Cate Blanchett Unearths Iron Age Corpse in Political Satire ‘Rumours’ Trailer

In the opening scene of the Rumours red band trailer, an archeologist unearths an Iron Age corpse, mummified with its severed penis hanging from its neck. As the summit host and German representative Hilda Orlmann, played by Cate Blanchett, describes the bog body, the G7 leaders in attendance can’t help but wince and give distasteful stares, with one global leader calling it “gruesome.” Following the ceremony, representatives of the world’s wealthiest democracies are stranded in the woods and chased by ancient bodies in a conference gone horribly wrong.

In Rumours, which follows the seven leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, it’s Germany’s turn to host the G7 with the aim of drafting a statement on the vaguely described “global crisis.” Ean Johnson, Galen Johnson, and Guy Maddin direct the political satire, and cast members include Rolando Ravello, Charles Dance, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Roy Dupuis, Denis Ménochet, Takehiro Hira, Zlatko Burić, and Alicia Vikander.

During the film’s Cannes Film Festival premiere in May, Galen Johnson shared that the film draws inspiration from the Fleetwood Mac album of the same name. He added that the filmmakers perused a “list of 10 best album names and Rumours was on there and we liked that name.”

“Rumours the album was famously creatively fraught and everyone was sleeping with each other, so it made sense to us,” Galen Johnson continued. “No one questioned it. We thought people, producers, and financiers, would be like, ‘Why Rumours?’ But no one ever questioned it, so it just made the title.”