Ruben Östlund's production company Plattform Produktion has joined "Toxic," a satirical workplace drama from Jessica Hausner, the Austrian director behind "Club Zero." The pan-European co-production, also backed by Austria's Schubert, Germany's Essential Films and France's Société Parisienne de Production, will be pitched at the Venice Gap-Financing Market running from 4 to 6 September, with the Coproduction Office handling international sales.

Told in four chapters set within an advertising agency, a waste disposal firm, a nursing home and a struggling retail chain, "Toxic" examines the contradictions of capitalism and the "mutual dependency" between employers and employees. Working from a script co-written with Jessica Lind, Hausner said the film probes how identity and self-worth are shaped by work and pay, and questions whether meaningful change is possible within a profit-driven system. Speaking from Vienna, she linked the film's themes to wider European debates about affordability of social welfare and shifting government spending towards defence, describing work as increasingly failing to deliver either financial security or fulfilment.