Lea Seydoux Viggo Mortensen Crimes of the Future
Lea Seydoux and Viggo Mortensen in Crimes of the Future courtesy of NEONCredit: C/O

Viggo Mortensen, Kristen Stewart and Léa Seydoux explore each other’s changing bodies as humanity evolves in new ways in the trailer for David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future.

“I can feel you pulling things around in there,” Mortensen says to Seydoux in the trailer as she maneuvers a strange medical tool similar to an ultrasound wand around his abdomen.

“It’s a brand new organ, never-before-seen,” Seydoux’s character replies.

An official selection of the 2022 Cannes Competition, Crimes of the Future takes place in a future timeline when humanity is adapting to a synthetic environment and the human body is undergoing transformations and mutations.

The story follows celebrity performance artist Saul Tenser (Mortensen) and his partner, Caprice (Seydoux) as Tenser publically showcases the metamorphosis of his organs in avant-garde performances. Meanwhile, an investigator from the National Organ Registry named Timlin (Stewart), begins to obsessively track their movements. Then, a mysterious group’s mission to use Tenser’s notoriety to shed light on the next phase of human evolution is revealed.

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“Crimes of the Future is a meditation on human evolution,” Cronenberg writes in his director’s statement. “Specifically — the ways in which we have had to take control of the process because we have created such powerful environments that did not exist previously. Crimes of the Future is an evolution of things I have done before. Fans will see key references to other scenes and moments from my other films. That’s a continuity of my understanding of technology as connected to the human body.

“Technology is always an extension of the human body, even when it seems to be very mechanical and non-human. A fist becomes enhanced by a club or a stone that you throw — but ultimately, that club or stone is an extension of some potency that the human body already has. At this critical junction in human history, one wonders — can the human body evolve to solve problems we have created? Can the human body evolve a process to digest plastics and artificial materials not only as part of a solution to the climate crisis, but also, to grow, thrive, and survive?”

In addition to Viggo Mortensen (A History of Violence, Hidalgo, Green Book) Léa Seydoux (No Time to Die, The French Dispatch, Blue is the Warmest Colour) and Kristen Stewart (Spencer, Clouds of Sils Maria, Twilight) the film also stars Scott Speedman (Grey’s Anatomy, Barney’s Version, Adoration, Underworld) Welket Bungué (Berlin Alexanderplatz) Don McKellar (Blindness, eXistenZ) Yorgos Pirpassopoulos (Beckett, Monday) Tanaya Beatty (Yellowstone, Through Black Spruce) Nadia Litz (Big Muddy, Hotel Congress, Blindness) Lihi Kornowski (Losing Alice) and Denise Capezza (Gomorrah).

Crimes of the Future is produced by Robert Lantos, Panos Papahadzis, and Steve Solomos with Laura Lanktree co-producing and Bonnie Do associate producing. Executive producers include Joe Iacono, Aida Tannyan, Peter Touche, Christelle Conan, Tom Quinn, Jeff Deutchman, Christian Parkes, and Thorsten Schumacher, and co-executive producers include Victor Hadida, Victor Loewy, Charles Tremblay, and Ariane Giroux-Dallaire.

Crimes of the Future is distributed by NEON in the U.S., Metropolitan Filmexport in France, Weltkino in Germany, MK2 | MILE END in Canada, The Searchers in Belgium, Capellain Russia, Argonauts in Greece, Movie Cloud in Taiwan, and Front Row in the Middle East. Rocket Science is handling international sales.

Watch the trailer above.

Main Image: Lea Seydoux and Viggo Mortensen in Crimes of the Future courtesy of NEON.

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