Brazilian director Karim Ainouz’s surreal satire Rosebush Pruning premiered Saturday at the Berlin Film Festival, featuring a star-studded cast portraying a spoiled, dysfunctional American family descending into chaos.
Pamela Anderson, Callum Turner, Jamie Bell, Riley Keough, and Elle Fanning play members of a wealthy family whose inherited fortune fuels conflict in a lavish Spanish villa. Turner’s character, Ed, narrates the story, describing his relatives as “lazy, mediocre, vapid egotists.”
Tracy Letts, the award-winning playwright and actor who plays the blind, abusive patriarch, said the film explores how extreme wealth can encourage bad behavior and warned that such disparities “probably create fascism.”
The film, drawing comparisons to HBO’s The White Lotus and Succession as well as Triangle of Sadness, exposes the emptiness beneath the luxury of the ultra-rich.
Ainouz said it was inspired by Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 Italian film Fists in the Pocket, which similarly depicts escalating dysfunction and violence within a wealthy family.
Ainouz described the film as a “Grimm Brothers on acid” vision, featuring incestuous overtones and a vivid color palette that contrasts with the idyllic, sun-drenched setting. Bell called the story “operatic absurdity,” with sibling relationships turning increasingly bizarre and violent. Anderson plays the mother, whose presence continues to influence the family despite reportedly having been killed by wolves.
At a press conference, Ainouz highlighted the importance of public funding for cinema, saying in Brazil, “cinema would not exist if it were not for public funding,” especially at a time when censorship and political pressures threaten creative freedom.
When asked about rumors that he might be the next James Bond, Turner declined comment, saying it was “very early for that question,” prompting Letts to joke, “I’m the next James Bond.”
