Bugonia

Yorgos Lanthimos's Bugonia arrived in 2025 and was nominated for the European Film Award for Best Director, alongside winning the EFA for Best Hair & Make-Up. The film consolidated Lanthimos's productive late-career period (after The Favourite, Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness) and continued his collaboration with screenwriter Tony McNamara and the broader ensemble of regular Lanthimos performers.

The premise (which the film itself slowly reveals) is that two amateur conspiracy theorists kidnap a powerful tech-corporate CEO, convinced she is part of an alien race in human disguise, and decide to interrogate her. The film operates simultaneously as conspiracy thriller, deadpan absurdist comedy, and a sustained ethical investigation of what we owe each other when our beliefs do not match. Robbie Ryan's photography establishes the off-centre register Lanthimos has been refining since The Lobster.

Critically the film was widely placed in the upper tier of Lanthimos's filmography, with the closing acts compared favourably to Dogtooth for sustained discomfort. The EFA Best Hair and Make-Up win (for the prosthetic and visual-design work that the film's central revelation depends on) was widely cited as a craft-recognition triumph for an unusually demanding production. Bugonia arrived in a strong year for European auteur comedy and confirmed that Lanthimos has moved permanently into a register where his international audiences expect to be unsettled.