Florian Zeller, the Oscar-winning writer of The Father, premiered his psychological thriller Bunker, with Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, as a London Film Festival gala.
Florian Zeller, the Oscar-winning writer of The Father, gave Bunker its UK premiere at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank on Saturday 10 October 2026. Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz play a marriage under strain.
Zeller was born in Paris in 1979. He graduated from Sciences Po in 2001 and published his first novel, Artificial Snow, at 22.
The theatre made his name. His 2020 film of his play The Father, with Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman, won him and Christopher Hampton the Academy Award for adapted screenplay. In 2025 he was elected to the Académie française.
Bunker is his third feature as director, and he wrote it alone. After 17 years of marriage, an architect and his publisher wife watch their lives come apart when he agrees to build a luxury bunker for a tech billionaire.
The screening was a gala of the seventieth London Film Festival, ahead of the film’s British release through StudioCanal.
Stephen Graham, Paul Dano and Patrick Schwarzenegger join Bardem and Cruz in the cast, and the film plays in Spanish and English.