Wes Anderson's 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' premieres in South Africa

The film recounts the adventures of Gustave H, a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars, and Zero Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting and the battle for an enormous family fortune.

Making and cast

Director Wes Anderson says his eighth feature film comes from a mix of inspirations including the pre-code comedies of the 1930s and the stories and memoirs of Viennese writer Stefan Zweig.

Anderson set his tale in a fictional spa town in the imaginary country of alpine Zubrowka, for which he created not only a complete visual aesthetic but also a cohesive 20th Century history mirroring Eastern Europe, with a fascist takeover in the thirties and a Communist period after that - but also a more distant past in the vein of the belle époque.

The film stars Ralph Fiennes, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Owen Wilson to name a few...

Some of Anderson's other films include The Royal Tenenbaums, The Aquatic Life with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited and most recently, Moonrise Kingdom.

Watch the trailer