Wes Anderson, Cannes Fest regular, skewered Trump’s proposed tariff on movies shot abroad at a presser for his new film, The Phoenician Scheme.

“Can you hold up the movie in customs? It doesn’t ship that way,” the director said, evoking a laughter.

“The Phoenician Scheme,” which features a sprawling cast of Anderson regulars, was shot partly in Germany. When asked about the tariffs, Anderson initially replied: “I thought you said he was giving us a plug or something. Did Trump see it?”

The film is a three-hander, starring Oscar winner Benicio del Toro, Michael Cera and breakout Mia Threapleton, the daughter of Oscar winner Kate Winslet.

Rendering a commanding lead performance, Del Toro plays business magnate Zsa-zsa Korda, one of the richest men in Europe and subject of repeated assassination attempts, while Threapleton portrays his estranged daughter, a smoking and alcohol-swilling nun named Sister Liesel.

Like Threapleton, Cera is a newcomer to the Anderson troop, playing a duplicitous tutor named Bjorn Lund.

Anderson said there was “the darkness of certain kind of capitalist we were building this on, but it took us somewhere else. We need a psychiatrist’s couch to really answer it properly, and even then, I don’t know.”

“The next film is also pretty dark. Roman and Richard and I are working on a script together for a movie, and I think it does have a darkness. I’m not going to say anything about it, but I’m at a press conference, so I have to announce something.”

Benedict Cumberbatch: “Watching him discover Michael is like God discovering water. It seems like a really natural, obvious element to have in his arsenal as a filmmaker. It was really a perfect partnership.”

Later on, when a journalist asked about sequels to any of his films, Anderson said to Murray: “You know, we’ll do ‘The Life Aquatic 2.’ Shall we?”

Rounding out the “Phoenician Scheme” cast is Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, Riz Ahmed, Scarlett Johansson, Mathieu Amalric, Rupert Friend and Hope Davis, all of whom have starred in at least one previous Anderson feature.

This is Anderson’s fourth film to premiere at the Cannes festival, after Moonrise Kingdom (2012), The French Dispatch (2021), and Asteroid City (2023).

The Phoenician Scheme will have limited release via Focus Features on May 30, before expanding wider June 6.