Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce presented Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, the story of a Hungarian architect in post-war America, at Picturehouse Central.
Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist had its UK special screening at Picturehouse Central in the West End on Wednesday 15 January 2025, nine days before it opened in British cinemas. Adrien Brody, who plays the architect László Tóth, led the cast.
Corbet wrote the film with Mona Fastvold, his partner. It follows Tóth, a Holocaust survivor trained at the Bauhaus, from his arrival in Pennsylvania in 1947 through an industrialist’s commission that consumes the next decade of his life.
Corbet shot it on VistaVision, a widescreen film format barely used since the early 1960s, and it runs three and a half hours with an interval. It won the Silver Lion for direction at Venice in 2024.
Brody was born in Queens in 1973, the son of the Hungarian-born photographer Sylvia Plachy. Roman Polanski’s The Pianist made him, at 29, the youngest winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor. The Brutalist has roots in his mother’s own emigration.
In March 2025 Brody collected his second Academy Award for Best Actor for the role of Tóth.
Guy Pearce plays the industrialist, and Felicity Jones plays Tóth’s wife, Erzsébet. Fastvold attended the screening with Corbet.