Caleb Landry Jones, who first appeared in the climax of the Coen brothers’ neo-western No Country for Old Men, recently spoke with Variety about starring in Athina Rachel Tsangari’s upcoming film Harvest.
Landry Jones, acting in roles ranging from the depraved Jeremy Armitage in Jordan Poole’s Get Out to the supersonic superhero Banshee in X-Men: First Class has cemented himself as a staple of off-kilter character portrayals in 21st-century cinema. Following his portrayal of an Australian mass shooter in Nitram (2021), a deeply upsetting and vulnerable performance stemming from the character’s mental anguish, Landry Jones received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor.
In the Summer of 2023, he appeared at the Venice International Film Festival for the premier of the Luc Besson-directed DogMan, a crime thriller set in New Jersey starring Landry Jones as a vigilante committing acts of Robin-Hood-like justice by wielding a large pack of dogs. The aforementioned Harvest, an English debut from Greek director Athina Rachel Tsangari, will be featured in this year’s VIFF.
Tsangari is known for Greek films such as Chevalier and Attenberg as well as multiple co-production credits in works by Yorgos Lanthimos. Harvest is set in the Dark Age and follows villagers as they experience great financial turmoil. In discussing the production of the film, Jones admitted to the difficulty and nigh “impossibility” of making a film like Harvest “because her (Tsangari) vision is very rare right now.”
Production and even Jones himself remained skeptical of the project due to the director’s singular creative vision challenging studio norms. “I know there’s a way to do it. I think if the corporations can stay off backs, because it’s hard enough to make movies as it is. Even on a movie like Harvest, where we were completely isolated, we were still going to have problems. It’s very difficult to make a movie and I think the more money you get, the harder it is, because the more people are involved.” Despite these hurdles, Harvest is set to set to premiere in 2024.