In a cinematic landscape saturated with recycled espionage tropes and high-stakes heist fatigue, The Phoenician Scheme arrives like a message in a bottle from a forgotten past—enigmatic, seductive, and tinged with danger.
Wes Anderson has once again stepped through a trapdoor into his own surreal dimension–only this time, he’s brought with him a complex father-daughter relationship. Known for crafting symmetrical worlds with obsessive precision, Anderson does something audacious here: he allows his pastels crash into the steel-blue mechanics of war, commerce, and legacy. The result is a film that feels both hyper-stylised and historically haunted.
The trailer teases a narrative packed with espionage, familial conflict, ideological struggle, and–of course—a meticulous aesthetic that only Wes Anderson could pull off. Set against a vaguely postwar European backdrop–though time remains wonderfully ambiguous—The Phoenician Scheme revolves around Zsa-zsa Korda, played with suave inscrutability by Benicio del Toro. Korda is a wealthy industrialist with ambitions that stretch across air and sea–orchestrating a massive infrastructure project–part political campaign, part ego-fuelled legacy grab.
Enter Sister Liesel, Zsa-zsa’s daughter, played by the ever charming Mia Threapleton–who happens to be a nun with an uncertain loyalty to the family business. Alongside them is Bjorn Lund starring Michael Cera, a meek and bewildered tutor navigating the strange moral theatre of the Korda household. If the premise sounds bonkers, it’s because it is. But that’s precisely where Anderson thrives: the intersection of absurdity and sincerity.
The cast is packed with a gallery of Anderson regulars and newcomers—Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, and others who seem to glide through the film; characters in a dream you half-remember but can’t explain.
It’s no accident that Anderson chose to co-write this story with Roman Coppola–longtime collaborator and fellow connoisseur of family mythology. They have worked before on The Darjeeling Limited, Moonrise Kingdom, Isle of Dogs, and The French Dispatch. Their script—if the trailer is any indication–promises a tone that’s both comedic and tragic, absurd and all-too-real, wrapped in Anderson’s signature direction.
Thematically, the film explores legacy and contradiction: How does one build for the future with tools forged in violence? Can morality coexist with ambition? These are the kinds of questions Anderson poses not with intensity, but with a wink, a title card and hymns singing over the clatter of factory assembly lines.
Visually, the trailer is peak Wes—pastel hues clash with militaristic greys, miniature sets bleed into grand hallways, and even the action sequences feel choreographed like a ballet of bureaucracy. Alexandre Desplat’s score floats through it all—part ancient lullaby, part retro spy thriller.
Whether it becomes Anderson’s defining epic or his most divisive experiment remains to be seen. But one thing is certain–this is not a film, it's a blueprint of how to build a world—and then question why it was built at all.
The Phoenician Scheme is scheduled for release on 5 June
