Edward Berger is on a roll. The German-born director’s electrifying 2022 film, All Quiet On The Western Front, won four Oscars and saw him nominated for best adapted screenplay, swiftly followed by last year’s timely papal thriller Conclave, another awards-season favourite. After years of toiling in the closeted German film industry, working on the international scene has been a revelation. ‘It feels like the Berlin Wall came down,’ he says. ‘Suddenly you’re in a candy store and you get to eat bananas and chocolate and oranges and all this stuff. And I want to eat that. It’s just delicious!’

He’s back already with Ballad Of A Small Player, adapted from Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 novel by Rowan Joffé (son of filmmaker Roland and director of 2010’s take on Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock). ‘It’s about gambling addicts trying to find a direction in life,’ says Berger. ‘A man who embezzled money in England flees to Macau to start a new life, to create a new identity and be hidden, and then he gambles his life away.’

That man is Lord Doyle, played by Colin Farrell, who spends his days and nights boozing in subterranean casinos. On his tail is Cynthia Blithe, a private investigator ready to confront him with his past, played by Tilda Swinton. Fala Chen (The Undoing) stars as Dao Ming, a casino employee with secrets in her own backstory who may just offer Doyle a way out. ‘Macau is a really hard place to stay for the duration of a movie, because it’s all about money,’ admits Berger. ‘And that’s basically what the movie is about: the decline of capitalism and trying to be insatiably hungry. You just eat whatever you can, but you’ll never be satisfied. And that’s Macau; that’s our world.’

Ballad Of A Small Player is in cinemas from Friday 17 October; on Netflix from Wednesday 29 October.