THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME
JULY 4–7 & 10, 2025
DAILY (except Tuesday & Wednesday) AT 6:20
JULY 11–17, 2025
DAILY AT 6:20
Wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda appoints his only daughter, a nun, as sole heir to his estate. As Korda embarks on a new enterprise, they soon become the target of scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists and determined assassins.
1950. Anatole "Zsa-zsa" Korda (Benicio del Toro), enigmatic industrialist, one of the richest men in Europe, survives another attempt on his life (his sixth plane crash). Korda's wide-ranging, wildly complex, and ruthless business practices have made him an enemy to not just rival enterprises but also governments of every ideology across the globe – and a target for assassins.
Now he is in the final stages of a decades-long, career-defining project (Korda Land and Sea Phoenician Infrastructure Scheme), the expansive exploitation of a potentially-rich/long-dormant region. The risk to his personal capital has become incalculable. The threats to his life are ongoing. He chooses this moment to appoint and prepare a successor: his twenty-year-old estranged daughter Lies (currently, a nun).
With personal tutor Bjorn (Michael Cera) in tow, Zsa-zsa and Lies sweep across Modern Greater Independent Phoenicia meeting their assorted partners on a mission to close The Gap (a rapidly expanding financial shortfall) which Zsa-zsa quantifies as: "Everything we got – plus a little bit more."
Along the way: Lies investigates the unsolved murder, a decade earlier, of Zsa-zsa's first wife (her mother). Exhilarating and hilarious, a work of pure pleasure, but also strikingly moving as a father and daughter find each other.
Directed by Wes Anderson
Rated PG-13
Running time 1h 41m
