The first trailer has arrived for The Birthday Party, with Willem Dafoe throwing a blowout on a private Mediterranean island — and it’s a party that’s headed for disaster. Watch the trailer above and read on for the info.

Late-’70s excess on an isolated estate: fireworks, string quartets, the sea at dusk — and a father–daughter standoff brewing under all the champagne fizz. Dafoe is Marcos Timoleon, a self-made shipping magnate staging an extravagant birthday for his sole heir, Sofia (Vic Carmen Sonne). Set over 24 hours, the event slides from gilded to predatory as guests angle for favours and the night spirals. Dafoe leads an ensemble that includes Joe Cole, Emma Suárez, Carlos Cuevas and Christos Stergioglou.

The film comes from Spanish filmmaker Miguel Ángel Jiménez (Window to the Sea), directing and co-writing an adaptation of Panos Karnezis’ 2007 novel of the same name.

Dafoe’s casting is knowingly left-field. “Me? Playing a Greek shipping tycoon? I don’t think so,” he tells Variety — but what hooked him was the “rich portrait” at the centre and the film’s “examination of the toxicity of the kind of power, the kind of patriarchy” Marcos embodies. “While I don’t normally respond to family dramas, it’s more than that… it bites off quite a bit,” he says. “It’s [about] ambition, legacy. And the thing that makes the guy, it’s also the thing that’s going to take him down.”

For Jiménez, “the huge distance between my own life and the Timoleon universe was a really appealing challenge for me,” and though his “convictions completely reject this wealthy, brutal, frivolous, false and self-serving caste,” he wanted “to portray them in the most human and intimate way possible,” resisting the urge “to ridicule or judge them from the beginning.”

A Greek–Spanish–Dutch–UK co-production, the film was shot in Corfu and Athens, premiered at Locarno, and also screened at Sarajevo. Heretic and Bankside handle world sales; after its theatrical rollout across various territories, it’s set to be released on HBO Europe and HBO Max.