Ex Machina and Annihilation writer-director Alex Garland's new movie may focus on a group of journalists covering a second Civil War in the US, but he doesn't see the film as inherently American.
"I don't exactly see it as an American story," he tells GamesRadar+ and Inside Total Film. "There's two primary elements in the film. One is about journalism and the other one is about polarised politics and populism – extremism, essentially – and neither of those things are in any way contained to America."
The film stars Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Cailee Spaeny as a group of photographers and reporters traveling through a divided and wartorn US on their way from New York City to Washington DC to record the fall of the fascistic, totalitarian president (Nick Offerman).
"I mean, right now we're talking in the UK and the UK has absolutely had an issue with polarized politics and populism and also an issue with the kind of traction that journalists are able to get, and what they're competing with in their voices as they're trying to make a point, what the nature of public discourse is," Garland continues. "So then you could legitimately say, 'Well, why not set it here? And I think the difference is that the UK is essentially a relatively inconsequential country in many important respects.
