Ruben Östlund’s Plattform Produktion has joined “Toxic,” the forthcoming satirical workplace drama from “Club Zero” director Jessica Hausner, which is among the projects being pitched during the Venice Gap-Financing Market taking place Sept. 4 – 6.
The pan-European co-production is produced by Schubert (Austria), Essential Films (Germany), Société Parisienne de Production (France) and Plattform Produktion (Sweden). International sales will be repped by the Coproduction Office.
Told across four chapters, “Toxic” explores different aspects of the modern world of work. Through contemporary parables, it follows employees and employers within a capitalist system on the verge of outpacing itself. With a tone at times realistic, at others more absurd, it’s tied together by the human element that acts as the sand in the gears of a profit-driven world.
“Meaning in life is really created through the ideology of our society. As an individual, I don’t think one can find meaning all alone,” she said. “Meaning is created through others — through the eyes of my fellows in society. It is very much a question bound to the system we work in.”
Hausner’s last film, “Club Zero,” was set at a British boarding school where a nutrition teacher — played by Mia Wasikowska — pushed a gospel of mindful abstinence on her students, transforming them into a cult. In a glowing review out of Cannes, Variety’s Owen Gleiberman praised the “gripping and provocative” film as an “audaciously disturbing drama.”
Speaking to Variety from her home in Vienna, Hausner explained how “Toxic” is in conversation with her previous films.
But what happens when society is in flux? Across Europe, the director noted, governments are mulling whether the continent’s work-life balance needs to be reconsidered. “The social system is becoming less affordable. This is an economic problem,” she said. “Many countries in Europe have to shift their social expenses from social care into building more weapons.”
Meanwhile, inequality is growing, and work itself, as Hausner put it, “no longer pays off, neither financially nor in terms of fulfilment.”
As “Toxic” illustrates, that leaves societies with many difficult questions and no easy answers — least of all from the tech barons and free-market evangelists who push capitalism as the miracle cure to all that ails us.
