In The World – the official featurette for The Phoenician Scheme – director Wes Anderson, along with stars Saoirse Ronan, Willem Dafoe, and Edward Norton, offer a rare glimpse into the film’s layered production design and surreal geopolitical satire.

Set within an imagined Mediterranean nation teetering between bureaucracy and breakdown, Anderson crafts a story that feels simultaneously antique and terrifyingly current. The featurette walks viewers through the film’s miniature dioramas, intricate sets, and period-costume politics, all rendered in Anderson’s signature visual grammar: symmetrical framing, retro typography, and understated hysteria.

From the Ministry of Calculation to the rooftop gardens of The Grand Archive, every environment is imbued with allegory. As Ronan describes, “It’s not just a place. It’s a system.” Meanwhile, Dafoe and Norton discuss the tension beneath the whimsy—how comedy and control clash in a world ruled by logic and legacy.

At just over two minutes, the video offers a window into the thematic architecture behind the film—a narrative maze where algorithms, nationalism, and identity converge.