Edward Berger Confirms Brad Pitt Film 'The Riders' Has Wrapped

Edward Berger has confirmed that 'The Riders,' his A24 film starring Brad Pitt, has already been shot. The director revealed the status of the project at Evolution Mallorca, where he received this year's Evolution Vision Award.

Berger described the film as a 'singular perspective story told through the eyes of Brad Pitt.' It adapts Tim Winton's eponymous novel. 'It's a story of a man who's renovating a cottage in the '80s, in Ireland, waiting for his daughter and wife to show up,' he said. 'Only the daughter shows up, and then they go on a European Odyssey to find [the wife.] [They go] to Greece, Brussels, Amsterdam… I won't tell you what happens or if he finds her [laughs].'

Who is making 'The Riders'?

A24 financed the film and will distribute it. David Kajganich, the frequent Luca Guadagnino collaborator behind 'Bones and All' and 'Suspiria,' wrote the screenplay. Producers include Ridley Scott's Scott Free, Berger's Nine Hours, Pitt's Plan B and Kajganich himself. The cast adds Julianne Nicholson, Danny Huston, Camille Cottin, Michael Smiley and Lara Pulver.

What does directing a child change?

Berger compared 'The Riders' to his Berlinale breakout 'Jack,' which starred then 12-year-old Ivo Pietzcker. His new film features seven-year-old Coco Greenstone as Pitt's on-screen daughter. Working with children, he said, means constant logistical pressure.

'You have too many needs,' he recalled of 'Jack.' '[Pietzcker] was shooting for six or eight weeks, so he needs a tutor for school, he needs someone to prep him […] The hard thing is the clock is running. We had an exemption from the city where we could shoot with him for six hours, and usually it's five hours. Every day I literally got the shot one minute before the six hours. It's really stressful.'

'And we just made a film with another kid,' he added. 'It was the same thing. It's like every day you just get it just before they take them.'

Why he returned to German war material

Berger also revisited 'All Quiet on the Western Front,' the four-time Oscar winner. He initially resisted the offer from a longtime producer friend because he 'wanted to make an English-language film.' 'Conclave' was already percolating. Still, he felt compelled: 'I can't escape this. It's something that I am going to have to do.'

The Austrian-Swiss director said he sensed that 'international institutions that had brought us peace for a long time were being questioned. Nationalism was on the rise.' He added: 'You know, a hundred years ago, life seemed glorious too.' Coming from Germany, the country that 'originated those wars,' he wanted to share 'the feeling of weight that I grew up with—or responsibility or shame.'

How 'Conclave' followed

Berger needed 'two, three months to wash off' 'All Quiet.' 'It was almost traumatic afterwards,' he said. 'Every day I came home from the edit, went swimming in the lake and tried to wash it off.' He wanted order after 'so much stress, so much chaos, so much destruction.'

He modeled 'Conclave,' also an Oscar winner, on 1970s political conspiracy thrillers: Alan J. Pakula's 'All the President's Men,' 'Klute' and 'The Parallax View.' 'Those three films were the example for it,' he said. He feared audiences would not watch 'a bunch of people vote for one Catholic,' so he cut new versions weekly and screened them for friends. 'And they'd tear it apart,' he said. 'I don't want to get that after the premiere.'

With 'The Riders' in the can and A24 set to distribute, Berger's next test is whether a child-driven odyssey can carry the momentum of two consecutive Oscar-winning films.