Cate Blanchett ‘deeply concerned’ by artificial intelligence impact

In Rumours, Blanchett plays the Chancellor of Germany who hosts a G7 summit for other world leaders.

She said the political characters were not based on real politicians and she “deliberately stepped away from that as that’s what an audience is going to bring to bear”.

The film’s director, Guy Maddin, added that he intentionally does not reveal the ideologies or allegories of the characters because “there’s an attempt when making sense of a movie for an audience to project on to it a message, a lesson, to find themselves in it”.

Maddin explained that he started creating the characters “from a point of sheer contempt”, but as the film progresses and more ludicrous things start to happen “you feel for them a little bit”.

“They’re not politicians for very long, the structures that make them world leaders evaporate incredibly quickly,” Blanchet told the BBC.

“What you witness is that they don’t know who they are and that’s part of the artificiality of the way they have very little to do with the real world.

“People talk about actors being infantilised and indulged, but there’s something about politicians being infantilised and indulged by the system.”