Benicio del Toro gives The Phoenician Scheme a sturdy center: his tycoon is controlled, imposing and faintly absurd, a man who treats danger and family succession as items on the same agenda. That steadiness helps Wes Anderson’s elaborate caper cohere, even as its intricate plotting and familiar visual signatures sometimes crowd out the father-daughter story that gives it emotional weight.
A family succession story inside a globetrotting caper
Set in the 1950s, The Phoenician Scheme follows Zsa-zsa Korda, a wealthy businessman who survives another assassination attempt as a decades-long project approaches its final stages. He reconnects with his estranged daughter Liesl, a nun, and appoints her as his successor. With her tutor Bjorn along, father and daughter travel through a series of adventures connected to Korda’s grand regional scheme.
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Focus Features sums up the premise as “the story of a family and a family business.” Anderson told the Festival de Cannes that his point of departure was “to try to invent something about one of those European magnates from the 1950s, like Onassis or Niárchos.” That premise gives the film two linked engines: the spectacle of a powerful man trying to complete an immense undertaking, and the more intimate question of whether he can make room for his daughter in the life he has built.
Del Toro makes the tycoon the film’s anchor
Korda could easily become just another outlandish figure in Anderson’s crowded world. Del Toro instead plays him with restraint. His measured delivery and unhurried physical presence make Korda feel less like a cartoon of wealth than a man accustomed to having every room, conversation and contingency arranged around him. The comedy often comes from the gap between that composure and the extraordinary danger or absurdity surrounding him.
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#1 Best Overall
- Runtime: 101 minutes
Nick Bradshaw’s review for BFI/Sight and Sound, published from Cannes on May 23, 2025, describes the film as an “elaborate creation” built around a top-dog protagonist written for del Toro. That focus is a strength: Korda’s certainty gives the caper a stable point of view. But his commanding presence also means the film’s emotional movement depends on whether the relationship with Liesl can challenge the order he takes for granted.
Threapleton gives the relationship its counterweight
Mia Threapleton’s Liesl is not simply a moral foil to her father. Her deadpan presence meets Korda’s authority without matching his appetite for control, and their exchanges provide the film with a quieter kind of tension. The succession plot becomes more than a pretext for travel when it asks what inheritance means between two people who have spent years apart.
The Associated Press’s Lindsey Bahr, writing on May 28, 2025, singled out Threapleton’s vivid, deadpan performance and the father-daughter relationship as a point of connection amid the film’s many Andersonian flourishes. That relationship is the strongest emotional thread, though it has to compete for space with the scheme’s moving parts and an ensemble populated by conspicuous supporting appearances.
Precise design, busy plotting
The film’s visual world is meticulously arranged. Festival de Cannes credits Bruno Delbonnel for cinematography, Adam Stockhausen for production design, Alexandre Desplat for music, and Barney Pilling and Andrew Weisblum for editing. The result is a carefully composed setting for the caper, with the production design helping make Korda’s ambitions feel as outsized and tangible as his personality.
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Rank #2
Whimsy with a harder subject underneath
The comedy and stylization do not erase the story’s darker foundations. Korda’s fortune and regional project raise questions of power, exploitation and what a wealthy patriarch believes he can pass on. Those themes are present in the premise rather than delivered as a separate lecture; the film’s central tension is whether family connection can be fitted into a business worldview built around ownership, control and succession.
That contrast gives the whimsy a useful edge. Korda’s world is absurd, but the consequences of his ambitions are not merely decorative. The film is most engaging when the carefully arranged spectacle reveals something about the costs of treating people and places as pieces in a grand design.
Release and home-viewing details
The Phoenician Scheme was listed in the 2025 Cannes competition. The festival listing identifies it as a 2024 German production with a 105-minute runtime and a May 28, 2025 release date. Focus Features lists May 30, 2025 as the US release date. These are distinct festival and US distributor dates, not competing claims about one territory.
Universal Pictures Home Entertainment announced US digital purchase and rental availability beginning July 8, 2025, with 4K UHD and Blu-ray street dates of July 29, 2025. Its physical-format information lists a 1.47:1 aspect ratio, a PG-13 rating and a runtime of 1 hour 56 minutes—different from Cannes’s 105-minute listing. The announcement also describes bonus features for participating retailers; it does not establish current stock at any particular seller.
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