EXCLUSIVE: Ruben Ostlund’s The Entertainment System Is Down may not have been ready to screen on the Croisette, but the director still has a presence in Cannes as the subject of feature documentary Ruben.
Directed by Sigge Eklund and produced by Peter Settman and Helena Sandermark for Swedish-US company Stockholm Syndrome, Ruben will depict the filmmaker behind the success, as he deals with pressure, doubt and the act of creating.
The film will also track Ostlund’s attempt to win a record third Palme d’Or with his new film, The Entertainment System Is Down, which is currently in post-production and hoping to premiere at Cannes next year.
Filming for Ruben began in 2023, immediately after Ostlund returned from the Oscars, where Triangle Of Sadness was nominated for three awards. It will conclude after The Entertainment System Is Down has its world premiere, wherever that may be.
The film is co-produced by Sweden’s Tiisch Film, Film i Vast and SVT, and is courting sales and distribution offers in Cannes this week.
“I’m interested in the psychological aspect of being Ruben Ostlund in 2026,” said Eklund, who has been friends with Ostlund for 20 years and has attended many film festivals with him, including Cannes both times that Ostlund won the top prize.
“There’s a scene where he’s sitting in front of his computer trying to start the new project, and you see two Palme d’Ors on the shelf looking down on him. He’s putting more pressure on himself to do something new. How a person handles that pressure fascinates me.”
Eklund filmed behind-the-scenes footage for the documentary during the Budapest shoot for The Entertainment System Is Down in early 2025. Ruben will include interviews with cast members, including Keanu Reeves, Kirsten Dunst and Daniel Bruhl.
“It’s a movie about an obsessed person, who is also obsessed with winning the third Palme d’Or,” said Eklund. “A lot of documentaries about artists are made on a very intellectual level. I hope this will be a suspenseful movie. How is this guy? How is his mental state going to be after this thing is through?”
Ostlund has been very open to including any material in the film, said Eklund. “Sometimes he turns to me and says, Don’t make it look too good or glamorous. It has to be a little raw, like life’.”
The film will be teased as part of Film i Vast’s Cannes presentation on May 14.
US-based Swedish filmmaker Eklund previously directed 2024 Netflix feature A Part Of You starring Felicia Maxime, Edvin Ryding and Zara Larsson.
He has “a few scripts” he is hoping to make next and is also a novelist, and a co-host of one of Sweden’s biggest podcasts, ‘Alex & Sigge’s podcast’, which has over 250,000 weekly listeners.
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