“Bugonia” (2025) – Cinematography by Robbie Ryan, BSC, ISC

Original Title: Bugonia
Spanish Title: Bugonia
Year of Production: 2025
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Director of Photography: Robbie Ryan, BSC, ISC
Lenses: Panavision GW, Panavision Primo, Panavision Super Speed, Zeiss Master Prime
Film Stocks: Kodak 5203 50D, Kodak 5207 250D, Kodak 5219 500T, Kodak Double-X 5222
Format and Aspect Ratio: 8-perf 35mm, VistaVision, 1.50:1
Other: 4K Digital Intermediate

In that sense, Bugonia follows the recent return of VistaVision also seen in films such as The Brutalist (2024) and One Battle After Another (2025). VistaVision exposes a horizontal 35mm negative area roughly twice the size of standard 4-perf 35mm. Its images are therefore sharper, finer-grained and cleaner than conventional 35mm, while still retaining the texture of photochemical capture. It is, in practical terms, a full-frame film format: close in image area and field of view to digital cameras such as the ARRI ALEXA LF, Sony VENICE or RED V-RAPTOR, but on celluloid.

The problem with VistaVision today is not the image. It is the camera system. Although the format appears to be returning with some force, it had barely been used for complete feature films for decades. The cameras are noisy, mechanically delicate and not always reliable. Film can jam or break, and the horizontal magazine layout makes camera operating more awkward than with a conventional vertical 35mm camera. The magazines sit behind or beside the camera rather than above it. In terms of image quality, VistaVision sits somewhere between standard 35mm and 5-perf 65mm, but mechanically it remains a demanding format.

As for lenses, any PL-mounted full-frame lens designed for digital cameras can cover VistaVision. In practice, both Paul Thomas Anderson’s film and Bugonia rely mainly on a custom spherical Panavision set known as the GW lenses. These are inspired by the Panavision spherical lenses of the 1970s and 1980s, the kind of optics strongly associated with Gordon Willis.

In Bugonia, the longer focal lengths are complemented by traditional Panavision Primo lenses and a few additional individual lenses. For some dialogue scenes, either because of sound requirements — a quieter camera — or because of issues with the second VistaVision body, the filmmakers also appear to have shot isolated material in conventional Super 35, using ARRI/Zeiss Master Primes. Those lenses are sharper and more contrasty than the GW set, which is softer and more prone to flare, perhaps as a way to compensate for the lower negative area of the 4-perf material.

VistaVision has a native aspect ratio of 1.50:1, and here that ratio becomes the final theatrical shape. In terms of 35mm image quality, it is about as high as the format can go. Bugonia is not necessarily the most obvious film for showcasing that potential, but many of the exterior scenes — the bees, the office, Emma Stone’s house — do give a sense of what the format can offer. It is the same potential Alfred Hitchcock exploited so beautifully in the 1950s with To Catch a Thief, Vertigo and North by Northwest.

Aesthetically, Lanthimos’s taste for wide-angle lenses is still present, but the effect is different here. Instead of the 6mm lenses associated with some of his earlier work, Bugonia uses approximate full-frame focal lengths such as 21mm or 24mm. These lenses appear in many exterior tracking shots, following characters laterally or keeping pace with cars and bicycles.

In a 1.50:1 frame — or 3:2, if we prefer to call it that — the image can include both the characters and a large amount of surrounding space without the kind of distortion one would normally associate with such wide angles on a smaller format. This is one of the key visual advantages of VistaVision here. The frame feels wide in field of view, but not grotesque in geometry.

The tracking shots and camera movements, some of which seem to have been executed from a crane or stabilized head mounted on a vehicle, are extremely precise. They give the film a formal discipline and seriousness that make the absurdity of the story funnier by contrast. Ryan exposes these sequences with real confidence. The negatives look rich, sharp and saturated, but they still have the texture of film, in direct opposition to the antiseptic cleanliness of digital acquisition.

In the interiors, Ryan and Lanthimos vary the focal lengths more, and the main house set — including the basement — gives them a wider range of visual possibilities. What stands out most is the use of integrated practical sources, and the fact that the filmmakers clearly like those sources to be visible.

The upper floor of the house is dominated by warm light. At times it mixes with a faint daylight ambience, but in the night scenes it is more often combined with sources of different color temperatures, creating distinctions between the dining room, living room and kitchen. There is even a greenish background tone that recalls Robby Müller. In the basement, the light becomes more clinical. This is clearly intentional. Fluorescent sources integrated into the ceiling create higher contrast and a more electronic feeling than tungsten light, especially when combined with Emma Stone’s makeup and physical transformation.

The individual images are not always spectacular in isolation, although they look good. What is more interesting is the design of the place itself, and the way the film gradually reveals and fragments that space from scene to scene. In the table scenes, sometimes shot with two cameras — likely the point at which some Super 35 material entered the film — the filmmakers choose their angles with great care and isolate the characters very effectively.

There is little sense of coverage for its own sake. Each line, each reaction and each shift in power seems to have been staged and photographed with a specific intention. In the wider shots, the ceilings are often visible, which makes Ryan’s integrated lighting more interesting: these practicals are not merely decorative. They are doing real photographic work.