Rumours

Seven leaders of the world’s most powerful countries must fend for themselves in a mystical forest filled with odd and hilarious horrors. Rumours is an endlessly unexpected and always absurd satire that prods at the embers of neoliberal failure.

In response to an unnamed global crisis, the leaders of the G7 countries – made up of some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful democracies – gather together beneath a gazebo in a forest to draft a provisional statement. However, they soon find themselves left on their own in the face of eerie sights and sounds. Panicked, the seven quickly become lost in the woods amidst a thickening fog and the frightening appearance of reanimated bog bodies. What is to befall our once so-called noble leaders, now bumbling and inept fools who begin to reveal their farcical desires and out-of-touch worldviews?

Never shy in its outlandishness, Rumours is an outrageous politico-satirical playground. The auteurs from Winnipeg, Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, juggle absurdity and nonsense to deliver a genre-bending commentary skewering the emptiness of neoliberal political messaging, sandwiched between a barrage of intentionally incoherent meta-babble. Cate Blanchett, Charles Dance, Alicia Vikander, and a terrific ensemble cast, as the world leaders, revel in the most spectacularly oddball roles of their careers. A gigantic glowing brain is not even the strangest thing they’ll encounter in this delirious, kooky and preternatural forest.

– Olivia Popp

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