True Detective star Anna Lambe and Zorga Qaunaq are starring in director and screenwriter Nyla Innuksuk’s psychological thriller In the Heart of the South.
Lambe and Qaunaq are reteaming after lead roles in the Inuk comedy North of Northfor Netflix and Canada’s CBC and APTN. The series that sees Lambe play a young Inuk woman looking to restart her life after an abrupt and public exit from her marriage has earned high critical praise and a second-season renewal.
In the meantime, Lambe and Qaunaqwrapped work on In the Heart of the South, which was shot in Hamilton, Ontario and co-written by Ryan Cavan. The thriller centers on Yura Ivalu (Lambe), an ambitious Inuk multimedia artist who spirals out of control when an estranged childhood friend, Sesi Ilupaalik, played by Qaunaq, resurfaces.
That forces Yura to confront the trauma she’s built her career on and the identity she built as an avenue to escape. “In the Heart of the South is deeply personal to me,” saysInnuksuk in a statement. “The story — one of power, authenticity and survival — is one we can all relate to on some level, and I’m thrilled we’ve brought it to life with such talented actors and creatives.”
The cast for In the Heart of the South includes Tara Nicodemo, Alexander Nunez and Star Slade, co-star of another indie film, Nika & Madison, that’s set to bow at the 2025 Toronto Film Festival.
Producer credits on the film are shared by Jennifer Kawaja and Laura Perlmutter, while Bruno Dube is executive producing. A 2026 release is targeted for In the Heart of the South.
“It’s exciting to see Nyla’s vision of the story come to life. She’s an inspiring filmmaker and we’re grateful to collaborate with her on this project and excited for audiences to see this captivating film,” producer Perlmutter, of Sphere Media, added in her own statement.
In the Heart of the South, also from producer The Mixtape VR, has Ann Tipper asdirector of photography, production designer Thea Hollatz, Sage Paul as costume designer and Hugh Elchuk as the editor.
The film is produced in association with Canadian streamer Crave, CBC Films and range of federal funding agencies and broadcasters and tax credits. Elevation Pictures will release the film in Canada.
According to Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, the digital art we make today has a long lineage dating back to the 1950s. Tezos Foundation
As the world becomes increasingly digital and technologically integrated, it is harder than ever to draw clear boundaries between analog and digital experiences. Technology is now deeply woven into how we express, communicate, share and process information and ideas, making it nearly impossible to find contemporary art completely untouched by digital tools or platforms. Artists working in traditional media inevitably engage with the digital realm in some capacity—even if only as a platform for sharing or a source of inspiration for works created in more conventional formats.
For this reason, the term digital art can be confusing. Some interpret it broadly to include any work shaped by technology, while others reserve it for “digital-native” practices created entirely within the digital space.
To explore this evolving landscape, Observer spoke with Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, who has worked in the Web3 art space for nearly a decade and now serves as head of Arts at TriliTech, the team behind the Tezos Art Foundation. Artamonovskaja shared her perspective on the current state of digital art, its market and the broader ways technology and digital platforms are reshaping how art is produced and circulated.
“You have both professionals in the broader creative economy or artists whose works are exhibited in traditional institutions such as museums, falling into this category,” she tells Observer. Still, there are some defining parameters. “To me, digital art is a form that relies fundamentally on digital technology, not just the tools, but the medium itself, as the product or the process. Digital art allows experimentation across various areas, such as lighting, texture, movement and interactivity, that traditional media can’t always convey. It’s not just about using a screen as a canvas, but often reinventing what the idea of a ‘canvas’ even means.”
Tezos began actively engaging with the digital art world in 2021. Artists and collectors on NFT platforms like Hic et Nunc, Objkt, and fx(hash) adopted the blockchain for minting and selling works, quickly making it a hub for digital, generative and experimental art.
Established around the same time, the Tezos Foundation formalized its support for digital art soon after, launching major initiatives between late 2021 and early 2022. Since then, it has evolved into an artist-first hub within the Web3 ecosystem. Through high-profile partnerships with institutions like MoMA and Art Basel, it is positioning itself as a vital conduit for Web3 creativity.
Since Artamonovskaja was appointed head of arts at TriliTech in 2024, she has played a central role in ensuring that the Tezos ecosystem maintains an artist-first framework. Priorities like sustainability, affordability and inclusivity are amplified through programming that raises global awareness of digital art while empowering existing talent with meaningful opportunities for growth.
Sabato Visconti, barbie~world~breakdown, 2024. At the Museum of the Moving Image, as part of its partnership with the Tezos Foundation. Photo: Thanassi Karageorgiou. Courtesy of MoMI
“Marketplaces on Tezos like objkt, along with high-profile partnerships with the Museum of the Moving Image, Serpentine, ArtScience Museum and others, help contextualise digital art within broader cultural landscapes,” Artamonovskaja says. She sees contextualization as fundamental to supporting the appreciation and institutionalization of a newly established field like digital art. “Our current programs also encompass a range of activities, including residencies, publications, and exhibitions, nurturing a creative environment that fosters artists’ career trajectories.” One major upcoming initiative she previewed is Tezos’ second participation at Paris Photo, in partnership with Paris-based Artverse gallery, where curator Grida Jang Hyewon will present a group booth featuring work by six artists who originate from, or are deeply shaped by, Asian cultures.
Fostering awareness of these tools and technologies is another key priority. “The Tezos Foundation has supported several educational projects, including WAC Lab, which taught professionals from cultural institutions about Blockchain best practices, as well as artist onboarding programs, such as Newtro, a program focusing on Latin American artists,” Artamonovskaja says. “Through these ongoing initiatives and upcoming projects, it’s no surprise that the Tezos ecosystem serves some of the most respected voices in the digital art space, including bitforms gallery, the Second Guess curatorial collective and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.”
Just as importantly, Tezos has helped connect and map a decades-long history of relationships between artists and digital media, beginning with early net art and extending back to Nam June Paik’s pioneering inquiry into media and technology as a form of expression. As Artamonovskaja explains, the history of digital art runs from the algorithmic plotter works of Manfred Mohr and Vera Molnár, to Alan Rath’s kinetic sculptures fusing electronics with movement, to Paik’s groundbreaking video art, and to the browser-based experiments of 1990s net artists like Cory Arcangel and Olia Lialina. “Each era redefined what it meant to create and experience art in dialogue with new technologies, shifting from producing singular digital images to building works that exist natively within global networks. I’ve always been fascinated by how forward-thinking some of the artists were. Seeing Nam June Paik’s Electronic Superhighway in person, its glowing map of America alive with moving images, makes you reflect on how foretelling his vision was to today’s hyperconnected, media-saturated world.”
The “Paintboxed Tezos World Tour” exhibition at Digital Art Mile, Basel, 2025. Courtesy Tezos Foundation
The Paintboxed Tezos World Tour paid tribute to this long history, spotlighting the heritage of the Quantel Paintbox—the legendary 1980s commercial computer designed for artists and famously used by David Hockney and Keith Haring. “The digital art we make today most certainly belongs to a long lineage dating back to the 1950s, with interactive systems, initiatives such as E.A.T. and tools like the Quantel Paintbox,” Artamonovskaja points out.
In the past year, the Paintboxed Tezos World Tour has appeared at major art events in Miami, Paris and New York, culminating in a pivotal exhibition at the Digital Art Mile in Basel. The Basel presentation was accompanied by a catalogue of works produced by early pioneers such as David Hockney and Kim Mannes-Abbott—among the first to experiment with the tool—alongside a younger generation of artists like Simon Denny, Coldie and Gretchen Andrew. “Recognizing these histories enriches our understanding and positions Web3 art not as a fleeting trend but as a continuation of decades of creative innovation,” Artamonovskaja says.
She recalls first encountering Olia Lialina’s work in person at her presentation during Rhizome’s 7×7 conference in 2017, an experience that left a lasting impression. “What struck me most was not only her early, both critical and playful approach to the browser as a canvas, but also the nuanced commentary on the word ‘technology,’” she recalls, noting how the artist was vocal in her criticism of how the term had been overused to the point of losing specificity. “This reminded me how in the 1990s, ‘technology’ in an art context often meant something tangible, visible and experimental. In contrast, today it’s so embedded in our lives that we rarely stop to question it, and by doing so, in a way, we lose our power. The work and reflections of early net art artists often underscore the importance of maintaining that spirit of inquiry.”
Creative freedom and new audiences
For Artamonovskaja, the digital realm opens vast possibilities: dynamic experimentation, global reach and direct control. Over the past decade, she notes, social media has reshaped the artist’s role—shifting it away from reliance on galleries and institutions toward a more direct relationship with audiences. “Some artists have become their own marketers, community builders and storytellers, shaping not only how their work is seen but also how it’s valued,” she says. “This shift didn’t just change the market side of art; it influenced the medium itself. Many artists, including those working in traditional media, have begun creating works either conceived for the screen or engaging with it from a conceptual or critical perspective, responding to its formats, visual rhythms and narratives, while reflecting on how these elements shape our ways of seeing and experiencing art.”
The rise of blockchain and NFTs has taken this further by adding new layers of transaction and interactivity. “Within the Tezos ecosystem, for example, sales platforms like objkt.com have nurtured their own curatorial voices and collector bases,” she explains. “At the same time, through our ongoing initiatives like Tezos Foundation-supported open calls, residency programs and partnerships with leaders such as Art Basel and Musée d’Orsay, we’ve created new success structures for artists.” Fully harnessing this potential means embracing both creative and structural possibilities—whether by experimenting with digital-native forms, exploring interactive or generative elements, or engaging with blockchain-native ecosystems to connect with communities and shape how their work is experienced, owned and valued.
Rodell Warner, World Is Turning, 2024. At the Museum of the Moving Image, New York, as part of its partnership with the Tezos Foundation. Photo: Thanassi Karageorgiou. Courtesy of MoMI
The importance of context in curating digital art
Context, Artamonovskaja stresses, is just as important for digital art as for any other medium when it comes to establishing value and recognition. Digital art curation—including art on the blockchain—has evolved rapidly over the past several years, she notes. Having worked in the digital art space for nearly a decade, longer than many of her contemporaries, she has witnessed these shifts firsthand. “It may not seem like a significant amount of time in the grand scheme of things, but in the Web3 world, everything is accelerated,” she observes. “The COVID-19 pandemic forced the traditional art world to embrace virtual environments en masse. In blockchain and digitally-native art, these technological advancements that reshape how the audience interacts and experiences the work happen every few months.”
For this reason, curating digital art already extends far beyond simply displaying work—it is about building trust and transparency with both artists and viewers. “Given the size of the digital art market and its novelty, the curator’s role is often also that of an art dealer helping artists position their work, connecting them with the right collectors and helping them navigate the commercial and technical aspects of selling digital art in a rapidly evolving environment,” she clarifies.
“In many ways, the Web3 market functions as an accelerated mirror to the traditional art world—compressing the cycles of creation, curation, sales and audience engagement into days or weeks instead of months or years,” she continues, noting that this might not apply to every project but that, over time, it makes the discovery of emerging talent more accessible. “The same dynamics of representation and influence exist, but blockchain-enabled provenance, global marketplaces and always-on communities make the process faster, more transparent and oftentimes more efficient.”
Aleksandra Artamonovskaja with a work by Jenni Pasanen. Courtesy Tezos Foundation
Artamonovskaja acknowledges that whether this acceleration is good or bad for artists and the market is still open to debate, but she sees one undeniable advantage: the ability to engage new audiences.
Challenges in collecting and preserving digital art
In May 2022, the Tezos Foundation unveiled its Permanent Art Collection (PAC), curated by Misan Harriman, as its first official high-profile program dedicated to celebrating and elevating digital art created within its ecosystem. This marked the beginning of an ongoing commitment to showcase and acquire works by diverse, emerging artists.
Artamonovskaja has been collecting digital art and NFTs for years. When asked about her criteria for identifying a significant work worth collecting, she says it often comes down to whether the piece moves her or signals that the artist is bringing a fresh perspective to her areas of interest. “Factors such as strong artistic vision, thoughtful use of technology and meaningful cultural context are also incredibly important,” she explains. “Novelty—both conceptual and visual—plays a significant role.” This is a defining feature on sales platforms like objkt, which frequently highlight advanced interactive pieces ranging from minimalist HTML sketches to fully immersive browser-based games and on-chain data experiments. Other platforms, such as EditArt or InfiniteInk, enable interactive co-creation and dynamic experiences.
“As someone who collects the art they love, I find that the resonance within the wider ecosystem often plays a big role,” Artamonovskaja says. “Given that the market was born under the premise that there are no more gatekeepers and each artist can represent themselves, an artist’s approach to self-representation can be as important as how a gallery typically represents its artists.” Today, a community of artists exists with varied definitions of success, some prioritizing reach and community growth over traditional markers of recognition. “Perhaps this is where comparing art on the blockchain to traditional markets is a fallacy.”
Collecting digital art also raises new questions around preservation and conservation, as these works often depend entirely on the technologies through which they are created, circulated, displayed and stored. Preservation begins with recognizing that it’s not just about maintaining the still or moving image as we see it on a platform or as we right-click save it. “If we care about the work’s association with a blockchain, we need to maintain a relationship between the smart contract and the output,” she explains. “We need to care about whether the work has an archival file, a higher resolution exhibition copy, or just the web copy we see in front of us. We also want to safeguard the metadata and the environments in which the work is intended to reside.”
She notes that ensuring a worthwhile chain of documented provenance for blockchain-registered art requires active collaboration between artists, technologists, archivists and node operators. For a work to remain tied to a chain, archival advocates and conservation specialists may need to preserve not only the piece but also its operational context.
Across blockchains, one of the most significant risks in recent years has been the shutdown of marketplaces. “In such instances, it was either the core team’s efforts or the community that preserved the works, ensuring they remained accessible as intended,” Artamonovskaja points out, emphasizing that this was possible only thanks to open-source access and the benefits of decentralization.
On Tezos, for example, every artwork collected on objkt is stored on IPFS, a decentralized network designed for long-term preservation. The team ensures that each asset is pinned and remains accessible, with safeguards in place so that even if the platform were to go offline, the art would remain secure. “Tezos provides a reliable and future-proof foundation for building digital art collections,” Artamonovskaja emphasizes.
Another advantage of NFTs on Tezos is that its self-amending blockchain and formal on-chain governance make contentious hard forks far less likely than on other chains, reducing the risk of the same NFT appearing on two separate blockchains. “Because protocol upgrades are proposed, voted on and activated within the blockchain itself, NFTs remain recorded on a single chain that all participants continue to use.”
When it comes to conversations about technology, the biggest elephant in the room is the A.I. revolution, which is reshaping nearly every aspect of our lives—and, in turn, how artists approach their work and creative process. Increasingly, artists admit to using A.I. not only to refine work but also to brainstorm or seek feedback. This has sparked ongoing debate about the role of A.I. in the creative process—as a tool, an assistant or even a collaborator.
Asked about the opportunities A.I. presents for the art world and the risks it poses, particularly for digital art, Artamonovskaja is convinced that if it is approached as an instrument, it can help extend an artist’s vision. Its value, she argues, depends on how intentionally it is applied—whether to streamline workflow, unlock new aesthetic possibilities, or enable experiments that would be impossible through traditional means.
“Artists like Dr. Elgammal have even credited A.I. as their creative partner. Ultimately, art is subjective, so the idea of improving it is hard to define,” Artamonovskaja considers. “For some creators, A.I. is integrated on a deeper technical level—artists like Ivona Tau or Mario Klingemann write their own systems, shaping the algorithm as much as they shape the final product. Other artists, such as Trevor Paglen or Kevin Abosch, engage with A.I. from a critical standpoint, using it to question the technology’s politics, biases and social implications.”
At the same time, she warns of potential risks: diluting authorship, amplifying biases embedded in training data or reducing the artist’s role to that of a passive editor rather than an active creator. In 2021, she collaborated with Mike Tyka to release his renowned Portraits of Imaginary People on the blockchain, a project that delved directly into these themes. By training GANs on thousands of Flickr images, Tyka generated faces of people who do not exist, exposing how A.I. systems can reproduce and amplify identity biases. “His approach challenged notions of authenticity and sparked dialogue about technology’s influence on representation and trust,” she notes.
With the arrival of more sophisticated tools in recent years, Artamonovskaja observes that the market is still struggling to understand and value generative artistic practices. “For me, the most compelling A.I. art is not simply about the image produced, but about the relationship between human intention and machine capability, and the conceptual story that emerges from that relationship,” she reflects, emphasizing again that it is not about the medium itself but the critical and creative approach to it—the inquiry into its potential—that transforms a work of art into a tool for better understanding, or even anticipating, the broader sociological, anthropological and political implications of these new technologies in our existence.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli strikes on a hospital in southern Gaza killed five journalists Monday, including a freelancer who worked for The Associated Press, according to health officials.
What You Need To Know
Health officials say Israeli strikes on a hospital in southern Gaza has killed five journalists, including a freelancer who worked for The Associated Press
Mariam Dagga was a visual journalist who freelanced for the AP during the war, as well as other news outlets
The AP said in a statement that it was shocked and saddened to learn of Dagga’s death, along with those of other journalists
The head of the Health Ministry’s records department said that 20 people were killed in Monday’s strikes on Nasser Hospital
Mariam Dagga, 33, a visual journalist, freelanced for the AP during the war, as well as other news outlets. The AP said in a statement that it was shocked and saddened to learn of Dagga’s death, along with those of other journalists.
Two missiles hit Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in quick succession, medical officials said. In all, 20 people were killed, according to Zaher al-Waheidi, head of the Gaza Health Ministry’s records department.
The Israel-Hamas war has been one of the bloodiest conflicts for media workers, with at least 192 journalists killed in Gaza in the 22-month conflict, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Comparatively, 18 journalists have been killed so far in Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to the CPJ.
Dagga, who has a 13-year-old son who was evacuated from Gaza earlier in the war, frequently based herself at Nasser, most recently reporting on the hospital’s doctors struggling to save children from starvation. Independent Arabia, the Arabic language version of the British Independent, said Dagga also worked with the organization.
“We are doing everything we can to keep our journalists in Gaza safe as they continue to provide crucial eyewitness reporting in difficult and dangerous conditions,” the AP said.
Al Jazeera confirmed that journalist Mohammed Salama was also among those who were killed in the Nasser strike. Reuters reported that its contractor cameraman Hussam al-Masri and Moaz Abu Taha, a freelancer who worked occasionally for the organization, were killed. The agency’s contractor photographer Hatem Khaled was wounded.
Ahmad Abu Aziz was also killed, according to Health Ministry official al-Waheidi. He had worked as a freelancer for Middle East Eye, a U.K.-based media outlet, the organization said.
The Israeli military said its troops carried out a strike in the area of Nasser Hospital and that it would conduct an investigation into the incident. The military said it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and does not target journalists as such.”
Thibaut Bruttin, the director general of Reporters Without Borders, said press freedom advocates had never seen such a severe step backward for reporters’ safety. He noted that journalists have been killed both in indiscriminate strikes and in targeted attacks that Israel’s military has acknowledged carrying out.
“They are doing everything they can to silence independent voices that are trying to report on Gaza,” Bruttin said.
In some cases, such as with Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, who was targeted and killed by Israel earlier this month, Israel has accused journalists in Gaza of being part of militant groups. Israel’s military asserted that al-Sharif had led a Hamas cell — an allegation that Al Jazeera and al-Sharif previously dismissed as baseless.
Aside from rare guided tours, Israel has barred international media from covering the war. News organizations instead rely largely on Palestinian journalists in Gaza — as well as residents — to show the world what is happening there. Israel often questions the affiliations and biases of Palestinian journalists but doesn’t permit others in.
Many of the journalists working in Gaza are facing the same struggles to find food, for themselves and their families, as the people they are covering.
In one of Dagga’s last social media posts on Sunday, she published a selfie of herself.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct that Dagga’s son is 13, not 12, and to correct the spelling of the last name of the one of the journalists to Salama, not Salam.
Danish filmmaker Per Holst, who produced films by the likes of Lars von Trier and directed one of the most successful Danish films of all time, has died. He was 86.
The director-producer died Saturday, according to his son, actor Morten Holst. The cause of death was not immediately available.
As a producer, Holst’s credits include films by von Trier (The Element of Crime), Nils Malmros (Tree of Knowledge, Beauty and the Beast, Arhus by Night, Barbara and Paion of Love) and Bille August (Zappa, Twist & Shout and Pelle the Conqueror, which won the 1989 Oscar for best foreign-language film).
He also directed the 1985 film Walter and Carlo — Up on Daddy’s Hat, which is one of the highest-grossing Danish movies of all time.
Holst also served as chairman of the board of the European Film College from 2000-05 and served on the Danish Film Institute’s Feature Film Committee for several years.
Throughout his career, he received several awards, including the Honorary Bodil in 1985, the Honorary Robert in 1995, LO’s Culture Prize in 1998 and the Ib Prize in 2019.
Russia accused Ukraine Sunday of launching drone attacks that sparked a fire at a nuclear power plant in its western Kursk region overnight, as Ukraine celebrated 34 years since its independence.
What You Need To Know
Russia has accused Ukraine of drone strikes that sparked a fire at a nuclear power plant in the Kursk region
The fire was quickly extinguished with no injuries, though a transformer was damaged
Radiation levels remained normal. The U.N. nuclear watchdog called for protecting all nuclear facilities
Russia claimed to have shot down 95 Ukrainian drones overnight, while Ukraine intercepted 48 of 72 Russian drones
Russian officials said several power and energy facilities were targeted in the overnight strikes. The fire at the nuclear facility was quickly extinguished with no injuries reported, according to the plant’s press service on Telegram. While the attack damaged a transformer, radiation levels remained within normal ranges.
The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said it was aware of media reports that a transformer at the plants had caught fire “due to military activity,” but hadn’t received independent confirmation. It said its director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said that “every nuclear facility must be protected at all times.”
Ukraine did not immediately comment on the alleged attack.
Firefighters also responded to a blaze at the port of Ust-Luga in Russia’s Leningrad region, home to a major fuel export terminal. The regional governor said approximately 10 Ukrainian drones were shot down, with debris igniting the fire.
Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed its air defenses intercepted 95 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory overnight into Sunday.
Russia fired 72 drones and decoys, along with a cruise missile, into Ukraine overnight into Sunday, Ukraine’s air force said. Of these, 48 drones were shot down or jammed.
The incidents occurred as Ukraine marked independence day, commemorating its 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered remarks in a video address from Kyiv’s Independence Square, emphasizing the nation’s resolve.
“We are building a Ukraine that will have enough strength and power to live in security and peace,” Zelenskyy said, calling for a “just peace.”
“What our future will be is up to us alone,” he said, in a nod to the U.S.–Russia summit in Alaska earlier in August, which many feared would leave Ukrainian and European interests sidelined.
“And the world knows this. And the world respects this. It respects Ukraine. It perceives Ukraine as an equal,” he said.
U.S. special envoy Keith Kellogg was in attendance at independence day celebrations in Kyiv, during which Zelenskyy awarded him the Ukrainian Order of Merit, of the 1st degree.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney arrived in Kyiv on Sunday morning for meetings with Zelenskyy.
“On this special day — Ukraine’s Independence Day — it is especially important for us to feel the support of our friends. And Canada has always stood by our side,” wrote Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff.
Norway announced significant new military aid Sunday, pledging about $695 million for air defense systems. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said Norway and Germany are jointly funding two Patriot systems, including missiles, with Norway also helping procure air defense radar.
Pope Leo XIV prayed Sunday for peace in Ukraine as he marked the country’s independence day with a special appeal during his weekly noon blessing. He said the faithful were joining Ukrainians “asking that the Lord give peace to their martyred country.”
Leo also sent a telegram to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to mark independence day, which the Ukrainian leader posted on X along with similar notes from other world leaders.
In the letter, Leo assured his prayers for all Ukrainians who are suffering, and wrote: “I implore the Lord to move the hearts of people of good will, that the clamor of arms may fall silent and give way to dialogue, opening the path to peace for the good of all.”
Meanwhile, fighting continued on the front line in eastern Ukraine, where Russia claimed Saturday that its forces had seized two villages in the Donetsk region.
Hundreds of Italian and international filmmakers, artists and cultural figures have signed an open letter calling on the Venice Film Festival to take a “clear and unambiguous stand” against what they describe as genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
The appeal, organized under the banner of Venice4Palestine (V4P), was sent on Friday to the Venice film festival umbrella organization the Biennale di Venezia, as well as the festival’s independent sections Venice Days and International Critics’ Week.
In the letter, the group accuses the Israeli government and military of carrying out genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing across Palestine, and urges the festival to avoid becoming “a sad and empty showcase” by instead providing “a place of dialogue, active participation, and resistance, as it has been in the past.”
Signatories include British filmmaker Ken Loach, Italian actor Toni Servillo — star of 2025 Venice opener, La Grazia from Paolo Sorrentino, Italian actress and director siblings Alba and Alice Rohrwacher, actress Jasmine Trinca, French directors Céline Sciamma and Audrey Diwan, British actor Charles Dance and Palestinian directorial duo Arab Nasser and Tarzan Nasser, who won best director in Cannes Un Certain Regard this year for their latest film Once Upon A Time In Gaza.
The group references the deaths of nearly 250 Palestinian media workers since the start of the conflict and frames artistic institutions as responsible for fostering awareness and resistance.
“As the spotlight turns on the Venice Film Festival, we’re in danger of going through yet another major event that remains indifferent to this human, civil, and political tragedy,” the letter reads. “‘The show must go on,’ we are told, as we’re urged to look away — as if the ‘film world’ had nothing to do with the ‘real world.’”
For once, the letter continues, “the show must stop. We must interrupt the flow of indifference and open a path to awareness,” adding, “there is no cinema without humanity.”
The letter calls on the festival to host events highlighting Palestinian narratives and to create “a constant backdrop of conversations and initiatives” addressing “ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, colonialism and all the other crimes against humanity committed by Israel for decades, not just since October 7.”
In a statement in response to the letter, the Biennale said they and the Venice festival “have always been, throughout their history, places of open discussion and sensitivity to all the most pressing issues facing society and the world. The evidence of this is, first and foremost, the works that are being presented [at the festival].” The statement noted that The Voice of Hind Rajab, a real-life drama from Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, about the killing of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl by Israeli forces in Gaza in 2024, will be screening in competition at Venice this year.
The Biennale noted that last year’s Venice lineup featured Israeli director Dani Rosenberg’s film Of Dogs and Men, shot in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks.
“The Biennale is, as always, open to dialogue,” the statement said.
A separate group of Italian artists, the Artisti #NoBavaglio network, has called for a public “stop genocide” protest on August 30, on the first weekend of the festival.
The 82nd Venice international film festival runs Aug. 27 to Sept. 6.
Lisbon has a reputation for being one of the most artistic cities in Europe, yet that reputation has long been tied to architecture—the pastel-toned Alfama buildings, the intricate blue-and-white azulejo tiles, the patterned Portuguese pavement—and to the soulful strains of fado music. For years, the city’s visual art scene, though lively and distinct in a way that’s endemic to locales at cultural crossroads, seemed to play a quieter role. That perception, however, has shifted dramatically in recent years.
Over the past decade, Lisbon’s art scene has surged into the spotlight, transforming the city into a magnet for art lovers from around the globe. Since the mid-2010s, it has steadily climbed the ranks as a must-visit destination for those seeking cutting-edge creativity. New art galleries have flourished in once-industrial neighborhoods, while established cultural institutions like the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, the Museu Coleção Berardo and the Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea have revitalized their programming to engage local audiences and international visitors. Street art, meanwhile, has exploded onto Lisbon’s walls, with large-scale murals and hidden interventions, turning the city itself into an open-air gallery that rivals other European destinations.
Lisbon’s art scene today is bold, inquisitive and remarkably diverse, reflecting the city’s layered history and its global outlook. Whether you’re drawn to experimental collectives pushing the boundaries of contemporary practice, exhibitions highlighting Portugal’s rich cultural traditions, or the sheer dynamism of urban art woven into daily life, Lisbon offers an experience that feels both authentic and forward-looking. If your time in the city is limited, here are the art galleries to check out first.
French architect Benjamin Gonthier founded FOCO in 2017 with the aim of creating a space where emerging artists—both Portuguese and international—could present their most genuine, honest and experimental work, the kind of art that might otherwise be excluded for breaking the mold. Nearly a decade later, FOCO is all that and more: it has become one of Lisbon’s most recognizable names for innovative expression. The gallery does not limit itself by format; FOCO has hosted exhibitions across a wide range of disciplines, from painting and photography to sculpture and performance. The space itself reflects FOCO’s bold and experimental spirit. Housed in a 300 m2 former car dealership designed by noted Portuguese architect Alberto Pessoa, the venue spreads across two floors connected by what was once a car lift. Among the most notable names on the gallery’s roster are Rudolfo Quintas, Mia Dudek and Pauline Guerrier.
Madragoa
Madragoa is the brainchild of Italian director Matteo Consonni and Portuguese biologist Gonçalo Jesus. The gallery first opened in 2016 in the historic Lisbon district that shares its name and, in 2023, relocated to a larger space near Basílica da Estrela. The new venue features soaring 4.8-meter ceilings and double-aspect windows that flood the galleries with natural light—a crucial element for the kind of work Madragoa is best known for. While the gallery does not restrict itself by medium, it has built its reputation on bold, unconventional and often experimental installations, including those of Belen Uriel and Sara Chang Yan. Madragoa also earned early distinction as the first to organize Portuguese exhibitions for Adrián Balseca, an Ecuadorian mixed-media artist, and Joanna Piotrowska, a Polish artist recognized for her construction of “social landscapes.”
Pedro Cera has been a mainstay of Lisbon’s art scene for more than 25 years and has rightfully earned its reputation as one of the city’s most eclectic yet sophisticated galleries. If there is one defining quality about Pedro Cera, it is that the team behind it is unafraid of ambitious, challenging ideas—indeed, the more experimental and unconventional the concept, the more likely it is to find a home here. The gallery’s roster is among the most diverse in Lisbon, representing around 30 artists from Europe, Latin America and the United States. Its mission is not only to foster cross-cultural dialogue but also to encourage intergenerational exchange between artists and the public. From Lisbon-native Vitor Pomar, celebrated for his bold, colorful paintings, to American artist Adam Pendleton, whose work merges painting, silkscreen, collage and video, to Italian Arte Povera pioneer Gilberto Zorio, Galeria Pedro Cera consistently curates exhibitions that are both visually compelling and intellectually rigorous.
Galeria São Mamede
Galeria São Mamede has been a fixture of Lisbon’s art world since the 1960s. Over more than six decades, it has earned a distinctive reputation thanks to its meticulous curatorial approach. Every exhibition staged at São Mamede is tailored specifically to the artist: lighting, framing and display design are carefully considered and painstakingly adjusted before the public ever steps inside. The gallery regards this process as central to shaping the individual identity of each artist it represents. Among the most notable names on its roster are Antonio Areal, Armada Passos, Carlos Botelho and Fernando Gaspar. For many years, São Mamede’s main exhibition hall was located in a historic building in the Príncipe Real neighborhood, a distinctive venue with narrow rooms, low ceilings, brick archways and stone floors. In 2018, the gallery expanded into a new space just a short walk away. The modern venue spans 500 m2 and offers all the hallmarks of a contemporary art gallery, from soaring ceilings and stark illumination to the clean simplicity of white walls.
Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art. VASCO VILHENA
Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art
Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art opened in 2001 and, after more than two decades on Lisbon’s art scene, has established itself as one of the country’s most influential promoters of conceptual contemporary art. When it first launched, the mission was simple: to place Portuguese contemporary artists in dialogue with prominent international figures. Over time, however, the gallery’s approach has evolved and expanded. That does not mean it has abandoned its original goal. Today, Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art represents 27 artists—a balance of Portuguese and international talent—and works actively to present their art on the global stage. The gallery’s portfolio includes celebrated names such as Lawrence Weiner, John Baldessari, Erwin Wurm and Julião Sarmento. Visitors should not be surprised, though, to encounter work by other artists as well. The gallery frequently collaborates with outside voices, often inviting guest curators to stage exhibitions that introduce fresh perspectives and novel approaches. This willingness to experiment and to mix established practices with newer ideas has given Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art one of the most eclectic and distinctive voices in Portugal today.
Vera Cortês did not begin as a gallery at all—it started as an agency focused exclusively on supporting specific projects by emerging artists. After three years of working in that format, Vera herself recognized that a more strategic, long-term approach was needed to foster successful collaborations. In 2006, she took the leap, expanding the program and transforming it into a full-scale gallery. Nearly two decades later, Vera Cortês stands as one of the most supportive galleries for new artists in Lisbon. The team’s central mission is to nurture talent and allow it to develop at its own pace. In today’s fast-moving art market, that philosophy is far from conventional, yet it has become the foundation of the gallery’s long-term success. By prioritizing thoughtfulness over immediacy, Vera Cortês has built enduring collaborations with some of Portugal’s most distinctive voices, including Vhils, the renowned street artist; Carlos Bunga, known for his monumental cardboard installations; and photographer Daniel Blaufuks.
Underdogs Gallery
Underdogs Gallery began in 2010 as a group exhibition initiative. Conceived by the artist Vhils (real name Alexandre Manuel Dias Farto), the project was designed to promote graffiti and urban art—then still a fringe movement—by bringing together some of its most prominent figures. After two successful exhibitions in 2010 and 2011, Vhils, with the support of curator Pauline Foessel, established a permanent gallery space in 2013. Today, Underdogs functions as part art gallery, part public art program and part print store, offering exclusive artist editions. Its home in Lisbon’s Marvila district is a converted warehouse whose design plays on the boundary between public and private space: a large circular window separates the expansive exhibition area from the gallery’s operational side. Within this industrial setting, Underdogs has showcased a true who’s who of urban-inspired contemporary art, from international names such as Shepard Fairey and Futura to celebrated Portuguese artists including Vhils and Wasted Rita.
This Is Not a White Cube is the only gallery on this list that is not strictly homegrown. Founded by Sónia Ribeiro in Luanda, Angola, in 2016, the gallery opened a Lisbon outpost in Chiado three years later. Its name reflects its mission. The artists represented by This Is Not a White Cube engage with urgent, complex themes such as identity, memory and globalization. By foregrounding perspectives that are often overlooked, the gallery fosters dialogue between Europe and the Global South and expands the scope of Lisbon’s contemporary art conversation.
Galeria 111 is very likely the oldest privately operated art gallery in Lisbon—and it is certainly among the oldest. Founded by Manuel de Brito in 1964, it marked its 60th anniversary last year. While it was initially devoted entirely to Portuguese art, the gallery broadened its vision to include international artists whose work aligned with its curatorial ethos. Today, under the direction of Rui Brito, the program maintains a carefully balanced mix of local and international voices. Its roster is as impressive as ever, featuring artists such as Lourdes Castro, Dame Paula Rego and Mauro Pinto. In 2020, Galeria 111 moved into a new, larger space in Lisbon’s Alvalade neighborhood. The updated venue offers a more contemporary look, yet it retains some of the qualities that have long distinguished the gallery from other institutions. The lighting, for example, is often warmer than what one finds in typical contemporary art galleries, lending exhibitions a more intimate and inviting atmosphere.
Balcony Gallery
Pedro Magalhães opened Balcony Contemporary Art Gallery in 2017, and in just a few years, it has grown into one of the most prominent spaces associated with emerging contemporary artists, both local and international. The Balcony team is especially interested in work that is experimental and audacious, with a strong commitment to interdisciplinary expression. Encouraging artists to explore new creative languages is one of the gallery’s central missions. The exhibition space reflects this ethos. Set within a renovated historic building that once housed a store, the gallery spans 220 m2 across two floors. It offers all the features of a modern, high-end gallery—soaring ceilings, white walls and open floor plans suited to large-scale installations—while often incorporating quirkier touches, such as boldly painted walls or floors, to heighten the impact of the works on display. Among the most notable artists on Balcony’s roster are Carolina Serrano, Hugo Brazão and Pedro Henriques, each of whom contributes to the gallery’s reputation for fostering inventive and distinctive voices.
Not a gallery but a museum, the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology still belongs on the itinerary of any contemporary art lover visiting Lisbon. While the works on display are not for sale, MAAT is one of Portugal’s most ambitious centers for contemporary art and remains a must-visit destination, if only for the reference point it provides. Exhibitions often bring together both established figures and emerging artists. MAAT has hosted the first-ever solo shows in Portugal for major names such as photographer Jeff Wall and painter Miriam Cahn. The EDP Foundation also supports younger voices through its New Artists Award, which has helped launch the careers of many Portuguese talents—Joana Vasconcelos, now internationally renowned for her monumental installations, received the prize in 2000. Each edition culminates in a group exhibition at the museum. The architecture is as striking as the art inside. MAAT spans 3.8 hectares (38,000 square meters) on the banks of the River Tagus and integrates both historic and contemporary design. Exhibition spaces are split between two primary structures: the Tejo Power Station, a red-brick industrial landmark from 1908 repurposed for innovative displays, and a sleek riverside building completed in 2016 by British architect Amanda Levete. Together, they create one of Lisbon’s most distinctive cultural environments, where past and present meet in dialogue.
The 31st edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival is wrapping up late on Friday after the unveiling of this year’s winners. The Heart of Sarajevo for the best feature film went to Wind Talk to Me, directed by Stefan Đorđević, while Ivette Löcker’s Our Time Will Come won the best documentary feature prize.
Mashing fiction and documentary, Wind Talk to Me stars its Serbian director and his family. “Stefan reunites with his family to celebrate his grandmother’s birthday for the first time since his mother recently passed away,” reads a synopsis. “This homecoming, driven by Stefan’s urge to complete a film about his mother as well as an attempt to make amends by rescuing a stray dog, will ignite an introspective journey.”
In his acceptance speech, Đorđević mentioned recent unrest and violent clashes between anti-government protesters and police in Serbia against the country’s beleaguered pro-Moscow President Aleksandar Vučić and the government. Peaceful demonstrations started in November after a railway station collapse killed 16 people, with critics blaming corruption and cost savings. In recent days, the situation has turned violent as supporters of the president and government staged counter-protests, and riot police was deployed.
“I dedicate this to my mother, but also to all the mothers who are staying up all night in Serbia worrying about their kids on the streets being beaten brutally and arrested,” he director said about his Sarajevo best feature film award.
Our Time Will Come, whose director discussed the film with THR earlier in the week, follows an interracial couple for a year. “Siaka from Gambia and his wife Victoria have returned to their adopted ‘homeland’ of Austria to build a stable existence and start a family,” notes its synopsis. “Both invest a large part of their energy in achieving their shared utopia, but cultural differences remain significant, social structures remain immobile, and their own history and traditions are just as hard to shake off.”
Our Time Will Come
Courtesy of sixpackfilm
Ivana Mladenović was honored as best director for Sorella di Clausura. Plus, the best actress and actor awards were bestowed upon the ensemble cast of director Kukla’s Fantasy, namely Sarah Al Saleh, Aline Juhart, Mina Milovanović, and Mia Skrbinac, and Andrija Kuzmanović for his role in Yugo Florida, respectively.
The festival’s four competition sections – for feature, documentary, short and student films – screened 15 world, six international, 28 regional and two national premieres. A total of 50 films competed for the Heart of Sarajevo awards.
Sarajevo Film Festival director Jovan Marjanović and his team also once again brought the stars to the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Willem Dafoe, Stellan Skarsgard, and Ray Winstone received the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo honor at the festival, as did Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino. The works of Russia-born director and artist Ilya Khrzhanovsky and Sorrentino were also featured in curated retrospectives of their films.
Check out all the winners of the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival below.
HONORARY HEART OF SARAJEVO Willem Dafoe Ray Winstone Stellan Skarsgård Paolo Sorrentino
HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST FEATURE FILM Wind Talk to Me, directed by Stefan Đorđević
HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST DIRECTOR Ivana Mladenović, Sorella di Clausura
HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST ACTRESS Sarah Al Saleh, Aline Juhart, Mina Milovanović, Mia Skrbinac, Fantasy
HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST ACTOR Andrija Kuzmanović, Yugo Florida
HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM Our Time Will Come, directed by Ivette Löcker
Special Jury Award In Hell With Ivo, directed by Kristina Nikolova
Special Mention I Believe the Portrait Saved Me, directed by Alban Muja
HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST SHORT DOCUMENTARY FILM The Men’s Land, directed by Mariam Bakacho Khatchvani
HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST SHORT FILM Winter in March, directed by Natalia Mirzoyan
Special Mention Eraserhead in a Knitted Shopping Bag, directed by Lili Koss
HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST STUDENT FILM Tarik, directed by Adem Tutić
BEST YOUTH PERSPECTIVES AWARD DJ Ahmet, directed by Georgi M. Unkovski
SPECIAL AWARD FOR PROMOTING GENDER EQUALITY God Will Not Help, directed by Hana Jušić
PARTNERS’ AWARDS
European Film Academy Short Film Candidate Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World Directors: Kevin Walker, Irene Zahariadis
CICAE (International Confederation of Art Cinemas) Award White Snail Directors: Elsa Kremser, Levin Peter
Cineuropa Prize DJ Ahmet Director: Georgi M. Unkovski
Yugo Florida, TV series veteran Vladimir Tagić’s feature film directorial debut, celebrated its world premiere during the 31st edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival that wraps up on Friday.
The title of the father-son drama refers to a car model, which is somewhat of a mirror of the state of its protagonist. Just check out the synopsis: “Zoran’s awkward, almost pointless life – which features a pothead roommate, an unavailable ex-girlfriend, and a job on reality TV – is turned upside down when his estranged and intolerable father is diagnosed with a terminal illness and Zoran commits himself to helping him through his final weeks.”
Tagić wrote the screenplay with Milan Ramšak Marković. The cast features popular Serbian TV comedian Andrija Kuzmanović, Nikola Pejaković, Snježana Sinovčić Šiškov, and Goran Slavić.
The Serbian director sat down with THR in Sarajevo to discuss the inspirations for the movie, the car and reality TV references, and his next film idea.
Going from TV series to film wasn’t a big leap for Tagić. “The movies are the thing that I always wanted to do,” he shared. “I just needed a lot of time to finance the movie. It’s not that easy, especially when you are a first-time director, to find financing. That’s why I just grabbed the chance to work on TV shows when I got the chance.”
His own experiences inspired the movie. “One year before my father got sick and died, an uncle of mine was sick, and I went to the hospital to visit him, and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I’m not ready for my parents to get sick’,” he recalled. “And then, three or four months later, my father got sick. And during the last six months of his life, I experienced the strongest feelings that I have ever experienced.”
Continued the filmmaker: “Your whole world is going upside down, and you have this illusion in your head that you are maybe learning something for life. That’s the way our brain functions. We want to make sense out of everything. We want to find the reason. So, you’re telling yourself that this has to have a meaning. ‘I will become a better person. I will understand to appreciate life more. I will be a better son to my mother, or better brother to my sister or better boyfriend to my girlfriend,’ whatever. But that’s an illusion. That is not true.”
Tagić realized that he had never seen a movie tackle this “idea that a painful experience doesn’t mean that it’s a learning experience. Maybe it’s just pain, and it’s okay to accept that.” Explained the director: “Zoran is this guy who is searching for a way to change his life, to find the meaning to. He’s saying [at one point in the movie]: ‘I’m more mature now.’ But in the end, he realizes that he’s not really.”
Making Yugo Florida helped the creator. “That was something I needed to do to let it out,” he highlighted. “That was my kind of catharsis. I think that this process helped me to let it go and to continue with my life. That experience for me was cathartic in a way, because I’m not a guy who’s going to go to psychotherapy.”
‘Yugo Florida’
Courtesy of Sarajevo Film Festival
So, what’s up with the title Yugo Florida? It turns out that is the name of a hatchback car model from Yugoslav automaker Zastava that was produced between 1987 and 2008. “The car has such an exotic name,” Tagić said. “In that name, you are putting Yugoslavia and Florida right next to each other, and it’s a strange combination. What is Yugo fucking Florida? That name was just so funny to me. It’s absurd because it sounds exotic, but it’s the shittiest car in the world.”
It may want to inspire the sunny beaches of Florida and the heat of Miami, “but essentially, it’s the shittiest, crappiest car in the world,” he concluded. “So for me, that was the perfect metaphor for my main characters and their lives. Their lives are full of imperfections, full of things that they don’t understand and problems that they cannot fix, and they don’t know why. And that car is like that.”
Zoran’s reality TV job is a reference to the filmmaker’s personal life. “That was the job that I did right after I finished film school,” Tagić told THR. “I was doing Big Brother reality. And those long night shifts, which you see in the movie, drove me completely crazy. I was in some perpetual state of insomnia,” just like Zoran.
“His main problem is loneliness,” the director continued. “And Paul Schrader, the famous screenwriter I really admire, says what a job in a movie represents and how, when he’s writing a character, he’s thinking about the job that he’s doing as a metaphor for the inner problem of that character. It’s the same thing in Taxi Driver or American Gigolo or First Reformed. So I was thinking what is the perfect job to represent the loneliness of a main character, and then it just clicked – it’s perfect to have a guy who is watching other people, including when they sleep, in black-and-white.”
Tagić already has a new movie idea and screenplay with his Yugo Florida writing partner. “It’s a story that is, in a way, a mirror to this story,” he told THR. “This story was about my relationship with my father, and the next one is going to be about the relationship between my mother and my sister. So I’m going to make the female version of Yugo Florida. I mean, it’s going to be a completely different movie, but, in my head, it’s like a duo. There is a kind of connection.”
Much more than just its namesake cheese, Gruyères is a charming Swiss village filled with quaint cobblestone streets, delicious food, and a museum filled with unexpectedly daring art. Located in the canton of Fribourg, it’s an ideal day trip from cities like Bern, Zurich and Geneva via train. But if you really want to dive into Swiss traditions and the striking surrounding landscape, it’s worth staying in the village and exploring Gruyères for a day or two.
The Gruyères region entices throughout the seasons; in the colder months, you can enjoy the museums and hearty cuisine, while in the summer, you can hike and enjoy outdoor dining in the town square.
History fans will love Chateau de Gruyères, an impossibly photogenic medieval castle with lush gardens and sweeping views of the alps. Here, you’ll find stained glass windows, knight’s armor and period furnishings, as well as contemporary art exhibitions. Looking for a sweet treat? Chocolate lovers will thoroughly enjoy spending time at Switzerland’s oldest chocolate factory, where you can learn about the history and production of chocolate and explore the various shops in town, including Chocolaterie de Gruyères. Of course, you’ll also have to indulge in ample cheese eating—after all, you’re right where one of the world’s most renowned cheeses is produced, with must-see cheese shops like La Maison du Gruyère and La Chaudière Fromagerie Crèmerie. And if you find yourself in Gruyères in late September, you’ll witness one of the most adorable cow parades in Switzerland, filled with live music and centuries-old traditions.
Much more than just a fairytale alpine village, Gruyères is a place where Swiss history collides with sci-fi realism, where traditional fondue meets daring culinary sophistication, and where cows in floral headdresses walk steps away from contemporary chic hotels. It’s Switzerland with a twist, where historic customs and futuristic imagination live side by side.
Based on a short story and script by Stefan Bosković, Bosnian helmer Srdan Vuletić’s Otter (Vidra) tells the story of a 16-year-old girl named Hana who has to face two major traumas, in addition to the expectations of her mother and extended family. Vuletić’s directorial debut, Summer in the Golden Valley, also featured a 16-year-old, a boy who must repay his late father’s debt. In his latest, Hana must cope with the death of her father, whose final wish was to be buried in a space suit. Matthew McConaughey has no role in the movie, but he gets referenced in Otter (more about that later).
“A reserved teenager, Hana, has been invited by her crush, Balsa, to go to a lake with him to film a solar eclipse. On the morning of their planned trip, however, Hana’s father, a top-notch pilot, dies,” reads a synopsis for the film, which celebrated its world premiere at the 31st edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival. “In his will, Hana’s father requests that he be buried in a space suit. Frustrated by her mother’s inability to stand up to the rest of the family, who want to give her father a traditional funeral, Hana runs away from home and goes to the lake.” She wants to have a good time with Balsa and his friend and social media star Luka, only to be disappointed and experience violence. “Hana must suppress her considerate and obedient nature or her destiny will be as dark as the solar eclipse.”
Vuletić has been busy after a 17-year “break” of sorts. “Many people think I took a break from filmmaking, but in essence, I was stuck with the production of one of my previous films,” he told THR during an interview at the Sarajevo festival. “It was that movie, Gym, that I premiered last year. Remember this saying, ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’? And I made this mistake.”
He reacted by starting to develop many things at the same time, “and it all came to fruition more or less over the span of five years,” Vuletić explained. “So in the last four years, I did two series as a creator and two feature films. But before that was not really a break. I did some theater performances as a director and some documentary things. So it was not that I was on holiday.”
Srdan Vuletić
Courtesy of Sarajevo Film Festival
What is the story behind the space suit? “That was not in the early script version,” the director told THR. “It came along as a solution that I asked the script writer to make. We had a movie about a girl facing trauma. And I told him it’s somehow too linear for me to have only one trauma. I didn’t want Hana to have any respite. So then we brought this big trauma inside the house.”
An otter captured in a box also plays a key role in the film. “One thing I changed right before shooting was that I thought maybe it would not be good to see the otter as an animal in a physical presence,” Vuletić shared with THR. “The otter symbolizes her trauma.”
In a later scene, the otter can be seen but only in animated form. The director planned for this animated sequence early on. “I wanted to make a movie that’s different from the rest of regional cinematography,” explained Vuletić. In consultations with others, “this animation thing clicked,” he recalled. “It’s a moment where we enter her inner world. It’s the moment when she finally understands that she should not run from her problems. It’s a moment of change when she says, ‘OK, my first step in solving the problems is to recognize I have a problem and to face it’.”
So what does McConaughey have to do with Otter? There’s a scene in which Luka’s looks are compared to those of the famous actor. But Vuletić says another Hollywood star was initially planned to get name-checked in that scene. “There was another actor we had in mind for this role of Luka, and this guy resembles Sean Penn,” the filmmaker told THR. “And then for a long time in the script, it was Sean Penn. Then, when we decided to have Pavle Marković, a great, great actor, play Luka, I said, ‘Listen, I think it doesn’t fit his character to say some name that he really resembles. Let’s say a name that he thinks he looks like.’ McConaughey. For some reason, that name came up.”
Last Spring, Kasmin New York staged “Les Lalanne: Zoophites,” featuring works by the acclaimed French designers drawn entirely from the collection of their eldest daughter, Caroline Hamisky Lalanne. Courtesy of Kasmin
While global auction sales slipped 6.2 percent in the first half of 2025—with post-war and contemporary art down 19.3 percent to $1.22 billion, impressionist and modern sales dropping 7.7 percent and luxury barely budging (down 0.5 percent to $805.9 million)—design, decorative arts and furniture experienced significant momentum. According to ArTactic, the category surged 20.4 percent to reach $172 million in 2025, compared to $143 million the previous year. This growth occurred despite concerns over new tariffs. While fine art remains exempt from tariffs due to a legal loophole, design objects, antiquities and other collectibles are not, yet the market continues to thrive. This sustained growth is driven by a broader collector base and ongoing institutional interest, making it worth a deeper analysis of its various tiers and areas of activity.
Recent numbers from design auctions show strong growth: Sotheby’s design sales in New York this June achieved $37.5 million, followed by Christie’s with $23.6 million and Phillips, which staged just one sale, bringing in $4 million. Altogether, the June auctions saw a 62.3 percent year-on-year increase—proof that, at least for now, the design market is not just holding steady but gaining momentum. In the same period last year, Sotheby’s reported $19.5 million, Christie’s $15.5 million and Phillips $5.1 million across two sales with significantly more inventory.
The first half of 2025 marked a landmark period for design at Sotheby’s, according to chairman and co-worldwide head of 20th Century design, Jodi Pollack. Fueled by strong global demand, record-setting prices and an expanding international collector base, the market saw particular momentum among new and younger buyers, with increased cross-category collecting. Sotheby’s reported a $75 million combined total across New York and Paris this season, among the highest series totals ever for Sotheby’s Design sales worldwide. “These exceptional results reflect the galvanizing strength of the global design market and the discerning collectors who continue to passionately pursue rare pieces of extraordinary quality,” Pollack commented.
The Lalanne obsession continued its upward trajectory, but records were also shattered in unexpected areas: the monumental Danner Memorial Window—designed by Agnes Northrop for Tiffany Studios—achieved a staggering $12.4 million last November, setting a new auction world record for Tiffany glass. Not far behind, Frank Lloyd Wright’s double-pedestal lamp reached $7.5 million after an eleven-minute bidding war this May, marking another record in the category this year.
Tiffany Studios’ Stillman Memorial Window sold for $2,390,000 at Sotheby’s in June 2025. Courtesy of Sotheby’s
Another magnificent glass window by Louis Comfort Tiffany, The Stillman Memorial Window, sold in June at Sotheby’s for $2,390,000 (estimate: $1.5-2.5 million) as part of the sale Masterpieces by Louis Comfort Tiffany, Featuring The Ann and Robert Fromer Collection. The sale generated $6.3 million (estimate: $3.6-$5.6 million) with 96 percent sold by lot and nearly 60 percent of lots selling above their high estimates. Notably, 21 percent of buyers participating in Sotheby’s design sales this June were new to the auction house.
Strong institutional demand is also driving the surge in the market for Tiffany Studios pieces, with museums actively acquiring the studio’s masterworks. In 2023, the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired the three-part, 10-foot-tall, 7-foot-wide Garden Landscape, while this past May, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, announced its acquisition of the monumental stained glass window Mountain Landscape (Root Memorial Window).
Meanwhile, the remarkable market surge for François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne continues unabated, cementing the duo as blue-chip fixtures in the design-art hybrid space. According to Artprice, the average auction price for their works has more than quadrupled since 2015, with major pieces now regularly surpassing six figures. The current auction record belongs to François-Xavier’s 1964 Rhinocrétaire I, which sold for €18.33 million ($19.4 million) at Christie’s Paris in 2023.
Between 2019 and 2024, Sotheby’s and Christie’s sold over 700 works from the private collections of Les Lalanne and their daughters, Dorothée and Marie, through a series of high-profile auctions in Paris and New York, generating a combined total of $330.2 million.
Demand remains strong—just this June, François-Xavier’s Grand Rhinocrétaire II (2003) fetched $16.4 million at Sotheby’s, five times its low estimate and accounting for nearly a quarter of the auction week’s total revenue. Christie’s New York also staged a dedicated sale in October 2023, François-Xavier Lalanne, Sculpteur | Collection Dorothée Lalanne, featuring works from the artist’s daughter and curated by French designer Simon Porte Jacquemus, closing with white gloves and a $59 million total, with at least fourteen lots surpassing six figures.
This October, Di Donna Gallery will present a museum-quality exhibition featuring a groundbreaking dialogue between Magritte’s surreal vision and the whimsical world of the Lalanne couple. The show will highlight their shared surrealist sensibilities and historical connection through gallerist Alexander Iolas in the 1960s. Over fifty works will be on display, including rare pieces from the estates of François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne, as well as paintings, works on paper and sculptures by René Magritte. Among the highlights is Magritte’s enigmatic L’ami intime (1958), which fetched $33.66 million at Christie’s London in March. During the last Venice Biennale, Ben Brown presented an extensive exhibition dedicated to the Lalannes, “Planète Lalanne,” featuring more than 150 works by the celebrated French duo.
The François-Xavier Lalanne, Sculpteur | Collection Dorothée Lalanne sale generated nearly $59 million at Christie’s New York in October 2024. Brian W. Ferry, all rights reserved
Phillips’ design specialist Kimberly Sørensen says the market is still strong, but more names are gaining momentum: their June Design auction in New York achieved a 91 percent sell-through rate by lot and 96 percent by value—an exceptional result. This followed their April Design sale in London, which reached 94 percent by lot and 97 percent by value. “These figures underscore the strength of the market and the continued appetite for exceptional design and craftsmanship,” Sørensen commented.
He told Observer that he’s seeing particular interest in female designers: Judy Kensley McKie’s Fish bench led Phillips’ June Design sale in New York, achieving $406,400 and setting a new world auction record for the artist. This, after her Leopard couch already led the top lot at Phillips’ London Design sale in April—further proof of her growing international appeal. Other standout female artists performing well in the recent sale included Line Vautrin and Claude Lalanne, whose works were among the session’s top lots. The American architect and designer George Nakashima also remains a beloved figure with a truly international market, according to Sørensen. “His daughter, Mira Nakashima, now the creative director of Nakashima Studio, is a remarkable designer in her own right and her work not only continues her father’s legacy of craftsmanship, but has also successfully introduced it to a new generation.”
Studio ceramics is another area in which Phillips has seen tremendous success. Phillips’ December New York sale, Moved by Beauty: Works by Lucie Rie from an Important Asian Collection, was a White Glove auction, which followed a dedicated London sale featuring Lucie Rie and Hans Coper. “We’re proud to hold the auction records for Rie and Coper and have previously set benchmarks for Lucie Rie and Doyle Lane,” he said.
Judy Kensley McKie’s Leopard Couch (1983) sold at Phillips’ April Design Sale for £177,800 ($237,736), while her Fish bench set a new record, achieving $406,400. Courtesy of Phillips
Sørensen confirms that design today attracts a broader and more diverse audience than ever. Even looking at their numbers, so far in 2025, 20 percent of Phillips’ design bidders were new to the auction house, which speaks to the category’s growing appeal. The Phillips specialist also points out that they’re seeing an encouraging rise in interest from younger collectors; Millennials and Gen Z now make up 20 percent of the Design bidders. “Many of them are drawn to the sustainability of the secondary market, where Design objects are not only beautiful but also environmentally conscious choices,” he explained. “Social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest have played a big role in this shift, making it easier than ever for collectors to discover and connect with designers across periods and geographies.”
Looking ahead to the final few months of 2025, Sørensen and his team are optimistic. “The momentum we’ve seen so far suggests sustained interest, especially as more seasoned and new collectors recognize the value and artistry within the category.”
Despite the swoon in the broader art market, design has continued to hit new highs with world record prices in all of Christie’s top markets, according to Alex Hemingway, Christie’s global head of design. Asked about the most sought-after names, he pointed to Lalanne, Giacometti, Tiffany and Royère, adding that today’s buyers are especially drawn to masterpiece-level works with strong provenance and compelling narratives.
George Nakashima’s Three-door room divider sold at Phillips for $209,550. Courtesy of Phillips
This June, Christie’s Design auction and the single-owner American Avant-Garde: The James D. Zellerbach Residence by Frances Elkins sale brought in a combined total of $23.6 million. Leading the auction was The Goddard Memorial Window by Tiffany Studios, which achieved $4,285,000, soaring past its $2-3 million estimate and becoming the second-highest price ever realized for a window from Tiffany’s studio. Nonetheless, the world record remains The Danner Memorial Window, which sold for $12.5 million with fees at Sotheby’s Modern Art evening sale last November. Before this, the studio’s record was $3.4 million for a Pond Lily lamp sold by Christie’s in 2018.
The Goddard Memorial Window, part of the American Avant-Garde sale, brought in $8.1 million, with 81 percent of lots selling at or above their high estimates. Other top-performing lots included two rare Oiseaux sculptures by Alberto Giacometti (sold for $2,954,000 and $2,833,000, respectively) and a pair of rare ‘Pyramides’ andirons (sold for $378,000). Jean-Michel Frank’s Aragon low table sold for $819,000, and his ceiling light brought in $277,200—more than five times its low estimate.
Lalanne led the $15.4 million Design sale. Claude Lalanne’s unique Structure végétale aux papillons, souris et oiseaux chandelier (2000) fetched $1,865,000, while her L’Enlèvement d’Europe (1990) sold for $1,134,000. Works by François-Xavier Lalanne also performed strongly, with Le Métaphore (Canard-Bateau) (ca. 2002) soaring to $667,800—five times its high estimate—and Rhinocéros Bleu (1981) achieving $327,600, well above its low estimate of $70,000. Animal-inspired design by other design masters drew significant interest as well, with Jean Royère’s Éléphanteau armchairs realizing $743,400. Notably, demand surged for Alberto and Diego Giacometti’s sculptural and lighting designs across Christie’s sales, with aggregate results finishing 147 percent above the combined pre-sale low estimates.
Claude Lalanne’s Unique ‘Structure végétale aux papillons, souris et oiseaux’ Chandelier (2000) sold for $1,865,000. Christie’s
Vintage design has become a market of its own over the past decade, confirms Alessandra di Castro, a renowned antiques dealer and the fourth generation of her family’s historic business based in Piazza di Spagna. Over time, she has progressively expanded her offering into broader categories to meet the evolving tastes of a more diverse and constantly shifting collector base. Di Castro pointed out that demand is especially strong when it comes to prominent names, particularly among the many foreign buyers who, encouraged by the flat tax, are purchasing homes in Italy. “They furnish them with Italian taste and aesthetics—those are very interesting clients,” she explained, noting how quickly international buyers absorb the beauty around them and want to live surrounded by it, much like travelers during the era of the Grand Tour.
“Even decorative art and design have become a global market—much more conscious and diverse than in the past,” she said, noting how it’s no longer just architects searching for the perfect piece. Auction houses have opened dedicated departments, and people now come with very specific requests—asking, for instance, whether they have or can source a particular piece by Scarpa.
“Personally, I always buy unique pieces, because I view them through my own lens—as a kind of continuity with the periods I’ve always focused on, particularly the 18th and 19th Centuries,” Di Castro explained. “But with my particular approach to research and my eye for unusual objects, I really look at everything.” Still, the expert dealer admits it’s somewhat disheartening that certain categories—like sublime examples of 18th- and 19th-century cabinetmaking—are now valued far less than when she began her career, even though they remain extraordinary works.
The market for big Italian design names like Carlo Scarpa or Ettore Sottsass remains strong, even in the international market. In December 2023, a rare Pennellate glass vase by Scarpa fetched $107,100 at Wright Auction House—starting from just $24,000 after being acquired for $3.99 in a thrift shop. The Italian architect’s latest record was set just this March for a special-order display cabinet that fetched $489,868 at Piasa. The most recent record for Memphis visionary Ettore Sottsass was set in 2018 at Phillips in London, where his iconic undulating mirror sculpture fetched $430,221. Since then, his furniture and ceramics have consistently crossed into mid- to upper-five-figure territory at European post-war and design sales.
Collectible design for new collectors and expanding geographies
According to Jennifer Olshin, partner and founding director at Friedman Benda, the term “collectible design” feels arbitrary—and even reductive—especially now that the categories of art and design increasingly overlap, both in how works are created and how they circulate. “We tend to avoid using the term because it doesn’t reflect how artists and designers think about their work. For them, it’s about creating something that expresses who they are, that pushes beyond what already exists. They don’t frame it as ‘collectible’—it’s just design, in the same way we don’t say ‘collectible art,’ we say art.”
“Ettore Sottsass 1947-1974” at Friedman Benda in 2023. Courtesy Friedman Benda and Ettore Sottsass | Photo: Daniel Kukla
Friedman Benda is a leading gallery at the intersection of contemporary design, craft and art, representing a highly diverse, intergenerational roster of designers and artists from around the world. Many challenge conventional boundaries between disciplines, materials and cultural narratives, often in cross-disciplinary ways. “Our focus is more on the making, the expression, the stories and commentary—the reason the work exists in the first place,” said Olshin. “Every artist on our roster is doing something we haven’t seen before. Together, they form what almost feels like an encyclopedia of what’s happening in design today.”
The gallery opened in New York in 2007 with an inaugural exhibition of legendary Italian designer Ettore Sottsass—his final show before his death. Since then, Friedman Benda has staged numerous exhibitions exploring the many phases of Sottsass’s complex, imaginative career and continues to represent his estate, along with other historically significant names such as Andrea Branzi, Gaetano Pesce, Wendell Castle and Shiro Kuramata. At the same time, the gallery champions emerging and multidisciplinary voices such as Samuel Ross, Misha Kahn, Ebitenyefa Baralaye and Formafantasma. “We’ve built a program that spans three or four generations of designers, artists and architects, many of whom play off each other in fascinating ways,” Olshin noted. “There have even been moments when a collector comes to us as a Sottsass collector and leaves with a work by Misha Kahn—because they sense a shared spirit between the two.”
Misha Kahn’s “Rien à voir” at Friedman Benda, Paris, in June 2025. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Misha Kahn | Photo: Fabrice Gousset
Olshin sees the early generation of design pioneers like Sottsass as having paved the way for younger talents. “They fought the initial battles and made things possible. Now, younger designers are building on those hard-won foundations and pushing things forward in their own way. After 18 years, we’re starting to see generational connections—designers introducing us to other designers, former students becoming peers, friends becoming collaborators. These evolving communities are really what we try to make the gallery about.”
Design itself is not new, nor is its market, Olshin pointed out. There have always been iconic collectors—especially in the U.S.—who’ve played a key role in shaping the broader design landscape. Many are deeply embedded in museum and institutional ecosystems, supporting exhibitions, publications and emerging practices. “These great patrons are integral to the cultural infrastructure,” she said. “By helping bring design into public view—through shows, dialogue and visibility—they create ripple effects that expand awareness and accessibility, shaping how wider audiences engage with design.”
What has changed more recently, however, is the breadth and diversity of the collector base. Interest in unique design pieces has expanded significantly since the pandemic, particularly among younger generations and across new geographies. “It’s not necessarily a new market, but we’re seeing a broadening of interest,” Olshin observed. “There are more players, more people engaging with what we’re doing—and a younger generation is coming to design in a really exciting way. They’re not drawing the same distinctions that once existed. For them, design isn’t separate from broader cultural conversations around art—it’s all part of the same dialogue.”
This new generation of collectors is looking to define their environments in more personal, meaningful ways. “It’s not just about aesthetics—it might be a single detail or object—but about surrounding themselves with stories and significance,” Olshin clarified. That shift has also changed who the buyers are. They’re no longer from a single social stratum or traditional collecting circles. Architects and interior designers now find themselves in closer dialogue with increasingly international, hands-on clients. “They’re interpreting the ethos of their clients—their values, daily lives, habits and aspirations. It’s about translating those stories on a deeper, more integrated level.”
Installation View: FormaFantasma’s “Formation” at Friedman Benda, New York. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Formafantasma. Photo: Izzy Leung
If there’s one common thread among today’s collectors, it’s a desire to live with design—intentionally and fully. “They’re not just acquiring objects to display in a corner; they’re integrating design into their daily lives in meaningful ways,” Olshin said. “It’s about creating environments that reflect how they live, think and feel.”
We’re also seeing notable geographic shifts beyond a handful of major centers. “Even in the U.S., we’re seeing collectors engage with cutting-edge work from regions that didn’t have a strong design presence in the past,” she said. “Whereas before they may have traveled to New York to experience it, now they’re building collections in their own communities.” Museums are starting to reflect this expanded interest as well. Some institutions have long been ahead of the curve, while others are now adapting to meet their audiences’ growing appetite for design. “There are curators who have been championing this for years and others who are now taking cues from their patrons, local communities, or academic circles.”
At the same time, the perspective has become truly global in terms of makers and collectors. “We used to talk about the U.S. market versus international markets, but now the gaze is much broader,” Olshin added. “It’s being driven partly by institutional collecting and design initiatives in places like Australia, the Middle East and Asia.”
“Summer By Design 2025” at Carpenters Workshop Gallery in Paris. Photo: Benjamin Baccarani
“The collector base has indeed grown and diversified over the years,” confirmed Cyrelle Herve, director of Carpenters Workshop in Paris, when Observer asked her to speak on the pulse of the market. “We naturally work with contemporary art collectors. We also engage with enthusiasts of vintage design and even more classical pieces. We particularly enjoy seeing our artists’ works interact with other styles, creating a sense of harmony and aesthetic balance.”
Founded in 2006 in a former carpenter’s workshop in London’s Chelsea, the gallery has since expanded globally, with locations in London (Mayfair), Paris (Le Marais), New York and Los Angeles. With a research-driven curatorial approach that remains attuned to both emerging talent and evolving trends in limited-edition functional sculpture and collectible design, the gallery now boasts a prestigious roster of artists, including Maarten Baas, Wendell Castle, Ingrid Donat, Studio Drift, Rick Owens and Antonio de Cotiis, among others.
Since the gallery’s founding, the design-art segment has undergone a remarkable transformation, Hervé reflects. “Just 15 to 20 years ago, it was still considered a niche market. Today, it holds a prominent place on the international art scene, and its market has evolved rapidly.” A visit to Design Miami or Art Basel’s Paris fair makes this shift palpable: the growing hybridization between art and design has fueled fluid collaborations across disciplines, resulting in exclusive, editioned works that blur the line between functional object and collectible sculpture.
According to Hervé, there’s a growing appetite for works that merge craftsmanship with a strong conceptual or material narrative. “Limited-edition design has moved from a niche interest to a core category in contemporary collections,” she said, noting how the gallery has recently seen a broadening audience—from seasoned contemporary art collectors to new generations drawn to tactile materials, storytelling and the individuality of each piece. “The act of collecting is no longer driven solely by function or decoration, but by a desire for meaningful, enduring works with cultural or sculptural depth. Buyers are more informed now—often researching materials, processes and the artist’s intent before purchasing.” At the same time, Carpenters Workshop is seeing increased demand for commissioned and site-specific pieces. Clients today prioritize sustainability, provenance and innovation as much as aesthetics.
Carpenters Workshop Gallery Paris showcases historic and contemporary works united by aesthetic associations. Photo: Benjamin Baccarani
Regarding trends, Hervé has seen a renewed interest in Brutalism and materiality, alongside a consistent appetite for statement pieces by established names such as Ingrid Donat, Vincenzo De Cotiis and Wendell Castle. Organic design is also on the rise, with artists like Najla El Zein and Wonmin Park gaining traction. At the same time, designers blending technology and form—such as Studio Drift and Random International—are increasingly in demand.
Asked about what she hopes to see next, Hervé is clear: “I would like the next trend to focus on narrative and sociopolitical engagement—pieces that address the environment, identity, gender, memory or decolonization.” She confirmed that the market in Paris—and more broadly in France—has grown significantly in recent years. “We work closely with many interior architects, who play a key role in promoting design art.” While the market remains sensitive to political and geopolitical shifts, which can introduce unpredictability, she notes that the market has been consistently dynamic and expansive in the United States, both on the B2B and B2C fronts. Still, she added, the French approach tends to be more measured and reflective. “More broadly, across all our markets, collecting is often guided by an intellectual process—an interest in the history of forms, the artist’s gesture and the meaning embedded in each piece. Our role goes far beyond simply presenting the work; we’re here to accompany, inform and at times, help educate the collector’s eye.”
The market for design is strongest in Europe. Artnet
According to 2024 data from the Artnet Intelligence Report published in March, sales in the decorative-art category—which in their analysis includes both design objects and furniture but also jewelry, watches and other collectibles—dropped nearly 42 percent year on year, netting $3.3 billion, the lowest total in a decade. In terms of geographical distribution, the market for the category at auction is much stronger in Europe ($1.3 billion in sales) and Asia ($1 billion), while North America maintains a third position for decorative art, generating just over $898 million.
The rise of fairs dedicated to Design
Meanwhile, new fairs are focusing on meeting the growing demand for collectible design. While Design Miami canceled its Basel edition, it has swiftly cemented its presence in Paris, becoming one of the most highly attended events during Art Basel Paris week. Its Miami Beach flagship returns for its 21st edition this December, curated by Glenn Adamson, and for the first time, Design Miami is also pushing into Asia with a curated exhibition in Seoul, timed to coincide with the city’s art week and tapping into the region’s booming market. Titled “Illuminated: A Spotlight on Korean Design,” the show (which is part of Design Miami’s new In Situ series) will be curated by Hyeyoung Cho, chairperson of the Korea Association of Art & Design, in collaboration with the Seoul Design Foundation. It will feature over 170 works—from furniture to lighting to objets d’art—exploring the convergence of traditional Korean craftsmanship and contemporary innovation.
This September, The Armory Show will debut a new design-focused section, Function, that explores how artists blur the lines between art and design. Beyond the curatorial intent to expand definitions, the initiative is also a strategic play to attract a broader cohort of aesthetically minded collectors. “The more entry points we can offer different types of audiences, the better,” fair director Kyla McMillan told Observer.
That same week, COLLECTIBLE returns to New York for its second edition, expanding its footprint and exhibitor roster after a successful debut at the new WSA 2 building. Long established in Belgium as the only fair devoted exclusively to 21st-century design, COLLECTIBLE’s New York edition could fill a persistent void in the U.S. market for dedicated contemporary design fairs.
The FASHION section at COLLECTIBLE New York in 2024. Photo: Simon Leung
COLLECTIBLE distinguishes itself with a fluid, non-traditional format that prioritizes aesthetic experience over discrete objects with immersive presentations such as Vignette, a section inviting interior designers to stage fully realized environments, creating compelling conversations between contemporary and vintage works. “Vignette will explore the conversation between collectible and interior design,” said interior designer Michael Hila, who curates the section, in a statement. “Each Vignette becomes a curated mise-en-scène—a sort of ‘store window’—where contemporary works are paired with vintage or antique pieces to express a personal design ethos. While the spaces might be small, the ideas will be boundless.” Combining curatorial rigor with a spirit of experimentation, COLLECTIBLE also keeps an eye on the future of design through New Gaarde, a platform dedicated to pioneering emerging studios founded within the past three years.
“What was once a critically engaged field has in recent years gained momentum,” Liv Vaisberg, who founded the fair with Clélie Debehault in 2018, told Observer. “We have seen a marked acceleration: more galleries dedicated to contemporary collectible design, a growing base of committed collectors, increasing institutional interest and deeper media coverage. While the market remains selective in scale, its cultural relevance has expanded significantly—shifting from the margins to a more prominent, discerning place within the broader design landscape.”
COLLECTIBLE recently announced its first-ever Hong Kong edition—the fair is venturing into the Asian market with an event scheduled for December and supported by the Hong Kong Government’s CCIDA. Curated by co-founders Clélie Debehault and Liv Vaisberg, with scenography by Ann Chan (Hero Design), the show will be part of Design Factory, a new international platform presented by Maison&Objet in Hong Kong.
Luxury-branded design holds the furniture market
It’s important to note that the data and analysis above mainly refer to the art and collectible side of the design market, which consists of exclusive collaborations, special editions and artist collaborations that distinguish it from the broader design and furniture industry. However, even when considering the industry as a whole, the global furniture market showed consistent growth in 2024. According to Future Business Insights, it was valued at $568.6 billion and is projected to reach $878.14 billion by 2032, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.65 percent. Asia Pacific led the market in 2024 with a commanding 48.68 percent share, underscoring the region’s manufacturing dominance and rising consumer demand. In the United States, the market is expected to reach $130.24 billion by 2032, driven by strong housing sales and growing demand for innovative, design-forward furniture.
The luxury segment remains a leader. According to Technavio, the Global Luxury Furniture Market is expected to grow by $9.54 billion from 2024 to 2028, driven by the increase in the number of luxury furniture showrooms and a demand for more eco-friendly, high-quality craftsmanship.
The market is holding up across different geographies, according to Marcello Lucchetta, a vice president of sales at Luxury Living Group. “It was certainly not the best year, but it has remained stable thanks to a specific and important factor: the world of branded real estate developments,” he said, referring to branded hotels, such as Bentley Residences, Dolce & Gabbana Residences and the Fendi Condo Residences.
At this year’s Milan Design Week, Dolce & Gabbana unveiled the new Verde Maiolica homeware line, its first-ever collection of bed linens, new Gotham furniture and its latest outdoor collection, Saint Jean, created in collaboration with Luxury Living Group. Dolce & Gabbana
And that segment is especially relevant in certain regions, Lucchetta adds, noting the growing presence of so-called “soft luxury” brands—those that aren’t overly loud—doing exceptionally well, like Fendi, automotive names like Bentley and Bugatti and fashion brands like Armani, Versace and Dolce & Gabbana, which continues to show strong interest.
According to Lucchetta, the number of residential and hospitality developments tied to a brand and/or featuring branded interiors is growing, particularly in North America, extending beyond Miami. “Previously, most of the activity was centered in Miami, which now feels somewhat saturated, but the market is expanding across the U.S. and North America more broadly,” he said. “Compared to last year, the numbers are roughly the same, but there’s more uncertainty now, mainly due to tariffs and what could be described as trade wars or customs duty conflicts.” As for retail, it’s a different story—the market is weak for other products. “I think that’s a trend we’re seeing across various sectors, not just luxury.”
Berlin-based Austrian filmmaker Ivette Löcker (Night Shifts, Ties That Bind) likes to go deep on human relationships and connections.
“My previous films have very often dealt with relationships, different kinds of relationships,” she tells THR on the sidelines of the 31st edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival, where her latest documentary, Our Time Will Come (Unsere Zeit wird kommen), screens in the feature documentary competition program. “And I was very much interested in this kind of interracial relationship, because I think it’s getting more and more common. As members of the white majority, we have to get used to and get to know more about these kinds of relationships.”
The synopsis on the Sarajevo festival website sums up the movie’s focus this way: “After years of uncertainty and involuntary exile, Siaka from Gambia and his wife Victoria have returned to their adopted ‘homeland’ of Austria to build a stable existence and start a family. Both invest a large part of their energy in achieving their shared utopia, but cultural differences remain significant, social structures remain immobile, and their own history and traditions are just as hard to shake off.”
The website of the Berlin Film Festival, where the movie world premiered, described it as “the portrait of a love between cultures that endures despite all difficulties in an Austria increasingly moving towards authoritarianism” amid the rise of a populist right-wing party. “Racism is a sickness,” Siaka says in letting off steam in one scene of the doc.
The film mixes observational filming with interviews with Victoria, Siaka and the couple together. And it takes viewers from Vienna to Gambia. Löcker doesn’t use any label for her cinematic style, but highlights that in addition to fly-on-the-wall scenes and conversations with the couple, she also typically likes to “pursue a quiet, rather poetic style of visuals.”
“For me, it’s a [story] of modern love, because it’s so common to not live in your home country anymore,” Löcker explains.
Ivette Löcker
Courtesy of Diagonale/Jürgen Keiper
The genesis of the film is very unusual. “I was approached by this couple, which was very new for me,” the director recalls. “They asked if their story could be an interesting topic for a documentary film. I was thrilled to get to know them.” The back story is that Löcker had met Victoria at an Austrian film festival, Diagonale in Graz, in 2017, that screened “her short experimental film before my feature film,” namely Victoria’s short film Kanten (Grenzen) before Löcker’s Ties That Bind.
“We met at the festival, and then that same year, she met her now-husband, and we just stayed in contact,” Löcker explains. Years later, Victoria wrote to her to share that the couple was now married and that her husband had an interesting immigrant story. And she asked if Löcker or someone she knew may be interested in documenting his, and their, story.
“When we had research interviews via Zoom, because it was still during the pandemic, I realized that it is very fascinating how they, as a couple, deal with each other, how they communicate, how they try to bridge cultural differences. I wanted to tell [a film] about these challenges, so I asked them if they could imagine giving us insight into an interracial couple. I am very happy that they agreed to this.”
The filmmaker followed the couple for a year after Siaka had received his residency and work permits. “For me, it was interesting to portray them in a year when these kinds of questions and struggles were already more or less behind them, because my premise was: How do they deal with everyday life?” While Löcker initially expected a focus on the couple, that theme expanded to a focus on family. “After all, especially Siaka was longing for a child and family. So, this topic or theme was getting more and more important for the film.”
Löcker also wanted to tell a more global story. “Our goal was to make a film that has, of course, the specific story with their specific problems, but that also shows more so that people can relate from wherever they may be or be from, whether they have migrant stories or not. I think people can relate to these kinds of challenges.”
What’s next for the filmmaker? “I have a new project, and we will try to start the financing process on it in September,” Löcker tells THR and teases some details about the project. “It will be about female friendship. This time, I will work with more protagonists, which is something rather new for me.”
JERUSALEM — Israel’s military said Wednesday it would call up tens of thousands of reservists and extend the service of others for an expanded military operation in Gaza City.
What You Need To Know
The Israeli military has announced plans to call up tens of thousands of reservists for an expanded operation in Gaza City
Defense Minister Israel Katz approved the plan, which involves deploying 60,000 reservists and extending service for 20,000 more
This move comes amid international concerns about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where many residents are displaced and facing famine
The operation aims to target Hamas’ underground tunnel network, according to Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity
Defense Minister Israel Katz approved plans to begin a new phase of operations in some of Gaza’s most densely populated areas, Israel’s military said Wednesday. The scheme, expected to receive the final approval from the chief of staff in the coming days, includes calling up 60,000 reservists and extending the service of an additional 20,000 currently serving.
In a country of fewer than 10 million people, the call-up of so many reservists carries both economic and political weight and comes days after hundreds of thousands rallied for a ceasefire.
This comes as negotiators scramble to bring Israel and Hamas to agree to a ceasefire ending 22 months of fighting, while international leaders and rights groups warn an expanded assault could deepen Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, with most residents displaced, neighborhoods in ruins, and communities facing the threat of famine.
A military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with military regulations, said that troops will operate in parts of Gaza City where they have not yet been deployed and where Israel believes Hamas is still active. Israeli troops in the Zeitoun and Jabaliya — a built-up refugee camp in Gaza City — are already preparing the groundwork for the expanded operation.
Gaza City is both Hamas’ military and governing stronghold and one of the last places of refuge in northern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands are sheltering. Israeli troops will be targeting Hamas’ vast underground tunnel network there, the official added.
Although Israel has targeted and killed much of Hamas’ senior leadership, parts of the militant group are actively regrouping and carrying out attacks, including launching rockets towards Israel, the official said.
Gaza City operation could begin within days
It remains unclear when the operation will begin, but it could be a matter of days and such a mobilization of reservists is the largest in months.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the objective of the war is to secure the release of remaining hostages and ensure Hamas and other militants can never again threaten Israel.
The planned offensive, first announced earlier this month, comes amid heightened international condemnation of Israel’s restrictions on food and medicine reaching Gaza and fears of another mass displacement among Palestinians.
AP journalists saw small groups heading south from the city this week, but how many will voluntarily flee remains unclear. Some said they were waiting to see how events unfold before moving yet again, and many insist nowhere is safe from airstrikes.
“What we’re seeing in Gaza is nothing short of apocalyptic reality for children, for their families, and for this generation,” Ahmed Alhendawi, regional director of Save the Children, said in an interview. “The plight and the struggle of this generation of Gaza is beyond being described in words.”
Exhausted reservists question war’s goals
The call-up comes as a growing campaign of exhausted reservists accuses the government of perpetuating the war for political reasons and failing to bring home remaining hostages.
The families of the hostages and former army and intelligence chiefs have also expressed opposition to the expanded operation in Gaza City. Most of the families of the hostages want an immediate ceasefire and worry an expanded assault could imperil bringing the 50 hostages still in Gaza home. Israel believes that 20 are still alive.
Guy Poran, a retired air force pilot who has organized veterans campaigning to end the war, said many reservists are exhausted after repeated tours lasting hundreds of days and resentful of those not called up at all. Most now just want to return to their lives.
“Even those that are not ideologically against the current war or the government’s new plans don’t want to go because of fatigue or their families or their businesses,” he said.
Hamas-led militants started the war when they attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. Most of the hostages have been released in ceasefires or other deals. Hamas says it will only free the rest in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal.
Israel still to respond to ceasefire proposal accepted by Hamas
Arab mediators and Hamas said this week the leaders of the Palestinian militant group had agreed to ceasefire terms, though similar announcements have been made in the past that did not lead to a lasting truce.
Egypt and Qatar have said they have been waiting for Israel’s response to the ceasefire proposal. “The ball is now in Israel’s court,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Bader Abdelattay said Tuesday.
An Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media said Israel is in constant contact with the mediators in an effort to secure the release of the hostages.
Netanyahu has repeatedly said he will oppose a deal that doesn’t include the “complete defeat of Hamas.”
More than 62,122 people have been killed during Israel’s 22-month offensive, Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Monday. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. The ministry does not say how many of the dead were civilians or combatants, but says women and children make up around half of them.
In addition to that toll, 154 adults have died of malnutrition-related causes since late June, when the ministry began counting such deaths, and 112 children have died of malnutrition-related causes since the war began.
Far-right Israeli minister shares more prison footage
Israel’s far-right national security minister on Wednesday released footage of Israeli prisons showing images of Gaza’s destruction to Palestinian inmates.
A video posted on Telegram by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir shows him pointing to an image of Palestinians walking amid rubble and half-collapsed buildings, saying they were being shown to security prisoners.
“So they understand that the people of Israel are not messing around,” he wrote.
Ben-Gvir’s prison visit comes amid a string of provocative moves. It’s less than a week after he published a video of himself admonishing an imprisoned Palestinian leader in a face-to-face meeting inside a prison, saying Israel will confront anyone who acts against the country and “wipe them out.”
Two and a half weeks ago, he visited and prayed at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site, triggering regional condemnation and fears that the provocative move could further escalate tensions.
Netanyahu’s government depends on backing from the far-right, which opposes negotiations for a phased ceasefire in Gaza. Ben-Gvir said Monday that Netanyahu didn’t have a mandate to pursue such a truce.
The far-right bloc nabbed a victory on Wednesday when Israel gave final approval for a controversial settlement project east of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank. The development in what’s called E1 would effectively cut the territory in two, and Palestinians and rights groups say it could destroy hopes for a future Palestinian state.
Israel says it killed Hamas militant involved in abduction of father whose family was taken hostage
Israel’s military said Wednesday it had killed a Hamas militant who stormed a kibbutz and abducted Yarden Bibas, the father of three whose wife and two young children were also kidnapped on Oct. 7.
The Bibas family became one of Israel’s most closely followed hostage cases after body camera footage of the mother and her young children being abducted was circulated widely in Israel and abroad. The three were later killed during the war, while Yarden was released.
In a statement, Bibas called the killing of his alleged kidnapper “a small part of my closure” and said he was still awaiting the return of hostages held in Gaza.
The Oldenburg International Film Festival has unveiled the first titles of its 32nd edition, highlighting a slate of world premieres and debuts with strong showings from Irish cinema and recent festival standouts from Cannes, Karlovy Vary, and Locarno.
Three new Irish productions anchor this year’s program. Jim Sheridan, a six-time Oscar nominee, teams with David Merriman on Re-Creation, which revisits the contested case of Ian Bailey, long linked to the 1996 murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. The film premiered at Tribeca and features Vicky Krieps and John Connors.
Connors also stars in Crazy Love, the debut feature by stage director Kevin Treacy and cinematographer Jason Byrne. The drama, about an unlikely romance in a psychiatric hospital, will have its world premiere at Oldenburg. Rounding out the Irish spotlight is Horseshoe from Edwin Mullane and Adam O’Keeffe, a family drama with supernatural elements that won Best Irish First Film at Galway.
Additional highlights include Ondřej Provazník’s Broken Voices, which premiered in Karlovy Vary; Vincent Grashaw’s Keep Quiet, which debuted in Locarno and features Lou Diamond Phillips; and The Girl in the Snow, Louise Hemon’s debut that screened in Cannes’ Critics’ Week. The festival will also screen Ben Leonberg’s Good Boy, which premiered at SXSW.
World premieres include Alejandro Castro Arias’ Harakiri, I Miss You, Guillaume Campanacci’s The Silent Sinner, Nancy Biniadaki’s Maysoon, Cris Tapia Marchiori’s Gunman, and Jérôme Vandewattyne’s Belgian satire Summer Hit Machine.
Oldenburg has also unveiled this year’s festival trailer. Directed by Edgar Pêra (Telegraphic Letters, Magnetick Pathways), and co-created with festival director Torsten Neumann, it reimagines H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds with an alien invasion set loose on the streets of the northern German city.
The short film will launch in cinemas nationwide in Germany on Aug. 21. You can check it out now below.
Taiwanese-Burmese filmmaker Midi Z caused a stir and gained good notices with his 2019 film Nina Wu, which dealt with the exploitation of women in entertainment, and was released in the midst of the global #MeToo movement, a long overdue public reckoning for powerful men who had committed acts of sexual violence and misconduct.
Selected for the main competition at this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival, Z’s new film, The Unseen Sister, outwardly at least, has similar themes to Nina Wu — that is, the habitual abuse of women in the entertainment industry as well as the trials of women at the margins of society.
Adapted from Zhang Yueran’s book Unseen Sister, the film tells the story of two sisters, one who is born officially as Qiao Yan and the other who takes on the name of Qiao Yan but lives in a twilight world of illegality, under the constant threat of being discovered. After swapping identities at a young age, the sisters grow up to very different lives in two different countries. The real Qiao Yan lives on the fringes of poverty in Myanmar and the assumed Qiao Yan becomes a famed actress in China. Fate, inevitably, brings them back together.
Zhao Liying in ‘The Unseen Sister.’
Shanghai Linmon Pictures
The film stars Zhao Liying (The Legend of Shen Li, The Story of Minglan Legend of Chu Qiao, Legend of Lu Zhen and The Journey of Flower and Wild Bloom), a prominent television actor in China who is making the transition to features. The cast also includes Huang Jue, Xin Zhilei and Chinese rapper Gem.
The Unseen Sister is produced by Shanghai Linmon Pictures, and is part of the company’s push into feature films with international appeal. After playing in Tokyo, the film will screen at the Singapore International Film Festival in December.
During the Tokyo Film Festival, The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Z and Zhao about The Unseen Sister, the challenges of making a mainstream commercial film with arthouse credentials and the universal themes of the feature.
Is The Unseen Sister the first mainstream Chinese film you’ve done?
MIDI Z Yes, that’s correct. It’s the first mainstream film that I’ve done, in comparison to the past ones. This is the most commercial film, in terms of production budget and the production scale. All my earlier films, were a little bit smaller with less people on set, this one, it’s over 300 people on set. Ultimately, the core of the story and the core of the whole production is very Chinese. It’s about Chinese people. It’s about family. It’s about the values that Chinese people value a lot.
Were there any specific challenges working on a bigger scale for you as a director? Did your process change in any way?
MIDI Z I think the most important part [for me as a director] is communication, specifically communication with the actors. Within a story, within a production, the chemistry and the performance of the actors are actually much more important than the story itself, because the actors are the people that brings out the story. And so in the two months, right before production, there was actually a lot of communication between me and the actors, and the actors met very frequently to rehearse and to go through the story together to get the chemistry and to get that story ready for rolling. It is very valuable and that really, really helped me to bring out the story through the performance of the actors.
Zhao Liying and Huang Jue in ‘The Unseen Sister.’
Shanghai Linmon Pictures
So in the film, there’s the use of two languages, Mandarin and the Yunnan dialect. Why did you choose to use two different dialects?
MIDI Z It’s because of the story. It’s because of the setting of the character. The character is traveling from Yunnan to Beijing.
For you as an actor, Zhao, do you speak the Yunnan dialect? If not, was that a real challenge to get right?
ZHAO LIYING No I don’t speak it. We spent about a month before production to work on the dialect specifically to go through all of the lines that the script has in the Yunnan dialect, so that we can be more comfortable during production. That’s how we overcame the difficulty working with a different dialect.
As an outsider, is the use of multiple dialects of Mandarin unusual for a mainstream Chinese film?
MIDI Z It’s becoming more and more common now to have a different dialect because there are a lot of different people traveling between different cities in China, a lot more exposure to dialects. The Sichuan dialect, the Guizhou dialect, for example, are becoming more and more common in content, and I think that’s great.
Watching The Unseen Sister, I felt the sensibilities, and perhaps the audience for this film, would be more international, particularly with the themes and ideas the film deals with. Is that fair to say?
MIDI Z Ultimately, this is a very, very Chinese film. And when we think about Chinese nature of the film, there are two different parts to it. The first part is the core of the story itself — the values of the story is very Chinese. It’s about the individual and their family, and how the individuals wants and desires clash with the family’s wants and desires and how it came out to look. And then when we come to the second part of it, which is the outside of the story, which is what we see visually — the landscape, the location. The aesthetics of it, like all the production design, the architecture that we see. There was a lot of snow and it’s a very poetic aesthetic style, a very Chinese style.
And the themes are universal themes. My films are really expressive about people’s lives. In order to speak to the audience, you really have to understand what lives they’re going through. And really this movie is about women and what they’re going through in society, the difficulties that they’re facing and their struggle. Their fight against whatever it is that is suppressing them, their desire and their yearning for freedom and for a better life.
Zhao Liying in ‘The Unseen Sister.’
Shanghai Linmon Pictures
Zhao, regarding your role as Qiao Yan, she is very complex and she’s also a prominent actress like you are in real life. What attracted you to the project? And also did you relate to the fame and industry-related pressures Qiao Yan goes through?
ZHAO LIYING I chose this character and chose this project because I really wanted to challenge myself. What really attracted me to the project was really Midi’s style and Midi’s very unique narrative style of his movies and his stories. And honestly, the character being an actress is really just a setting for the character in the story. And it isn’t about this one character in this one setting. It’s really about the entirety, like the overall story and the structure and style and the narration that really attracted me.
Regarding whether the character was relatable… obviously, the story, it’s very dramatic. Sure I can relate to a certain extent, but of course these are very dramatic experiences that the character is going through. It doesn’t really happen in real life. The overall pressure, the suppression that [Qiao Yan] faces at work, I can definitely relate to that specific thing. There’s a scene where my character is filming a scene in hospital and she’s being stabbed with a needle, that really triggered me.
Xin Zhilei in ‘The Unseen Sister.’
Shanghai Linmon Pictures
Midi, The Unseen Sister has some outward similarities with your last film Nina Wu, as there’s an actress as the lead character, she’s exploited by the men around her, and the entertainment industry is portrayed as quite negative. Why have you focused on stories around women being mistreated?
MIDI Z I grew up in a family that is dominated by female. I grew up under the protection of my mom and my sister. They are both wonderful women. My interactions with my family affected my considerations when it came to storytelling and designing characters. This comprehension of my mom and my sister’s lives also affected me when whenever I write and create a female character. In The Unseen Sister, Qiao Yan really expresses this type of woman that is already successful to the standards of our current society, she’s famous, she’s wealthy, and yet she still faces these types of difficulties. This situation can really affect anyone.
Palestinian officials say an Israeli drone strike on a clinic in northern Gaza where children were being vaccinated for polio wounded six people, including four children. The Israeli military denied responsibility.
What You Need To Know
Palestinian officials say an Israeli drone strike on a clinic in northern Gaza where children were being vaccinated for polio wounded six people, including four children
The Israeli military denied responsibility. The alleged strike occurred Saturday in northern Gaza, which has been encircled by Israeli forces and largely isolated for the past year
Israel has been carrying out another offensive there in recent weeks that has killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands
It was not possible to resolve the conflicting accounts
The alleged strike occurred Saturday in northern Gaza, which has been encircled by Israeli forces and largely isolated for the past year. Israel has been carrying out another offensive there in recent weeks that has killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands.
It was not possible to resolve the conflicting accounts. Israeli forces have repeatedly raided hospitals in Gaza over the course of the war, saying Hamas uses them for militant purposes, allegations denied by Palestinian health officials.
Dr. Munir al-Boursh, director general of the Gaza Health Ministry, told The Associated Press that a quadcopter struck the Sheikh Radwan clinic in Gaza City early Saturday afternoon, just a few minutes after a United Nations delegation left the facility.
The World Health Organization and the U.N. children’s agency, known as UNICEF, which are jointly carrying out the polio vaccination campaign, expressed concern over the reported strike.
“The reports of this attack are even more disturbing as the Sheikh Radwan Clinic is one of the health points where parents can get their children vaccinated,” said Rosalia Bollen, a spokesperson for UNICEF.
“Today’s attack occurred while the humanitarian pause was still in effect, despite assurances given that the pause would be respected from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m.”
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said that “contrary to the claims, an initial review determined that the (Israeli military) did not strike in the area at the specified time.”
A scaled-down campaign to administer a second dose of the polio vaccine began Saturday in parts of northern Gaza. It had been postponed from Oct. 23 due to lack of access, Israeli bombings and mass evacuation orders, and the lack of assurances for humanitarian pauses, a U.N. statement said.
The administration of the first dose was carried out in September across the Gaza Strip, including areas of northern Gaza that are now completely sealed off. Health officials said the campaign’s first round, and the administration of the second dose across central and southern Gaza, were successful.
At least 100,000 people have been forced to evacuate from areas of north Gaza toward Gaza City in the past few weeks, but around 15,000 children under the age of 10 remain in northern towns, including Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, which are inaccessible, according to the U.N.
The final phase of the polio vaccination campaign had aimed to reach an estimated 119,000 children in the north with a second dose of oral polio vaccine, the agencies said, but “achieving this target is now unlikely due to access constraints.”
They say 90% of children in every community must be vaccinated to prevent the spread of the disease.
The campaign was launched after the first polio case was reported in Gaza in 25 years — a 10-month-old boy, now paralyzed in the leg. The World Health Organization said the presence of a paralysis case indicates there could be hundreds more who have been infected but aren’t showing symptoms.
The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Israel’s offensive has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, who do not say how many were combatants but say more than half were women and children.
New technologies led by artificial intelligence and virtual production are profoundly changing visual effects but are still “another paintbrush” in the service of storytelling, says VFX veteran George Murphy.
“Virtual production is not just a tool for VFX; it’s a storytelling tool that allows actors to feel fully immersed in the scene, instead of having to imagine everything against a blank screen,” Murphy tells The Hollywood Reporter, in an interview at the Tokyo International Film Festival ahead of appearing on the Motion Picture Association panel, Filmmaking 2.0: The Evolution of Real-Time VFX for Traditional Filmmakers.
Murphy, a VFX supervisor and creative director at DNEG in London, made his entry into filmmaking with Steven Spielberg’s Hook (1991), a production hailed for its seminal VFX, in particular the use of projected matte painting. Computerized effects were very much in their infancy when he joined Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). He was part of a small team that pioneered digital compositing for films and he quickly recognized the potential of these ground-breaking tools to transform filmmaking.
“At ILM, we worked with Unix scripts and early computer graphics programs, but it was clear that these tools could create more believable, integrated images than anything before,” he says.
Murphy’s background was in another visual medium. “I started out fully intending to be a freelance photojournalist, covering the real world,” he recalls. “In an odd way, it was those skills in capturing reality that prepared me for fabricating worlds that don’t exist.”
Creating those worlds and making them look believable won him an Oscar and BAFTA for Forrest Gump, and has seen him supervise effects on productions including Planet of The Apes, Mission: Impossible, Jurassic Park, The Matrix sequels and Black Sails.
One of the biggest game-changers in recent years has been the development of virtual production, says Murphy. This technology, popularized by The Mandalorian, allows filmmakers to create virtual environments on LED screens in real time, replacing traditional green-screen backdrops.
Murphy experienced the power of this technology firsthand on the set of Murder on the Orient Express back in 2016, where a train car was surrounded by LED screens displaying high-resolution footage of the world speeding by. “The actors didn’t have to pretend they were looking out at a snowy mountain scene. They were immersed in it, and that makes a huge difference in their performance. Things that were going past would actually catch their eyes,” he notes, saying it led to a more authentic feel and therefore immersive experience for the audience as well.
Responsive tools like Epic Games’ Unreal Engine and Unity have also revolutionized the VFX workflow. “These tools allow us to create, edit, and test our work in real-time, which wasn’t possible a decade ago. You can see the result instantly instead of waiting hours for a render,” Murphy explains.
He likens this change to moving from analog to digital photography: “The whole process has become much more flexible and collaborative, allowing us to explore creative choices and see what works best in the moment.”
With AI advancing at a bewildering pace, it is quickly finding a place in the VFX toolkit. For Murphy, AI offers both opportunities and challenges. He points out that AI can streamline labor-intensive tasks like rotoscoping (manually isolating elements within a scene) or tracking (following a moving object or character in footage).
“With AI, we can now accomplish in minutes what used to take hours or even days,” he says. “It frees up artists to focus on the more creative aspects of their work”
Nevertheless, he believes that for all its power, machine learning isn’t a substitute for the creativity and ideation of a filmmaker, for now at least. “AI can process huge amounts of data, and it can imitate styles based on what it’s seen. But it doesn’t experience emotions, so it can’t capture the essence of human storytelling. That’s something only artists who have lived and felt can bring to a project,” he suggests.
Another exciting development for Murphy is the expansion of storytelling across different media and platforms. During his work on The Matrix sequels, he witnessed the potential of what he calls “story worlds.” The Matrix franchise extended its narrative through video games, animated shorts, and comics, allowing fans to explore the story beyond the main films. Murphy sees this approach as crucial for the future of entertainment, as audiences look for ways to engage more deeply with stories.
This “multiverse” approach to storytelling has become increasingly popular, especially with the rise of streaming and interactive platforms. Murphy believes that as technology advances, audiences will be able to interact with story worlds in new ways—perhaps even experiencing them in virtual reality or augmented reality. “We’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible,” he says. “Once VR becomes more accessible, the way we tell and experience stories is going to change fundamentally”
Looking forward, Murphy is enthusiastic about the possibilities that technology opens up but also concerned about the potential loss of craftsmanship.
“There’s an artistry to physical effects, to building something by hand, and that’s still incredibly valuable. It gives you a grounding in reality that’s essential, even in digital work,” he explains, adding that many of the best physical model makers went on to VFX careers.
Ultimately, Murphy believes that technology should serve the story, not the other way around, and remains optimistic about the future of filmmaking.
“These tools are just new brushes in our paintbox,” he says. “They allow us to push the boundaries of what’s possible. But the artist’s hand will always be there, guiding the story and making sure it resonates with the audience.”
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Wallace, the scattered entrepreneurial protagonist created by the Oscar-winning animator Nick Park, has an invention for everything. The modest suburban home on Wallaby Street that Wallace shares with his expressive beagle, Gromit, is filled with Rube Goldberg-esque gizmos.
One machine, functioning as a kind of alarm, ejects Wallace out of bed and tosses him into a tunnel that leads right into a warm bath. Another gadget dresses the inventor, offering him variations of his signature sweater vest and brown slack combo. A third contraption slathers spoonfuls of jam on toasted bread, while yet another widget pats the dog.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
The Bottom Line
More polished, but just as fun as ever.
Venue: AFI Fest Release date: Saturday, Jan. 3 (Netflix) Cast: Ben Whitehead, Reece Shearsmith, Peter Kay, Diane Morgan Director: Nick Park, Merlin Crossingham Screenwriters: Mark Burton, Nick Park
Rated PG,
1 hour 19 minutes
Still, these tools aren’t enough for Wallace, whose chronic need to optimize his life rivals the obsessiveness of the most ardent Silicon Valley technocrats. At the beginning of Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, the machine architect, eager to sell the benefits of technology to Gromit, creates a robotic garden gnome programmed to lend the reserved pooch a helping hand. The chaotic results are sleekly rendered by co-directors Park and Merlin Crossingham.
Premiering at AFI Fest ahead of its debut on Netflix in January, Vengeance Most Fowl builds on the detailed claymation technique and slapstick humor that have earned Wallace and Gromit their enduring reputation. The beloved duo made history when their 2005 big screen debut, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, became the first stop-motion animated picture to win best animated feature at the Academy Awards. While the style enjoys more widespread popularity today (note recent Oscar nods for the endearing Marcel the Shell with the Shoes On and Guillermo del Toro’s brooding rendition of Pinocchio), it wasn’t always so commercially sexy. The Wallace & Gromit franchise, created by Park in the late ’80s, occupies a special place as both a vestige of the craft’s past and evidence of its enduring present and future.
It’s a shame that Vengeance Most Fowl is getting only a limited theatrical release. The pair’s second feature flaunts a broader canvas that would have benefitted from the scale of a cinema screen. Wallace and Gromit, with their wide smiles and active eyebrows, are rendered in greater detail by Aardman Animation (Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget), and the smoothness of their movements, as well as the diversity of textures, reflect stop-motion animation’s own technological advancements. Take Wallace’s clothes, now made of real yarn instead of clay. Or Gromit’s ears, which, while still made of the Lewis Newplast (that now-famous Plasticine), appear more polished.
There are other changes, too, some more expected than others. Wallace is now voiced by Ben Whitehead, who inherited the role after Peter Sallis’ death in 2017. Whitehead hold his own with a Wallace who’s less meek and muttering, though he still gets himself and Gromit into wacky situations. When he sits down for breakfast, commenting on the “cracking” toast, the difference is noticeable but slight. A more pronounced update is in the jokes, some of which are less bawdy and more attuned to the humor of a younger audience.
Mark Burton’s script marks the return of one of Wallace and Gromit’s old enemies, Feathers McGraw. As fans of the duo will remember (and as Vengeance Most Fowl establishes with an efficient introduction), the wily penguin first appeared in the 1993 short The Wrong Trousers, in which he uses Wallace’s recent invention to steal a precious blue diamond. After the bird’s plan fails, thanks to Gromit, he ends up imprisoned at a local zoo. Like any good villain, he’s been plotting his revenge on the zealous inventor and his loyal canine ever since.
While McGraw stews behind bars, Wallace waxes poetic about his latest invention, Norbot, a “smart” gnome created to help Gromit with the garden. But the beagle, who enjoys the labor of trimming his own hedges, finds the automaton’s quest for efficiency deeply off-putting — a commentary, perhaps, on how we should all be warier of unfettered technological advancement.
Norbot (voiced by Reece Shearsmith) nevertheless turns out to be a hit in the neighborhood, and Wallace, plagued by a stack of overdue bills, is inspired to pursue a new business venture. It makes him a local hero, even getting him an interview with news anchor Onya Doorstep (Diane Morgan).
Until, that is, McGraw interferes. The silent villain cleverly tampers with Norbot to turn it against Wallace and Gromit. The robot then duplicates himself and goes on a burglary spree throughout the community, prompting Chief Inspector Mackintosh (Peter Kay) and his new lieutenant P.C. Mukherjee (Lauren Patel) to get involved.
A haywire adventure, heightened by Lorne Balfe and Julian Nott’s suspenseful score, ensues, in which the police investigate Wallace while Gromit tries to prove his innocence.
Running just 79 minutes, Vengeance Most Fowl is a brisk and well-paced escapade, in which Gromit proves himself to still be one of our best screen actors and Wallace’s absentminded behavior still endears. A gallery of supporting characters — from neighbors scandalized by theft to the journalists and the police — not only add to the usual fun but also offer some of the film’s more cutting jokes and social commentary.
Those roasted include the suburban fixation on uniformity, the capriciousness of the media and the negligence and all-around laziness of law enforcement. If, as with the first Wallace & Gromit film, the story is a little predictable, that doesn’t make the journey any less enjoyable.
Israeli strikes on northern Gaza have killed at least 33 people, mostly women and children, Palestinian officials said Sunday, as Israel’s offensive in the hard-hit and isolated area entered a third week and the U.N. secretary-general called the plight of Palestinians there “unbearable.” Israel said it targeted militants.
In a separate development, a truck rammed into a bus stop near Tel Aviv, killing one person and wounding more than 30. Israeli police said the attacker was an Arab citizen of Israel. The ramming occurred outside a military base and near the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
What You Need To Know
Palestinian officials say Israeli strikes on northern Gaza have killed at least 33 people, mostly women and children
Israel’s offensive in the hard-hit and isolated north entered a third week Sunday
The U.N. secretary-general calls the plight of Palestinians there “unbearable”
In a separate development, Israeli medics say a truck rammed into a bus stop near Tel Aviv, killing one person and wounding more than 30
Meanwhile, Iran’s supreme leader says Israeli strikes on the country over the weekend “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed,” while stopping short of calling for retaliation. It was Israel’s first open attack on its archenemy
Iran’s supreme leader, meanwhile, said Israeli strikes on the country on Saturday in response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack earlier this month “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed,” while stopping short of calling for retaliation. It was Israel’s first open attack on its archenemy.
That exchange of fire has raised fears of an all-out regional war pitting Israel and the United States against Iran and its militant proxies, which include Hamas and the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, where Israel launched a ground invasion earlier this month after nearly a year of lower-level conflict.
Two Israeli strikes killed eight people in Sidon city in southern Lebanon, with 25 wounded, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. One strike hit a residential building, according to footage taken by an Associated Press reporter.
The Israeli military said four soldiers, including a military rabbi, were killed in fighting in southern Lebanon, without providing details. It said five other personnel were severely wounded. An explosive drone and a projectile fired from Lebanon wounded five people in Israel, authorities said.
Netanyahu says strikes on Iran achieved Israel’s goals
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his first public comments on the strikes said “we severely harmed Iran’s defense capabilities and its ability to produce missiles that are aimed toward us.”
Satellite images showed damage to two secretive Iranian military bases, one linked to work on nuclear weapons that Western intelligence agencies and nuclear inspectors say was discontinued in 2003, and another linked to Iran’s ballistic missile program. Iran on Sunday said a civilian had been killed, with no details. It earlier said four people with the military air defense were killed.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s 85-year-old supreme leader, said “it is up to the authorities to determine how to convey the power and will of the Iranian people to the Israeli regime.” Khamenei would make any final decision on how Iran responds.
Later Sunday, protesters disrupted a speech by Netanyahu at a nationally broadcast ceremony for victims of Hamas’ attack on southern Israel last year that sparked the war in Gaza. People shouted “Shame on you” and forced Netanyahu to stop his speech. Many Israelis blame Netanyahu for the failures that led to the’ attack and hold him responsible for not yet bringing home remaining hostages.
An Israeli official said Mossad chief David Barnea is traveling to Qatar for cease-fire and hostage release talks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose details.
Truck ramming in Israel wounds dozens
In Ramat Hasharon, northeast of Tel Aviv, the truck slammed into a bus as Israelis were returning to work after a holiday, leaving some people stuck under vehicles.
Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said six of the wounded were in serious condition. The Ichilov Medical Center reported that one person had died.
Asi Aharoni, a police spokesperson, told reporters the attacker had been “neutralized,” without saying if the assailant was dead.
Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group praised the attack but did not claim it.
Palestinians have carried out scores of stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks over the years. Tensions have soared since the war in Gaza began. Israel has carried out regular military raids into the occupied West Bank that have left hundreds dead. Most appear to have been militants killed during shootouts with Israeli forces, but Palestinians taking part in violent protests and civilian bystanders have also been killed.
‘Horrific circumstances’ in northern Gaza
The Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service said 11 women and two children were among the 22 killed in strikes late Saturday on several homes and buildings in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. It said another 15 were wounded. The Israeli military said it carried out a strike on militants.
A Health Ministry official, Hussein Mohesin, said 11 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in the Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza. The Israeli army did not immediately comment. Israel has struck a number of such shelters, often killing women and children, saying it targets militants hiding among civilians.
Israel has waged a massive air and ground offensive in northern Gaza since early October, saying Hamas militants have regrouped there. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled to Gaza City in the latest wave of displacement.
Aid groups have warned of a catastrophic situation in northern Gaza, which has suffered the heaviest destruction of the war. Israel has severely limited the entry of basic humanitarian aid in recent weeks, and the three remaining hospitals in the north — one raided over the weekend — say they have been overwhelmed by waves of wounded.
The U.N. secretary-general in a statement by his spokesperson noted “harrowing levels of death.” The International Committee of the Red Cross on Saturday described the civilian population in “horrific circumstances.”
The war began when Hamas-led militants blew holes in Israel’s border wall and stormed into southern Israel in a surprise attack on Oct. 7, 2023. They killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, around a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says more than half of those killed were women and children. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The offensive has devastated much of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its population of 2.3 million, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands of people have crowded into squalid tent camps, and aid groups say hunger is rampant.
