In Bunker by Florian Zeller, competing at the Venice Film Festival 2026, the architect portrayed by Javier Bardem agrees to design a nuclear shelter for a billionaire, but the choice unsettles the balance with his wife (Penélope Cruz). The director and cast, which also includes Paul Dano, Stephen Graham and Patrick Schwarzenegger, presented the film at a press conference, reflecting on the ethical themes that the director of The Father and The Son has chosen to stage.
Bunker, acting together was not difficult for Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz
Married since 2010, she and Javier Bardem have known each other for “thirty years,” and, as Penélope Cruz playfully recalls, “you can imagine we argue, but never about work.” A shared undertaking that, in their careers, doesn’t happen often: Cruz notes that over the years there have been other offers to see them on screen together, but exposing themselves on a set as a real-life couple isn’t simple. Fortunately the screenplay and Florian Zeller’s direction guarantee a kind of total protection on Bunker: “Between us, there is him,” she summarizes. Still, Javier, even jokingly (“Noooo, we never fight!”), believes they have learned to separate work from family quite well.
Having said that, Zeller was nonetheless aiming for that spontaneous truth that could emerge from a real-life couple bound by more than acting: he wrote the script with them in mind, because he considers them among the finest performers around, but his goal was to blur the line between reality and fiction, and luckily the two actors are ambitious and unafraid.
The idea that the lead couple would speak Spanish in private but English outside the home may seem odd only because it’s an unconventional cinematic choice, yet it does not mirror a distant reality: “We were very happy to be able to speak Spanish” — explains Penélope — “A real couple in a foreign country would continue to speak Spanish in private.” Now much has changed in cinema, there are financiers who accept this idea. The audience was already ready, films are now watched in their original language, and the world is multilingual. In the past there were moments when we played Colombians but had to speak English! Fortunately that happens less often now, because as an actor you seek the truth.”
Javier and Penélope have never feared taking a political stand, and certainly not for a film that frames the dangers of a future of separation among humans, fueled by capitalism with no ethical limits. According to Bardem, “as an artist you are called to bring a story to life, following the director. Every individual, however, has the right to express their truth, it applies to everyone, not only to me who has the means to do so.” He adds, “I never take that for granted. Here emerge issues I care about: how willing are we to see, hear, and welcome others? Or are we afraid? How far would we go to criminalize the other?” At a certain point Cruz suggests that staying detached would be contradictory for someone who is part of a film that tackles these themes.
Specifically, where did the inspiration for Bunker come from?
Bunker, the fear of the unseen other and the specter of isolation according to Florian Zeller
Florian Zeller recalls: “Fear was a starting point. I had read about a bunker that a very wealthy man had begun to build, with the construction shrouded in nondisclosure, and eventually the story leaked. A man who had become powerful by connecting people [referring to tech magnates, editor’s note] was spending a fortune to hide himself. The point is that each of us is tempted to live in an invisible bunker. The world we inhabit is built on illusions, as if other human beings were no longer necessary, as if the world were no longer to be explored. But I didn’t want to narrate the madness of a single person; I wanted to understand that this impulse lives inside all of us. [The lead architect] is drawn to the project, yet does not question the ultimate meaning of what he does.”
This sentiment is unearthed by his wife, a character that Penélope Cruz understands all too well: “She says many things I think; she lives between sorrow and anger, she sees a certain degree of manipulation, and it seems to me that today we struggle to respond to this state of affairs. I am by nature an optimist, yet this concerns me; still I see that the younger generation is realising it. They now talk about politics more than before.” Cruz is troubled by the promises some of these entrepreneurs make, such as “much more free time available,” just when there is a problem of employment! And if the stakes then become the risk of losing the human bond, one can only hope for a response.
It isn’t a matter of lecturing others: “I hardly know my own people,” says Bardem, but the aim would be to focus on the “necessity of connecting with others, with their needs and their pains. It’s a difficult thing, you must sacrifice a lot, which is why we build ‘bunkers.’ Yet morality slips away if you don’t cultivate the physical bond.”
Paul Dano, present at the press conference, speaks directly of the drift toward “insular lives” and centers on a question: would it be possible to metaphorically open other windows instead? Stephen Graham, known to the general public as the father in the series Adolescence, offers a clear compass: “People without ethics have no future.”
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