Humanity should work collectively or else, Peter Sarsgaard (Useless Man Strolling, Boys Don’t Cry) advised reporters throughout a Saturday roundtable interview carried out as a part of the 59th version of the Karlovy Fluctuate Worldwide Movie Pageant (KVIFF), through which he additionally defined why he joined a “No Kings” protest on U.S. President Donald Trump’s birthday, and why he doesn’t imagine in Elon Musk’s Mars colonization plans as a approach to secure the human race.
Sarsgaard shared his ideas and insights after receiving the KVIFF President’s Award throughout the pageant opening ceremony on Friday night time. In his acceptance speech, he spoke out in opposition to divisions, particularly within the U.S., saying: “The enemies are the forces that divide us.” He added: “There isn’t a going it alone. As my nation retreats from its world obligations and tries to go it alone, additionally it is being divided into factions from inside — factions of politics, gender, sexuality, race, Jews cut up over the warfare.” Sarsgaard’s spouse, Maggie Gyllenhaal, identifies as Jewish.
Given such risks as local weather change and nuclear or different warfare, Sarsgaard mentioned: “We’re all going to die. Our kids are all going to stay on the identical planet, and perhaps Elon [Musk]’s will stay on Mars. It doesn’t look that good to me. I feel you must be born on Mars and by no means have seen Earth to assume Mars is good.”
He continued: “We’re all fucked. So now we have to attach. It’s quite simple. That’s not even political. I’m not political in that means. I’m not endorsing candidates.”
Sarsgaard first referenced Musk when requested about his upcoming Apple TV+ sequence, the ebook adaptation Neuromancer, which he’s presently capturing. “I play a man who has created a sort of AI that’s used all around the world, and he’s principally essentially the most highly effective, richest man on the planet,” he defined. “And since the world goes to shit, he has a spot the place he may be that’s [far] away. So, I’m taking part in this man who type of manages to essentially get away, away from Earth, Elon Musk-style – ‘we’ll simply go to Mars whereas this one goes to shit.’ There isn’t a place to go! So that basically me.”
Sarsgaard then talked about how apocalypse-fearing expertise and different billionaires have been constructing survivalist bunkers. “I’ve heard extra wealthy individuals discuss this. Many rich individuals are shopping for properties, say, in New Zealand, they usually’ve heard that that’s the place to be,” he defined. “There isn’t a fucking place to be except you will have a nuclear arsenal to maintain everybody else at bay!! There isn’t a place to go. We’re all on this collectively. In order that theme me. I used to be additionally a giant fan of the ebook. I learn it in highschool, and I simply cherished a whole lot of the language. I’m going to get to satisfy [the author] William Gibson. He’s within the present, and he had traces like ‘undulating tsunamis of pleasure.’ I keep in mind a whole lot of the language is so muscular and loopy.”
The star additionally shared that he has his personal place distant, however he doesn’t anticipate to be secure there if a disaster strikes. “I even have a chunk of property that’s means out within the woods and has its personal water supply,” he mentioned. “It’s an excellent place to be, perhaps, for local weather change. And I hear individuals say this typically: ‘The place’s the most effective place to be for local weather change?’ When it occurs, there’s no place to be, since you assume the world goes to remain within the desert, the place there’s no water? Everybody’s going to go. They don’t care that you just personal the property.”
Notably, the theme of AI and machines having an growing function in changing human interactions additionally performs into Sarsgaard’s fear a few lack of social connections. In 2023, Sarsgaard warned about AI. “I feel we will all actually agree that an actor is an individual and {that a} author is an individual, however apparently we will’t,” he mentioned on the Venice Worldwide Movie Pageant again then. He urged the business to not hand over tales about connections “to the machines and the eight billionaires that personal them.”
Talking of billionaires, Sarsgaard advised reporters in Karlovy Fluctuate on Saturday that, “I like going to a protest typically to take a look at all these individuals. ‘We will do it! All of us imagine in one thing larger’.” The latest protest was a giant one, and he went to it along with his 13-year-old daughter. “I went to the one on Trump’s birthday, the anti-Trump’s birthday – the ‘No Kings’ protest,” he mentioned. “I went to the one which was proper exterior the New York Public Library.”
Peter Sarsgaard on the 2025 Karlovy Fluctuate Worldwide Movie Pageant opening ceremony the place he acquired the KVIFF President’s Award
Courtesy of FIlm Servis Karlovy Fluctuate
His daughter “was actually moved a few collective motion like that,” the actor recalled. “I do know it appears political, however to me, ‘No Kings’ just isn’t that political. All the ability consolidated within the fewest variety of individuals appears like a foul thought. I imagine, I suppose, in a sort of mixture of socialism and democracy. However I don’t know what to name it. I I feel there are different individuals who know that shit higher than I do. I simply need all people to have an equal alternative.”
On the finish of his dialog with this group of reporters, Sarsgaard defined what’s subsequent for him after Neuromancer. It’s a movie with Swiss director Michael Koch that is known as Erosion. Koch’s A Piece of Sky was made with non-actors, “so I’ll even be performing with largely non-actors,” the star defined. “We’re filming it in Lucerne. He wrote the function for me.”
He portrays a talented individual. “I play a mind surgeon,” Sarsgaard mentioned. “I’ve been going to all these mind surgical procedures, and I’ve been going to so many mind surgical procedures that at this level I’m sort of like feeling I may do it.”
He additionally shared in regards to the function: “It’s a very large canvas for me as an actor. I’m in each body of the film, and it’s not only a lead function in that sense. It’s a personality who actually goes someplace. He begins in a single place, and he results in one other. I don’t know the place it is going to be. I’m curious, and I actually belief this director. He’s a very visible storyteller, and so I feel that might be an excellent mixture.”
At one level throughout Saturday’s dialog, Sarsgaard lauded his spouse, Gyllenhaal, for being such a educated director. Might followers ever see him sit within the director’s chair? “Possibly I’ve one film in me to direct at some point,” he replied. “I even have an thought for one thing I wish to direct in some unspecified time in the future, however it will be a really actor-driven factor. And I’ve an appreciation for cinema, and the visible telling of the story, however my spouse has the whole package deal.”
The actor most not too long ago starred in director Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5. He has additionally wrapped manufacturing on Warner Bros.’ The Bride!, which additionally stars Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley and is about for launch later this 12 months. Directed by Gyllenhaal, the movie takes place in Nineteen Thirties Chicago and places a spin on the traditional Frankenstein story.
For his function as a person affected by dementia in Michel Franco’s Reminiscence, reverse Jessica Chastain, Sarsgaard gained the Volpi Cup for finest actor on the 2023 Venice pageant. In sequence, he has starred within the likes of Presumed Harmless, The Killing, and Dopesick.
In unveiling that he would obtain this 12 months’s honor, KVIFF organizers lauded Sarsgaard for being “famend for his vary and talent to entry what’s behind the often-complicated facades of the characters he performs.” Within the actor’s honor, the fest is screening the 2003 journalism drama Shattered Glass.