Romain Gavras in Athens. The director hardly needs an introduction. From the music videos that made his one of the most recognizable signatures of his generation to Athena, he has built a cinematic world in which excess is not merely an aesthetic choice but a way of speaking about society, power, and their contradictions.
Sacrifice, his first English-language feature, takes that vision a step further and sets much of it in Greece. The film premiered in Athens, on Saturday, Oct. 3, attended by Gavras, his partner Emily Ratajkowski, and star Vincent Cassel, alongside figures from art, fashion, and Greek public life. The choice was fitting: Greece is not just a backdrop here but a defining element of the film’s look and atmosphere.
The story unfolds at an ultra-luxurious charity gala where celebrities and billionaires gather for a night of conspicuous wealth and social conscience. Among them is Mike Tyler (Chris Evans), a washed-up action star angling for a comeback. The host is billionaire Ben Bracken (Cassel), with Salma Hayek Pinault as his wife, Gloria.
The glittering evening turns violent when Joan (Anya Taylor-Joy) storms the event with her followers and takes the guests hostage. Convinced the world faces imminent catastrophe, she insists only a sacrifice can avert it: three people must be offered to a nearby volcano within three days.
The party of the powerful becomes a bizarre ritual of survival.
Shot entirely on location in Greece, Bulgaria, and Iceland, the film’s most striking setting is the marble quarry at Volakas, in northern Greece’s Drama region, transformed into an otherworldly gala venue.
Some 200 extras in formal wear joined the cast there, creating a surreal tableau: cold white marble against evening gowns, tuxedos, and an elite celebrating while the world outside seems to collapse.
The landscape is personal for Gavras, who in 2022 spoke of childhood memories of Greek marble quarries and of the hold that Cape Sounion and the Isthmus of Corinth had on him. In Sacrifice, those memories come of age. This Greece is no postcard. It is wild, vast, almost menacing, a place where people who have everything must face the most primal fear of all: death.
Beneath the spectacle, the film asks what philanthropy means when it becomes part of a public image, and what happens when people used to buying almost anything meet something they cannot control.
The cast also includes John Malkovich, Ambika Mod, Yung Lean, and Charli xcx, while Will Arbery of Succession co-wrote the screenplay.
