"The Dog Stars" is an action film set among people trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world after a contagious flu has wiped out most of the world's population.
A film should not only entertain, it should also challenge you, says Ridley Scott and continues:
I didn't want to make a documentary - but a film that speaks to the audience. A film that leads to talking about human behaviour, about empathy and sympathy and humour.
Bloody action
“The Dog Stars” takes place a few decades in the future. Far out in the countryside, at an old airfield, Hig (Jacob Elordi) and Bangley (Josh Brolin) live. Hig takes trips in an old propeller plane and dreams of getting to a place with more life. He finds Cima (Margaret Qualley) and Pops (Guy Pearce) - but there are murderous figures all around the forests and it becomes the usual bloody Ridley Scott action.
I spend a lot of time with the screenwriter and I'm good at telling you what's boring. It changes all the time. But in my 40 years, there have been three scripts that I've come across that I've immediately felt work: "Alien," "The Martian," and this one.
Everything was there. The characters, the story, the time, the place, everything was there.
Corner with humor
Scott is keen that there is always humor in his films.
If you're not doing "Macbeth," you have to try to find a corner with humor, but it can't be humor for its own sake.
He believes that the post-apocalyptic is not completely unrealistic.
Look at the world. I have to watch the news, I do it several times a day. And all of this is already happening and we refuse to see it: climate change, chaos in countries around the world, there are disasters going on all the time.
I was going to make a movie about Ebola with Jodie Foster. Now there's a new Ebola outbreak and it's out of control. We've cut the budget for fighting epidemics, and that's why it's been able to start again.
Age: 88 years.
Family: Giannina Facio, three children.
Occupation: Director.
Previous films in selection: "Alien", "Blade Runner", "Thelma & Louise", "Black Rain", "Gladiator", "Hannibal", "Black Hawk Down", "Body of Lies", "Robin Hood", "Prometheus", "The Martian", "The Last Duel", "Napoleon", "Gladiator 2".
Current: With "The Dog Stars" which has its Swedish cinema premiere on August 28.
