At the 20th edition of Festa del Cinema di Roma, filmmaker Ari Aster presented his latest work, “Eddington” — a story set in small-town New Mexico, where a fragile community spirals into conflict and paranoia. The film, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal, reimagines the American Western through the lens of modern technology and social division.

Speaking with FRED Film Radio, Aster described the film’s origins and the atmosphere that inspired it.
“The film is set at the end of May, the beginning of June 2020, and that’s when I started writing it,” he explained. “I would say the initial inspiration was just kind of what was in the air; it felt like things were more fraught than I had ever experienced in the country.”

The director continued:
“Since writing it, things have only become more fraught and more uncertain and more worrying. And so I guess the film kind of just came out of my alarm over where we were, where we seemed to be headed, and just trying to get my hands around it and trying to wrestle with a lot of what I was feeling.”

A Western About Small-Town Rivalries

While “Eddington” explores contemporary issues, Aster grounded it in one of the oldest American genres: the Western. But, as he points out, it’s a Western reimagined for our age.

“Part of the project became, okay, how do I pull back as far as I can and include as much of the culture as possible while still telling a…” he said, reflecting on his creative process. “And in the end, the film is, it’s a satire, it’s many things, but it’s a Western. And it’s a movie about small-town rivalries that intensify and lead to violence.”

In “Eddington”, those rivalries are no longer fought with guns — but with digital weapons. The sheriff and mayor’s feud becomes a metaphor for how technology and online tension bleed into real life, blurring the lines between communication and confrontation.

Technology as the New Frontier

One of the most striking elements of “Eddington” is its depiction of smartphones as instruments of both connection and destruction. Aster acknowledged that this was central to the film’s design.

“I think that there’s a tendency, especially in contemporary films, to sort of retreat from the moment, from the present, because there’s something kind of unpleasant about the moment, and there’s something not very interesting about people on their phones.”

He challenges that assumption directly:
“But I do find that there’s something very insidious about how much we live on our phones and how glued we are to our phones and how dependent we are on them. And I wanted to make a film that didn’t exaggerate, it doesn’t exaggerate, you know, how much we want our phones, but it also, it strives to acknowledge how often we are on our phones.”

Aster underlines that the story isn’t about excess or exaggeration, but about reflecting reality as it is.
“It’s a movie that I think maybe underscores phone usage more than most would. But at the same time, I don’t think anybody’s on their phone in this film more than you or I might be.”

A Reflection of Our Moment

“Eddington” emerges as both a satire and a social mirror, capturing the anxieties of 2020 and the constant hum of digital life. Through his distinctive tone and perspective, Ari Aster transforms a local story of rivalry into a universal parable of disconnection and dependence.

The film, set in a small town but resonating far beyond, marks a shift in Aster’s career — from the psychological horror of “Hereditary“ and “Midsommar“ to a new kind of horror: one rooted in everyday behavior, in what we see and share.

His words remind us of the urgency that inspired the film:
“It felt like things were more fraught than I had ever experienced in the country… I guess the film came out of my alarm over where we were.”

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