Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem won’t be shying away from discussing politics while promoting their new film “Bunker.” In fact, during a press conference for the film at the Venice Film Festival this week, the couple argued that “it’s impossible” to avoid doing so.
In the film, directed by Florian Zeller, Cruz and Bardem star as couple who’s been married for nearly two decades. But, that marriage starts to fall apart when Bardem’s character agrees to build a survivalist bunker for a tech billionaire. At the film festival, the actors were asked about their decision to speak openly on politics, as they have for years.
“We don’t have to agree with our characters, we don’t have to agree sometimes with the story, but this involves so many aspects of where the world is right now — things that affect all of us, future generations,” Cruz said. “Children, their children — there are so many things that we touch in this film that it would be really contradictory then to be here and say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to talk about that, or that other thing.’ It’s impossible.”
Cruz admitted that it makes events like the press conference “more scary,” but reiterated that it wouldn’t “make sense to say, ‘I don’t talk about politics.’”
Bardem agreed, and added that everyone, no matter their profession, has “the right to expose your truth on what you think is important.”
“Obviously I have more resources to do it than a taxi driver, because I have this thing,” he said, referring to the microphone, “and I have you guys listening to me. So the responsibility is a different one.”
“And that’s what I think is important, to have a responsibility towards the world that we live in and I don’t take it for granted,” the actor continued. “But artistically speaking, this movie speaks about that, about how much we’re willing to see, feel, welcome the other, or fear based on what we imagine, our pre-judgments, our fears. Based on that, how much are we going to isolate and criminalize the other? And I don’t know the answer, but it’s a good question.”
