CHILEAN-American actor Pedro Pascal issued an expletive-laced call for Hollywood to resist political pressure in the United States on Saturday while admitting it is “scary” to speak out against President Donald Trump.
Asked about Trump’s immigration policies, “The Last of Us” star told reporters: “It’s very scary for an actor participating in a movie to sort of speak to issues like this.”
“I’m an immigrant. My parents are refugees from Chile. We fled a dictatorship, and I was privileged enough to grow up in the US after asylum in Denmark… I stand by those protections,” the 50-year-old told a news conference in Cannes.
He was at the Cannes film festival alongside Joaquin Phoenix to premiere “Eddington”, an intense and darkly satirical examination of America’s toxic politics set in New Mexico during the Covid pandemic.
Directed by horror specialist Ari Aster, it earned praise for its vaulting ambition, but Time magazine’s critic was one of several who found it “overstuffed with ideas”.
Echoing a message from Robert De Niro on the opening night of Cannes, Pascal insisted that the film industry needed to find the courage to be political.
“So keep telling the stories, keep expressing yourself and keep fighting to be who you are,” he said. “Fuck the people that try to make you scared. And fight back.
“This is the perfect way to do so in telling stories. Don’t let them win.”
 Political Cannes
Trump has made himself one of the main talking points in Cannes this week after announcing on May 5 that he wanted 100-percent tariffs on movies “produced in foreign lands”.
De Niro, who accepted a Cannes lifetime achievement award on Tuesday, urged the audience of A-list directors and actors to resist “America’s philistine president”.
Many film dealmakers in Cannes this week have criticised Trump’s tariff idea, with Scott Jones from Artist View Entertainment telling AFP that the idea “could really hurt us”.
The Cannes Festival on the French Riviera, which runs until next Saturday, has been highly politically charged this year, with US domestic politics as well as the wars in Gaza and Ukraine drawing strong statements.
Megastars Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson ensured attention was still focused on the red carpet on Saturday, however, with the premiere of their film “Die, My Love” by British director Lynn Ramsay.
Fellow Briton Harris Dickinson, the 28-year-old “Babygirl” actor enjoying a lightning rise in the film industry, also showcased his directorial debut “Urchin” to widespread praise.
“Be gentle with me… it’s my first film so if you don’t like it, break it to me nicely,” he said before the screening.
 ‘Furies’
In “Eddington”, Aster offers a portrait of his bitterly divided country that parodies everyone from gun-loving southern US conservatives to virtue-signalling white anti-racism activists.
Emma Stone (“La La Land” and “Poor Things”) plays Phoenix’s wife who gets sucked into a world of paedophile-obsessed conspiracy theorists, with one of them played by “Elvis” heart-throb Austin Butler.
Aster admitted to worrying about America’s direction and set out to dramatise it in his film, whose early social satire gradually gives way to much darker material.
Asked Friday if America’s polarised politics and the breakdown in trust in the media could be setting the country on a path to mass violence, he said: “That is certainly something I’m afraid of.
“It feels like nothing is being done to temper the furies right now,” he added.
“Eddington” is competing for the Palme d’Or top prize in Cannes.
Critics’ favourites so far include German-language drama “The Sound of Falling”, as well as experimental rave road-trip thriller “Sirat”.
Last year’s Cannes winner — “Anora” by Sean Baker — went on to triumph at the Oscars.
Elsewhere in Cannes on Saturday, a man was crushed by a falling palm tree on the main seafront boulevard that is taken by celebs and film insiders every day to access the festival’s venues.
The unidentified victim was left seriously hurt and was taken to hospital.
