European Film Awards 2026 Interview: BUGONIA Production Designer James Price

Yorgos Lanthimos once again grounds his singular cinematic logic in a world that feels disarmingly tangible, even as it edges toward the absurd, the conspiratorial, and the extraterrestrial, in Bugonia.

The film’s uneasy balance between banality and rupture is carried, to a remarkable degree, by its production design: a rigorously conceived, fully functioning house that is less a backdrop than a psychological engine for the film itself. Built from the ground up on the outskirts of London, basement, utilities, drainage and all, it embodies Lanthimos’s long-standing resistance to artifice.

The film’s production designer James Price reflects on a collaboration defined by trust, iteration, and an almost obstinate commitment to physical reality in the interview with Screen Anarchy. From the earliest script response, likened to a Coen Brothers fever dream, to the logistical gamble of sinking shipping containers into chalk soil, the interview offers a rare, granular look at how Bugonia was shaped through design choices.

Price was nominated for European Production Designer at the 38th European Film Awards for his work on Bugonia and has won an Academy Award for best production design on Poor Things.

Screen Anarchy: How did Yorgos Lanthimos get you on the project?

James Price: Oh, I mean, it was just a script. He sent me a script because we’d already worked together before. I didn’t do Kinds of Kindness because I was doing another movie in America at the time. So he sent me a one-line email saying, “I’m going to send you a script, might be my next movie, let me know what you think.”

I read it and I loved it. I mean, it’s everything I love. I found it very funny, very much of the moment, and then you’ve got this completely mad ending. I was like, this ticks all the boxes. We can build a house that’s a completely real, believable place, and then we’ve got to create aliens, which, by definition, can’t be normal. So you really have to think about that. That in itself is exciting.

What were your initial conversations about how and where to make the film?

We spoke about it and I said, look, because we’ve both done movies in America, we won’t find a house there that can do everything you want. But I think we could build one and tailor-make it. And maybe we should do this in Europe, because it’s very expensive to shoot in the States.

I also said that the alien element at the end would take a lot of thinking and research, figuring out what it actually is, because you’re not going to be happy with some kind of Star Trek alien scenario.

That was basically it. He liked the idea of doing it in Europe. For ease, really, because a lot of his collaborators in this English-language phase live in London, he thought we should base ourselves there and work from that side. And it evolved like that.

What does that development phase look like for you?

You do look books, mood boards, maybe some drawings. You make a plan. Then you come back and he’ll say, “Okay, what out of this do you really hate?” And it evolves. Then you go away again and do more. He might come back and say, “Do you know Matthew Barney?”, he mentioned him on this, and I’d be like, no, not really. So you look into that.

I think he doesn’t want to say too much too early. He wants you to bring something, because that’s why you’ve been hired. Early on you know the fixed points, we know it has to have a basement, for example, but beyond that, it’s open.

What was it about the script itself that spoke to you so strongly?

It reminded me of the Coen Brothers at their best, somewhere between Fargo and The Big Lebowski. I could imagine them making it in the ’90s. That was the feeling when I read it.

 Did you look at the original Korean film?

Yeah, I watched it because I hadn’t seen it. It’s completely mad, bonkers, but very different. They’re in an abandoned mine, they’re not cousins, he has a girlfriend. But essentially it’s the same story, just in a very different framework.

How did the finished film strike you the first time you saw it?

I was amazed by how much of the moment it felt. Very fresh. A lot of people in their twenties really love it, much more than people my age. It really connects with that generation. It’s just a shame they don’t go to the cinema. They’re streaming it instead of seeing it properly on a big screen.

With BUGONIA, you didn’t use studios at all?

Nothing in a studio. We built the house from scratch. Dug a massive hole, dropped seven shipping containers in, cut them up, welded them together, and built a framed house on top. You could walk all the way around it. It was up a small road, about a mile from anything else.

We put in half a kilometer of telegraph poles and power lines, because in America utilities are above ground. And we avoided anything too English, no quaint hedgerows. I’d done a lot of research while shooting The Iron Claw in the south of the US. And we never would have found exactly the house we needed. So I was like, we should create it.

It’s like what Jack Fisk did on Days of Heaven, building the house. It does get done, but people don’t usually build the interior and exterior together. And that’s something I’d always wanted to do, because it becomes an immersive space.

How long did preparation take, and how did pre-prep unfold?

We started pre-prep at the end of 2023. That’s the real development phase, designing the house and finding a suitable location.

We had three possible locations, because in the UK you need planning permission. It’s what they call temporary permanent permission. We were digging a huge hole, so there were strict rules, no weekends, finishing at Six pm and no work on weekends.

I originally wanted 14 weeks to build. Then it became 11. Then ten. At that point the producers came to supervising art director A. Makin and me and said, “Can you do it in ten weeks?” And if you say no, the film doesn’t happen. So we said yes, and we did it. From digging the hole to finishing the house: ten weeks.

And you were integrating the technical side at the same time?

Yeah. We designed everything in Blender, which is an open-source 3D modelling programme. It’s incredible. We model every space before we build it, so we know exactly where everything goes, including the lighting.

It looks incredibly American for something built in London.

We built everything from scratch. The basement and everything. Originally, when I first proposed the plan to Yorgos, I suggested we do the basement separately, in a more traditional way, on a studio set. And then one day we were scouting and he said, “Why don’t we just build the basement with the house?” And I was like, well, because I didn’t think anyone would let us, it’s kind of crazy.

And he said, “Come on, think of the benefit for the film. It will be so much better.” And he was right, about 90 percent of the film happens in that basement. You don’t know what you’re going to hit underground, it could have been rock, anything. So we did some test excavation holes, and it turned out to be fine. It was chalk. It drained well.

We had a lot of rain. It only flooded once, and that was because we had sump pumps running, and someone turned them off over the weekend. Locations were like, “Oh, we turned the power off.” And we were like, no, the whole point is it has to stay on.

It sounds like a very iterative process, with several phases. Given his very distinctive style, I always imagined that he already has a very fixed vision and brings people in to execute it.

No, not like that. Not like a Wes Anderson style. I don’t actually know what Wes Anderson is like to work with, but I imagine it’s very much, “This is the Wes Anderson style.” I don’t think I could work for Wes Anderson, because it would be like: this is the thing, this is the look.

The incredible thing about Yorgos is that you can always distinctly tell it’s a Yorgos film, even when he didn’t write the script, like on this one. But there’s also an eerie sense about it, a feeling that anything can happen. At the same time, it feels remarkably free. You never feel constrained.

All I know is that when I work with Yorgos, no one works me as hard as he does. No one pushes me like that. With other directors, I often find I’m the one pushing myself, because they’ll say, “Oh yeah, that’s great.” But Yorgos, he’s such a perfectionist, such an artist. He has an incredible eye for detail and sensibility.

He can look at a photo and say, “No, that set’s good, but it’s just a set at the moment.” And you’re like, okay, you have to go to another level. But it pushes you creatively to do your best work. He really pushes you.

And in the end, it’s all through iteration. He always assumes that the easiest solution is probably not the right one. Sometimes it is, but for him, it’s in his nature to keep pushing. Not in a bad way, but in a disciplined, creative way.

We’ve got over a hundred years of cinema now, and it’s very hard to do something that feels new. A lot of the good directors I’ve worked with are very controlled internally. They’re not loud on set. You don’t necessarily notice them. They’re thinking all the time.

You have to really consider every decision that’s being made, and then trust the people around you to make the right decisions too.

How did building the whole house affect the way BUGONIA was shot?

It worked perfectly with the way Yorgos likes to shoot, almost like a theatre company. He doesn’t like having the crew around. So all the crew were in sheds. Upstairs, makeup had one bedroom. Lighting had one of the sheds. And the only way you could really tell it wasn’t a real house was that one of the garden sheds had an access staircase under the house that led into the basement from the back.

But we wired it like a real house. You build the wooden frame, you run the wires properly, you do the first fix, then you put the walls in, then the roof, everything. The drainage worked. The shower really worked. The sink really worked. It was kind of stuck in a ’90s time period as well.

Many of the details regarding the interior design that told the story of Teddy´s previous life in the house weren’t actually in the script, were they?

No, this is all in our heads. It’s about making the whole thing believable. You have to create a complete backstory. I always compare it to scenic painting. If you say to a scenic painter, “Can you age this room?” and they put a damp spot right in the middle of the wall, it might look beautifully painted, it might look great, but it doesn’t feel right. Because you think, why is there a damp spot there? What’s the story? Where did the water come from? How did it get there?

So with any good scenic painting, or good set decoration, there has to be a reason for everything. You have to think about why that’s there. Why is that phone open like that? Everything. And as soon as you can quantify it, it becomes totally believable.

It’s like the world of Poor Things. People say, “Oh, it’s so magical,” but it’s also incredibly practical. It works on a very real level. Those houses, those places, those machines, there’s thought behind why they evolved that way.

So you kind of have to do this, it’s almost like, I sometimes joke, “method dressing.” You really have to think about why everything exists. His house is full of his mum’s old drugs, for example. That tells you something immediately.

And that gives the actors a different kind of freedom?

Exactly. They can just be. They can tell the story in the way that feels right to them. They don’t have to reach for anything from the art department, they can just exist in that space.

The lighting works, too. Yorgos is very strict about that. He won’t allow film lights inside the set. You can light through a window with a film light, but you can’t bring a light in and just give someone a bit of extra fill. You have to do it with practical lights. That’s his thing.

Is that about realism?

Yeah, reality. He likes to feel it, to believe it. And I think that’s because he has difficulty believing something himself if it doesn’t feel real. That’s why it’s such a beautiful thing to build sets for him. There are other filmmakers where you’d say, “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll fix that in post.” Whereas with Yorgos, it’s like, no, we’re going to build everything. Because otherwise he won’t believe it himself.

And that’s great for the actors. They love it. But it’s also difficult, because you need producers who buy into that way of working. Other producers would say, “What’s cheaper? Why are you doing that?

I just got told off on a movie recently I built this massive courtroom, put a roof on it, everything. We were on budget, but they were like, “Why did you build all of that?” And I said, because the actor had never acted in a courtroom before. Now he’s totally in a courtroom. He believes he’s in that space.

Every time he looks around, he’s oppressed by the architecture. It affects his performance. And I’m like, thank you, I’m making his performance better. That’s what I believe in: you build, you settle, you make the world as believable as you possibly can. If I believe it, then surely everyone else will believe it too.

POOR THINGS must have been a very different challenge.

Oh, massively. It was horrendous. So hard. Because it was so big, so many worlds. That’s why they brought two of us on. We had a lot of money, but in a very compressed schedule, which is brutal.

We shot everything in Hungary. Lisbon was the big one. We initially thought we will build Lisbon outside as we were with London, but Yorgos really wanted to do it on a stage. It was a very tricky set to shoot on and it still gives Yorgos and Robbie Ryan cold shivers when its name is mentioned. But for many people who love the film, it’s their favourite set.

I always call it a theme park. But the real validation is when crew members, riggers, electricians, people who’ve seen hundreds of sets, people who’ve just come off Dune, come up and say, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” That’s when you know you’ve done something right.

Even if it didn’t function perfectly as a set, it was an incredible place to be. It would make a great theme park.