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American director Wes Anderson has mocked Donald Trump’s plan to impose severe tariffs on foreign-made films, suggesting it would mostly financially hit film-makers like him and be unworkable in practice.
“Can you hold up the movie in customs?” the world’s chief auteur of cinematic whimsy asked at a press conference at the Cannes film festival. “I feel it doesn’t ship that way. I’m not sure I want to know the details so I’ll hold off on my official answer.”
Earlier this month, Trump announced on his Truth Social platform a 100% tariff on all movies “produced in Foreign Lands”, claiming the US film industry was dying a “very fast death” because an increasing number of American film-makers were shooting in other countries to take advantage of tax incentives or cheaper production costs.
“The tariff is fascinating because of the 100%,” said Anderson, who is in Cannes to promote his new film The Phoenician Scheme, which was mostly shot at Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam outside Berlin, Germany. “I’m not an expert in that area of economics, but I feel that means Trump is saying he’s going to take all the money. And then what do we get?”
The easily distracted US president has not elaborated further on his film tariff plans since the announcement on 5 May. An open letter signed by major studios, film industry unions and Trump’s own “Hollywood ambassadors” Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone instead calls on the government to try to revive America’s film industry with tax incentives, specifically mentioning those in place in the United Kingdom and Australia.
In The Phoenician Scheme, Puerto Rican actor “““, a ruthless and egocentric industrialist who grows concerned about his fortune’s future after surviving an assassination attempt and begins to glimpse the error of his ways.
Anderson described Korda as embodying “the darkness of a certain kind of capitalist”, and as “a character who is not really concerned with how the big decisions he has empowered himself to make for the world are affecting populations of workforces and landscapes”.
The Phoenician Scheme stars an array of Hollywood royalty, with major and minor appearances from Bill Murray, Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johansson and Michael Cera. In Cannes, Anderson announced he is working on a script for a future film with British actor Richard Ayoade, who plays a Che Guevara-style guerrilla fighter in The Phoenician Scheme.
Asked if he was planning to make a sequel to any of the 12 other features he has directed so far, Anderson announced his desire to make a second part to 2004’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and spontaneously shook hands with Bill Murray on the project.
