, and was directed by French filmmaker Florian Zeller. The film carries a warning about isolation, power and a world controlled by a wealthy minority.
Starring Bardem and Cruz, the story follows a renowned architect who is hired to design a luxury shelter in Hawaii for a wealthy client convinced that society is on the verge of collapse. As the architect grows increasingly seduced by the project, tensions emerge in his marriage, and a seemingly minor dispute with a neighbor turns increasingly threatening.
Zeller, who won the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay for "The Father" in 2021, told reporters the idea came from articles he had read about a prominent businessman building a secret refuge. He said he found it a fascinating paradox that a man who made his fortune on the idea of connecting people was working on a plan B to isolate himself from the rest of the world.
A society retreating behind screens
The story evolved into a broader reflection on a society in which people increasingly isolate themselves and everything, from food to friendship, is delivered through screens.
Zeller said that the more he thought about it, the more he realized everyone is, to some degree, tempted to live in a bunker, not a literal one, but an invisible one.
The film also serves as a critique of an economic system in which a handful of people hold enormous influence, Zeller said. He said very few people own almost everything, including people's privacy, their email addresses and the platforms on which they communicate, and that this is a real issue that needs to be questioned.
Casting a real-life couple
Zeller said casting Bardem and Cruz together added another dimension to the story. He said he thought it would be a unique way to capture something special by using a real couple, blurring the line between reality and fiction.
Cruz told reporters she was drawn to the project partly because it explored her own concerns. She said she believed the people who make the world's most important decisions could probably be counted on the fingers of both hands, and that sometimes even one hand would be enough. She said this degree of manipulation seemed very sad to her, and that events were moving so fast it felt like there was almost no time to react.
Speaking Spanish on screen
Bardem said he did not bring anything from his own marriage to Cruz into the film. His wife, however, acknowledged one thing the production did allow: the chance to speak Spanish to each other on screen, as they do in real life, while switching to English in their dealings with the outside world.
Cruz said that even looking back 10 or 15 years, it had always been a huge challenge to get financiers to accept a film made this way, but that this is what children are used to today, watching original-language films with people speaking the language they are meant to speak.
Golden Lion contention
"Bunker" is one of 21 films competing for the Golden Lion, the top prize of the Venice Film Festival, which will be awarded on Saturday. The festival, held on Venice's Lido island, is one of the world's oldest and most prestigious film events.
