Earlier than donning a darkish bouffant for Sofia Coppola’s 2023 movie Priscilla, in regards to the contentious relationship between Elvis and Priscilla Presley, Cailee Spaeny suited up for a unique type of battle on the set of Alex Garland’s Civil Conflict. Starring within the movie reverse Kirsten Dunst, the 25-year-old Missouri native spent months dodging flash blanks and studying tactical maneuvers from Navy SEALs to carry to life Garland’s imaginative and prescient of an America riven by violent inner battle.

“I used to be the annoying younger one on set who, each time they handed round earplugs, went, ‘Yeah, yeah, thanks,’ and simply caught them in my pocket,” says Spaeny. “Kirsten [Dunst] saved going, ‘Cailee, put the fucking earplugs in.’ And I’m like, ‘No, I need to really feel it!’ That’s a traditional younger actor doing her factor—appearing like she’s obtained to really feel each second—however for me, doing motion pictures is simply such an fascinating expertise,” she provides. “I wished to dive into it as a lot as I may.”

Impressed by Garland’s upbringing because the son of a political cartoonist, the movie opens as a coalition of states often called the Western Forces wage a multi-front marketing campaign towards the U.S. authorities and its fascist-leaning president (Nick Offerman). With Washington anticipated to fall to the Western Forces in a matter of days, three veteran conflict correspondents, Lee (Dunst), Joel (Wagner Moura), and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), make a plan to drive from New York to D.C., the place journalists are being shot on sight, within the hopes of snagging a remaining interview with the president. To make it there, the group—which quickly contains Spaeny’s Jessie, a scrappy, beginner photojournalist Lee saves from a suicide bombing—has to evade the lawless, conflict-torn cities and sadistic paramilitary teams which have cropped up for the reason that nation descended into civil conflict.

But it surely’s not the treacherous highway journey, nor even the (largely uncontextualized) battle for management of the U.S., that appears to be Garland’s chief concern right here. As an alternative, Civil Conflict focuses intently on the knotty dynamic (typically familial, typically patently rivalrous) between Jessie and Lee—an bold, probably opportunistic up-and-comer and the haunted skilled who’s seen all of it—and the function of journalists in a society on the point of collapse. “The admiration and love for these journalists is the center of the story,” Spaeny says. (The mannequin turned formidable conflict correspondent Lee Miller was the namesake for Dunst’s character.) “The journalists are the heroes, however they’re unbelievably sophisticated within the questions they need to ask themselves.” She refers to their “addict-like high quality” as they hurl themselves deeper and deeper into an lively conflict zone, recording mutilated our bodies and sniper stand-offs alongside their route. Are they pushed by obligation, or merely a should be the place the motion is? “The passing of the baton between Lee and Jessie and that soul connection they’ve, the ethical ambiguity [of their mission], and the horrors [Lee’s] all the time having to work by way of—there’s plenty of issues to choose aside,” she observes.