A secluded Catalonian villa becomes a gilded pressure cooker when an outsider arrives and a wealthy clan begins to unravel.
The streaming curator MUBI has released the First full trailer for Rosebush Pruning, the latest feature from Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz. The film, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February, unfolds in an isolated Catalonian house where abundance and taste mask brittle relationships. The newly circulating preview foregrounds a strong visual vocabulary and theatrical performances that signal the film’s ambition to be both alluring and unsettling.
At its narrative core is a wealthy family whose routines and rituals start to crack after the arrival of a stranger. Penned by screenwriter Efthimis Filippou, the script maps how characters attempt to obtain affection and status through clothing, music and each other, until long-buried tensions come to light. The press materials describe the group as people who “seek love and validation” through designer wardrobes and pop music, a shorthand that the trailer renders in vivid, sometimes grotesque shorthand.
The trailer leans into high-contrast palettes and meticulously framed interiors to present luxury as both spectacle and trap. Rosebush Pruning favors visual excess: art-directed rooms, saturated colors and compositions that feel staged down to the last cufflink. Dialogue frequently lands with a deliberate affect, suggesting an interest in stylized, almost ritualized speech. That quality recalls the influence of the Greek Weird Wave, a movement associated with unsettling domestic dramas and whose fingerprints are visible in Filippou’s previous work.
The role of the catalytic outsider is inhabited by Elle Fanning, while Callum Turner plays her romantic counterpart. The household around them includes Riley Keough, Jamie Bell and Lukas Gage as siblings; Tracy Letts appears as the blind patriarch; Pamela Anderson is credited as the late mother, described in press notes as having been “ravaged by wolves,” and Elena Anaya provides further support. Together the cast projects an intentionally heightened register that the trailer emphasizes through close-ups, costume calls and deliberate line readings.
Pop star Dua Lipa has recently been visible both for her fashion and her expanding screen work. In social posts she was photographed in a mint-green mini dress that paired floral paisley prints with sheer tights and statement silver jewelry, a look that underscored her crossover status as a style influence. According to accompanying coverage, Dua Lipa is also broadening her acting résumé with appearances in mainstream films and is named among performers associated with Rosebush Pruning in some reports, a move framed as part of her wider pivot from stadium tours to onscreen roles.
Early responses to the film highlight how the ensemble’s relationships are choreographed like a closed system: small gestures and coded exchanges carry narrative weight. The trailer accentuates moments of high camp, carefully staged confrontations and a sense that each decorative object in the villa participates in the drama. That formal control produces an effect that some viewers will find intoxicating while others may perceive it as exhausting; either way, the film stakes its claim on style as substance.
Critical reaction emerging from the Berlin screenings has been mixed. One reviewer for IndieWire awarded the film a C+ and argued that the project reads less as a political manifesto than as an invitation to consume a depiction of the wealthy as they consume one another. The trailer and festival chatter suggest Rosebush Pruning is designed to provoke divided responses: its pleasures are emphatic but not universal. MUBI’s decision to distribute the trailer amplifies that debate ahead of the film’s planned release in the U.S. later this year.
The film arrives at a moment when institutions continue to cultivate emerging talent. On 20/03/2026, Cineuropa reported on the 51st session of the Cannes Film Festival Résidence, noting that since 16 March six directors have been working in Paris with individualized support until 31 July on their first or second feature screenplays. Alumni of the program include established names such as Lucrecia Martel, Karim Aïnouz and others who later achieved international recognition. The current cohort—Saulė Bliuvaitė, Harry Lighton, Emma Branderhorst, Joecar Hanna, Oliver McGoldrick and Mansi Maheshwari—represents the next generation of filmmakers developing projects within that influential incubator.