Dead Man's Wire

Dead Man's Wire

Dead Man's Wire

USA, 2025, 103’
Director: Gus Van Sant
Cast: Al Pacino (M.L. Hall), Bill Skarsgård (Tony Kiritsis), Cary Elwes (Michael Grable), Colman Domingo (Fred Temple)

Venice ’25 – Out of Competition; Campari Passion for Film Award for director Gus Van Sant

A crime drama based on true events from 1977. Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) kidnaps his mortgage broker Richard Hall and uses a “dead man’s switch” (a self-triggering mechanism). Al Pacino appears as the hostage’s eccentric, Southern-accented father. The kidnapper demands a hefty ransom of five million dollars and a public apology — and the entire ordeal is broadcast live on television.
Dead Man’s Wire marks Gus Van Sant’s impressive return to the socially engaged yet stylistically refined filmmaking that made his early works iconic. The director uses the atmosphere of the 1970s not as a vintage backdrop but as a mirror of contemporary social tensions — the individual’s desperate struggle against institutional indifference, corporate power, and a manipulative media landscape. Bill Skarsgård’s powerful performance as Kiritsis and the strong supporting cast highlight the absurdity of the crisis, as the film explores how systems fail to protect those who need them most.
A blend of dark humor, impeccable form, and sharp social critique, Dead Man’s Wire proves that Van Sant remains an auteur faithful to both his aesthetic and his social sensibility. Its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, alongside the honorary Campari Passion for Film Award, makes the film a significant milestone in the director’s career and an important contribution to the broader dialogue between cinema and society.