Ruben Östlund: The Square

This past week, Swedish auteur Ruben Östlund received three Oscar nominations for his lastest film, Triangle of Sadness. The film is up for Best picture; Östlund himself is up for Best Director; and his script is up for Best Original Screenplay. This well-deserved attention follows Ostlund’s 2018 Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film for his previous feature, The Square. Both Triangle of Sadness and The Square have won the Palme D’Or at Cannes Film Festival. Östlund inches closer to world domination.

In October of 2017, I interviewed Ruben Östlund during the New York Film Festival for IONCINEMA. We talked about how his latest film The Square is—or now, aguably was—Östlund’s most ambitious attack on humanity yet … with a compellingly affectionate touch. In other words, this guy knows how to do satire: he delivers a rant while he keeps you laughing. In this interview, we dig deep into the specifics of Östlund’s process, which still applies today: how he forms an idea, his take on the industry, his critiques of young artists — along with critiques of himself — and, finally, how he reacted to an Oscar snub for his previous film, Force Majeure (2014). To top it all off, Östlund teases his current hit, Triangle of Sadness, which was already in gestation back in 2017.

Check out the video interview below:

Originally published in IONCINEMA on October 28th at the 2017 New York Film Festival. You can read the original here.