COUP!

The Spanish flu rages, claiming victim after victim. Trying to outrun the epidemic, a journalist and his aristocrat wife take refuge in their seaside estate, with their servants and a mysterious cook, only recently hired. The island they’re in won’t save the from the disease, and the couple find themselves isolated when the cook tries to take over the villa heading a servants’ revolution.
New York filmmaker Austin Stark‘s Coup! is the closing film, screened out of competition, at the Venice Days programme. A story that “is not about the Spanish Flu, Covid, or any other pandemic. It is about a class struggle and cultural divide that has existed for centuries. It is about the thin line between civilization and savagery. In this struggle to survive, the real threat to emerge is not the loss of human life – but the loss of what makes us human.”