The crazy and risky advertising campaign for ‘Bugonia’ Would you shave your head for a film?

«Welcome to the headquarters of the human resistance» is what you’ll find written when you enter the website Human Resistance HQ. The page, with its crude graphics and questionable fonts, was created alongside the promotion of Yorgos Lanthimos’s upcoming film, Bugonia, premiered at the Venice Film Festival and in theaters from October 23. A remake of the Korean film Save the Green Planet! (original title «Jigureul jikyeora!»), released in 2003 and directed by Jang Joon-hwan in his feature debut.

Similar to many online portals, hotbeds of conspiracy theories and civilians who come together to discuss and seek solutions to seemingly imminent threats such as the possible invasion of the planet by alien species, the site is nothing more than an extension, an extra-cinematic Easter egg of the film starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons. It is not difficult to imagine that in the film, Teddy, played by Plemons, could use this very site in an attempt to save the Earth—which he believes to be in danger—and end up kidnapping the CEO (Stone) of a major pharmaceutical company, thinking that she is actually an Andromedan.

The care put into Bugonia’s advertising work is not only in the web page’s design but also in the content it offers its users, some even commented on by registered visitors. These include diagrams, drawings, and even articles, all fictional material purposely created for the promotional campaign. The classy touch comes from a few cutouts from Forbes magazine showing interviews with Michelle Fuller, the CEO protagonist played by Stone. Some excerpts are even highlighted as suspicious and could serve to reveal the woman’s true extraterrestrial nature.

For the Bugonia marketing campaign, the film’s marketing team didn’t limit their efforts to the online world: in Los Angeles, billboards have appeared featuring advertisements for Auxolith, the pharmaceutical company run by Michelle, complete with a photo of the businesswoman, vandalized with the phrase «Andromedan scum.» The typical slang of www.humanresistancehq.com users. Also in the Californian city, during a preview of the film, only bald people were allowed into the theater. In case a viewer wasn’t hairless, Focus Features thoughtfully set up a barber station to shave the heads of anyone willing to go that far just to watch Lanthimos’s new work in advance. A show of faith that, at times, made the Greek director’s fanbase seem like a true cult.

As always happens with his works, Yorgos Lanthimos has managed to create a world whose aesthetic is each time able to transcend the screen, carefully attending to every detail of the launch—just as with the image of Bugonia. Much talk has also surrounded the font chosen for the film’s poster, created by none other than Vasilis Marmatakis, the graphic designer with whom the Greek author has continued his collaboration since 2009’s unsettling Dogtooth and throughout his subsequent titles. A way of making cinema that extends beyond the theater, expanding the universes that would otherwise live only on the big screen.