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.
Johnny Depp‘s plane was late coming into Rome, so he missed the Rome Film Festival press conference that was scheduled on Saturday to talk about the new film he directed, Modi: Three Days on the Wing of Madness. Depp was due to present the film that evening, pick up a prize and then fly out on Sunday morning.
The actor is considered a controversial figure in Hollywood after years of legal battles and a messy divorce from his ex-wife Amber Heard, which included allegations of domestic violence and his and Heard’s heavily publicized defamation trial. But Depp is in the midst of a career reboot of sorts in Europe, one that began at last year’s Cannes Film Fest with French director Maïwenn’s Jeanne du Barry, in which he starred as King Louis XV.
Modi, which premiered at the San Sebastian Film Festival last month, is the story of three turbulent days in the life of Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani. It is set in war-torn Paris in 1916, in the Montmartre district which was home to many bohemians and artists at the time. Depp sat down with The Hollywood Reporter Roma to talk about how he identifies with Modigliani, moving on from the past and jokingly compared his reputation to that of O.J. Simpson.
Al Pacino first suggested this film about Modigliani to you way back in 1997. Why did it take so many years to make it?
Al was going to direct it at the time, and he was talking to me while we were working together on Donnie Brasco, and he wanted me to play Modigliani. Then it sort of disappeared and then 20-plus years later Al calls me, and he says [imitating Pacino], “Hey John I think you should direct the Modigliani thing,” and I said, “Why?”
How do you feel about directing? This is your second attempt at directing a film; the first one, The Brave, back in 1997, did not go so well.
The Brave didn’t go so well. I remember very well the comedown of the critics on The Brave, and all it did was make me understand. What do you do? You learn from that.
[Riccardo Scarmacio, who plays Modigliani in Modi, interjects to say: “By the way, (Italian auteur Michelangelo) Antonioni said ‘Bravo, bravo!’”]
Yes, he did, bless his heart. That actually happened.
Did you identify with Modigliani? He was a wild guy — he was into sex, drugs and rock and roll. And he couldn’t stand rejection.
And he is the exact opposite of me. I adore rejection. [Laughs.]
But are there ways you identify with him as a character?
Of course. My upbringing was not the same as Modigliani’s, but you do understand the levels that you have to climb, up a ladder or up a wall to get to a point where you earn your stripes. I do understand him in the sense that he stuck to his guns with his particular style, which was far too brute for those at the time.
He was in the wilderness for a while, like you because of your personal issues. Is that a good description?
It was a vast wilderness and ultimately that vast wilderness taught me a whole lot
What lessons have you learned?
Oh let’s see. Should this be funny or should it be true? [Laughs.]
Just give it to me straight. You said in San Sebastian last month that your life turned into a soap opera. Do you still feel that way?
Honestly, I can sit here this very second and think about all the hit pieces, and how everybody was against me, and yeah yeah yeah he is off the map … endless stuff. I can remember it all. Went through it all. Some of it was not the most beautiful time, some of it was hilarious. Some of it was mad. The thing is, it simply just was, and it simply just is. So, for me, it happened. I learned, man. Everything that we experience, whether you’re given a snow cone or walking your dog, you learn something somewhere along the way. So I don’t have any ill feelings toward anyone. I don’t have this great reserve of hatred, because hatred requires caring. Why carry that baggage?
You also said that you feel you don’t need Hollywood anymore.
I had a few bouts with Hollywood over their particular easy way and the fluid three-act structure and all the stuff that is predictable. And I am sorry, but I had to get in there and whip it around a little bit…
With all the challenges you have faced in your personal life and your career, you still give unforgettable performances. Do you have an instinct or an intuition or some method that allows you to focus on the authenticity of your roles?
Oh yes, of course, it is my responsibility. But it is also helpful in certain instances, especially when things are crumbling all around. It’s weird to be able to escape, not into a character, but it is good to be able to inhabit a character, and as everything is in your toolbox — some of that stuff can be used as available stimulus. Which is great. So yeah. Everything has been … it has really, it just is. And on some level, it is gonna be around, that kind of thing. It’s like OJ or something. But hey, it just happened. That’s all.
Pop Art emerged at a pivotal moment when mass consumption and communication strategies were just beginning to take shape, capturing the “inevitable phenomenon” of postwar American pop culture and its persistent and pervasive imagery. Often termed “capitalist realism,” Pop Art reflects a radical acceptance of modern civilization, embracing the ways society communicates, produces and consumes. Unlike earlier avant-garde movements, which aimed to narrow the gap between art and everyday life, Pop Art was the first to fully engage with the cultural landscape as it was—making it democratic and broadly accessible in a way few movements had managed before. This accessibility has helped make Pop Art one of the most inviting and relatable art forms for the general public. Though contemporary critics dismissed its “poverty of visual invention” and even questioned its status as art, Pop Art broke down the walls between art and culture, speaking directly in the language of the everyday society it portrayed.
“Pop Forever, Tom Wesselmann &…” at Fondation Louis Vuitton offers a deeply comprehensive look at Pop Art’s enduring significance. The exhibition centers on Tom Wesselmann, a key figure in the movement, with 150 paintings and other works that highlight and explore the legacy of his approach. It then expands to explore Pop Art through the lens of seventy works by thirty-five artists across generations and nationalities, creating a visual narrative of the ways subsequent generations of artists have engaged critically with the pop culture of their time. The diverse collection of works questions what Pop Art means today and its relevance in the future in an age of hyper-communication through digital media that empowers consumers to act as co-creators, enabling the continuous, global circulation of messages and cultural expressions.
On the occasion of the exhibition’s opening during Paris Art Week, Observer spoke with artists Derrick Adams, Mickalene Thomas and Tomokazu Matsuyama—all of whom have newly commissioned works presented in the show—about their relation to Tom Wesselmann and Pop Art, and what this term means for them today.
“I think that Pop art was the only art movement to date, and the audience that the work that’s made is a response to not only the society that informs it but also the audience that embraces it and communicates to it,” Adams said. The link between this artist and Pop Art, and in particular Wesselmann’s work, lies in how he navigates media culture and discusses consumerism. His relationship with Wesselmann started while studying his archives, as he was interested in understanding more about his process and how it related the material construction of his work to media culture. “I was curious about how he started, finished and collaged things together, whether this was in paintings or sculptural objects. This is something that I also do in my work.”
Adams was particularly drawn to Wesselmann’s Great American Nudes series and the controversial way it portrayed the female figure in American culture, sparking in him a mix of interest, concern and curiosity. His response to Wesselmann is embodied in the series Great Black American/African American Nudes, a set of four new works in the show depicting Black male nudes, whose colors—drawn from the African American flag popularized by David Hammons (black, green and red)—are accented with comic-book-style onomatopoeias. Through these parodies of the American dream, Adams critiques the image of white, heterosexual, patriotic American superheroes, challenging the paradoxical values underpinning this dream and exposing its inherently marginalizing nature, which has long excluded entire segments of the population, at least in media representation. In a conversation with curators Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer, Adams noted that “they aren’t necessarily counterimages, but more of an offering to assist in the expansion of the notion associated with who and what ‘Great American’ fully represents.” The figures are also partially censored, adding a playful, provocative edge, blending humor with eroticism as they evoke social media’s use of symbols like eggplants and peaches to imply sexual meanings without explicit language.
Adams observed that consumer culture and communication have shifted significantly since Pop Art’s emergence: “I think we are now more self-conscious and aware of our image.” Social media has fundamentally altered the dynamic between media and consumers, making them far less passive, as they now play a critical role in co-creating both media and meaning. “Now you can curate your image and can no longer be objectified, but you can objectify yourself,” he clarified. Rather than imposing fixed models and desires, media industries now cater to a more fluid sense of desire. “It’s more about allowing people to be part of popular culture and contributing in defining what this should be.”
Adams’ work thoughtfully examines how people express themselves through media today, using daily “staging” to shape identity and storytelling, which directly impacts consumer habits. He also noted that the art world and institutions are now much more attuned to what “Pop” signifies for audiences and actively seek ways to connect with it; data allows for a deeper understanding of what people enjoy, desire and respond to, along with insights on viewers—knowledge widely used in marketing across industries. Reflecting on his relationship with Pop Art, Adams suggested that the references to popular culture in his work “allow people to have a direct relationship with it.”
Thomas observed that while the willingness to engage with contemporary culture persists, the very definition of “popular culture” has evolved along with the artistic practices addressing it. “It’s transformed because it’s of that moment,” she said, and art “is about how we define it as a culture and how those artists decide to pull from that particular moment and what they want to present to the world. It’s about the new technology and the new media that are available. Today, it’s more diverse, it’s expansive, it’s global, it’s universal. Art is now amalgamated with different sort of ethnicities in a global society.” Thomas’ own style reflects this shift; her vibrant, engaging works draw from pop culture, particularly in their connection to fashion trends. Bold depictions celebrating the beauty and resilience of Black female bodies challenge historical narratives that have sought to erase or marginalize them.
In her work, Thomas often employs photographic materials, engaging in the hybridization of painting and mechanical reproduction. She fragments these images, adding unexpected materials like rhinestones and glitter to empower femininity and female independence. During our conversation, she shared her longstanding fascination with Tom Wesselmann’s work, noting significant similarities between hers and his. While an undergraduate at Pratt Institute, Thomas discovered Wesselmann’s art, conducting research in his archives—a journey culminating in her current exhibition. What particularly interested her, as she emphasized, was how Wesselmann portrayed both white and Black female bodies on equal terms, exploring how both inspire desire. “When it came to the American nude female body, there was no hierarchy between a Black woman’s body and a white woman’s body,” she said. This was radical for its time and remains so to some degree even today. Thomas, as a queer Black woman creating art that celebrates Black female bodies, still encounters resistance.
At Fondation Louis Vuitton, Thomas presents works that explore Black erotica and delve into themes of sexuality, desire and the female gaze with a boldness akin to Wesselmann’s, similarly challenging societal norms around the representation of the nude female body, especially the Black female body. She highlights a shared element in Wesselmann’s work and her own: empowering women by portraying them as fully aware of their seductive power. This approach invites desire while pushing back against the objectification of female bodies in mass media and advertising. Examining these narratives and the societal dynamics they reflect remains one of Pop Art’s greatest strengths, according to Thomas. “I think most artists today are pop artists. We’re always bringing things to the forefront and bringing attention to what surrounds us, inviting others to question it.”
Japanese-born and U.S.-based, Matsuyama offers a unique perspective, highlighting the pervasive influence of American commercial culture worldwide while drawing parallels with Japanese culture. His work examines how these cultural strategies operate within commercial, media, and social media realms, contributing to a global culture that often leans toward homogenization yet thrives on a rich exchange of symbols and elements from diverse backgrounds.
In particular, Matsuyama’s shaped canvases feature densely layered collages that capture the cultural and aesthetic diversity of our global society. The sources for each piece range from traditional art history to contemporary fashion campaigns, along with objects and interiors inspired by popular design magazines. These are often blended with references to Japanese culture, visible in the manga-inspired flatness of his characters and traditional landscape motifs. His art embodies a cultural fluidity that reflects the diasporic experience and the global nature of identity, moving beyond a fixed idea of pop culture. “I was a minority when I got to the U.S., but even in Japan, I was that, as my father was a pastor,” he explained. “Throughout my life, I couldn’t adapt. Now everybody’s trying to adapt to the world. What I’m doing in my work is adapting different influences to reflect us.”
When discussing his connections to Pop Art, Matsuyama noted that if his work is categorized as such, it’s because his palette is colorful and certain elements align with the genre. He also acknowledged the influence of pioneers like Warhol and Wesselmann, the latter of whom played a key role in his early digital collages, which he later translated to shaped canvas. What intrigues him most, however, is that while Japanese culture has traditionally valued fine objects such as historical ceramics or porcelains, Wesselmann and other Pop artists elevated the everyday object to a similar level. “My way of assembling fictional landscapes from everyday items represents a continuation and transformation of Pop Art,” he said. At the same time, Matsuyama layers his work with additional dimensions, incorporating a final dripping of white paint reminiscent of Pollock’s Abstract Expressionism and treating art and cultural history as a vast, global archive—carefully researched, selected and recombined using digital tools before translating them into painting.
At the same time, while Pop artists like Warhol explored the imagination conveyed through media such as TV, magazines and advertisements, Matsuyama engages with a digital archive of our civilization—one that already fuses traditional and historical, contemporary and vernacular, on a global and multicultural scale. He also draws parallels to today’s cultural disorientation, noting that “back then, in the ’70s, America was going through this huge economic growth, and therefore there was a dark side that was coming.” The quest for idols, for points of reference, for something to believe in is what both pop culture and Pop Art ultimately express. “Now we’re going to this last generation stage, like: Where do we fit? What do we belong to?”
In this light, Matsuyama’s art—and indeed, this entire exhibition—can be seen as a celebration of “Pop” as a model for multiculturalism, which has already permeated today’s global popular culture. This model embraces the complex, multifaceted nature of modern popular culture and offers the potential to move beyond the subtle nationalist undertones of the American Dream that Pop Art once exposed, instead fostering a new sense of belonging rooted in shared global identity and an ongoing, cross-border exchange of goods and symbolic meanings they carry.
A view of the installation at the Centre des Monuments Nationaux–Hôtel de Sully. Photo: Tanguy Beurdeley. Courtesy of the Lynn Chadwick’s Estate and Perrotin.
British artist Lynn Chadwick was instrumental in liberating modern sculpture from its traditional figurative and celebratory forms, pushing it towards more abstract, innovative expressions. His market remains robust, largely due to the careful management of his estate by his family. Now, “Hypercircle,” a series of exhibitions split into three chapters across two venues, seeks to further cement Chadwick’s reputation and enhance his market standing.
Timed to coincide with Art Basel Paris, the first show, “Hypercircle – Chapter 1: Scalene,” opened at Galerie Perrotin alongside a display of works at the Centre des Monuments Nationaux–Hôtel de Sully. This exhibition focuses on Chadwick’s formative years, showcasing sixty pivotal works produced between 1947 and 1962—a period during which the artist defined his distinct style and gained international recognition. Observer spoke with curator and art historian Matthieu Poirier, who played a central role in orchestrating the show.
Poirier revealed that this exhibition is the culmination of years of dialogue with the Chadwick estate. He first connected with them during research for his groundbreaking “Suspension” exhibition and publication, which looked at artists who pioneered the idea of sculpture beyond the pedestal. Despite some of these pieces not being Chadwick’s most recognized works, the show highlights the artist’s exploration of “Mobiles” in the 1950s. “They are something deeply connected with the history of abstract art,” Poirier said. “It’s about losing boundaries and creating abstraction.”
The Lynn Chadwick exhibition at Perrotin Gallery in Paris was curated by Matthieu Poirer. Photo: Tanguy Beurdeley. Courtesy of the Lynn Chadwick’s Estate and Perrotin.
Chadwick’s fascination with suspension and his intuitive approach to working with unconventional materials were fueled by his diverse background as an architectural draftsman, furniture and textile designer, and later, a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II. According to Poirier, for the artist, “mobiles were an extension of architecture, moving parts of the architecture. He always had a fascination for flying objects, also for his past as a pilot.”
As Chadwick sought to liberate sculpture from mass and traditional support, his works evolved into more animal-like forms, often featuring angular bodies and delicate, spindly legs. Though deeply abstract and imaginative in their hybrid forms, these sculptures retained some references to the natural world. Poirier noted that Chadwick was fascinated by biology, particularly Darwin’s theory of evolution, with illustrations from those scientific texts inspiring his distinct biomorphic language.
For this reason, the sculptor’s creations often appear more like fossils suspended between present and past, between remoteness and presentness of their forms, evoking humanoid forms figures with anthropomorphic heads and limbs while maintaining their “otherness.” Many of Chadwick’s pieces also resemble insects, particularly referencing the exoskeleton—a concept that fascinated the artist as he explored the idea of a protective shell or carapace encasing the body structure.
These connections to natural forms and geometries became even more pronounced after Chadwick moved to Lypiatt Park, a neo-Gothic castle in the Cotswolds. From the late 1950s onward, he absorbed inspiration directly from the rich flora and fauna surrounding his new studio. Yet even as his biomorphic tendencies became more apparent, his work continued to blend elements of nature with the mechanical, industrial, and even futuristic, reflecting the aesthetic sensibilities of his time.
“Hypercycle” is a series of exhibitions at several sites, each tracing a part of the artist’s career. Photo: Tanguy Beurdeley. Courtesy of the Lynn Chadwick’s Estate and Perrotin.
Chadwick’s work was never tied to a specific narrative or political stance, which is why Poirier avoided categorizing his pieces by “type” in this exhibition. Instead, he wanted to highlight the artist’s abstract approach, allowing the sculptures to transcend direct references. By pairing the works organically and displaying them as if they were occasionally gathering on pedestals, Poirier emphasizes their fluidity. “They’re always highly stylized and maintain only the main lines of the real thing,” he said.
Some of Chadwick’s monumental sculptures are on display at the Monuments Nationaux–Hôtel de Sully. These pieces, which weigh up to 800 kg, are remarkable not only for their scale but also for the artist’s working method—Chadwick often worked alone and created his sculptures without preliminary sketches, relying on an intuitive and automatic process. Poirier likened this method to surrealist automatic writing, noting that his process had “no plan, leaving the materials leading the way.”
At the same time, Chadwick’s work is deeply rooted in the tradition of sculptural pioneers, from Russian Constructivists like Naum Gabo to Henry Moore, and even the existential sculptures of Alberto Giacometti, where bodies are reduced to their minimal forms. “I’ve always seen him as the missing link between Henry Moore, Giacometti and someone like Louise Bourgeois,” Poirier said, emphasizing the broader significance of Chadwick’s practice. “When you look at her spiders, it’s clear that she looked at Chadwick’s work, and she wasn’t the only one.”
Lynn Chadwick was one of the most significant sculptors of the twentieth century, alongside Alberto Giacometti, Henry Moore and Louise Bourgeois. Photo: Tanguy Beurdeley. Courtesy of the Lynn Chadwick’s Estate and Perrotin.
When compared to Moore and Giacometti, Chadwick’s works convey a similar sense of precariousness and fragility, reflecting the uncertainties of the postwar era. He minimized the base of his sculptures, creating a sense of imbalance and instability through the use of triangular shapes, a key element of his sculptural language. As Poirier explained, this instability wasn’t merely aesthetic but also a means to evoke movement: “The idea of the scalene triangle, this irregular triangle, is an unstable shape that is on the verge of collapsing, not symmetrical. It is not orthogonal. There is no symmetry. It’s just on the verge of falling or giving birth to another triangle or tetrahedron—these shapes imagined from this simple structure.”
The concept of the scalene triangle was so integral to Chadwick’s work that it inspired the title of the first chapter of his exhibition in Paris. Poirier added that this formal approach likely stems from his architectural background, where he learned to stabilize structures using diagonal lines, creating a dynamic interplay between gravitational forces. This architectural influence is evident in the way Chadwick balanced strength and instability within his sculptures.
Profoundly enigmatic, Chadwick’s hybrid sculptures seem to foreshadow new possibilities of symbiosis between nature and human creation. His concept of “organic growth” within sculpture offers a visionary anticipation of themes such as interspecies relationships and “alienness,” ideas that have become increasingly popular in today’s artistic and creative realms. As humanity is compelled to reconsider its place on the planet, this sculptor’s work feels more relevant than ever, whether viewed through dystopian or optimistic lenses.
“Hypercycle” will continue with a second chapter in New York focusing on Chadwick’s mature period from 1963 to 1979. The final chapter will be mounted in Asia. Complementing the exhibition series, a monograph set to be published in 2025 will provide a comprehensive overview of Chadwick’s career, offering diverse perspectives on his work and legacy.
The first chapter brings together sixty key works produced between 1947 and 1962, a time when the artist defined his unique approach and achieved international recognition. Photo: Tanguy Beurdeley. Courtesy of the Lynn Chadwick’s Estate and Perrotin.
At 92 years old, Colombian textile and visual artist Olga de Amaral has recently seen a remarkable resurgence in recognition, with a growing market presence and heightened institutional interest that surged after her 2022 debut with Lisson Gallery. De Amaral’s rich body of work merges fiber art with the spiritual and natural essence of Colombia, blending traditional textile techniques with modernist explorations of geometry, color, materials and three-dimensionality. Her practice draws from her studies at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and her deep connection to pre-Columbian art and Colombian textile traditions.
In conjunction with Art Basel Paris, Fondation Cartier has mounted the first major European retrospective of her work, offering a comprehensive look at her artistic evolution. De Amaral treats textiles as a form of language, creating intricate, textured surfaces that play with light and space. Her works transcend functionality, serving as sacred monuments or portals, bridging the human and cosmic realms.
The exhibition is organized both chronologically and thematically, highlighting how de Amaral’s practice pushes the boundaries of textiles as a mode of expression. It showcases her modernist influences, including the Bauhaus, alongside her relentless experimentation with scale, materials, and light, always maintaining a deep connection to the natural world and the Colombian landscape.
The basement spaces of the exhibition introduce visitors to Olga de Amaral’s expansive exploration over the past five decades, from her early works in the 1960s to her most recent creations. By freeing her pieces from the confines of the wall, the curatorial decision creates an immersive experience, allowing visitors to fully appreciate the elaborately intricate textures and the dynamic interplay between the threads, light and physical space. Upon closer inspection, her works reveal meticulous research into the multiplicity within a single entity, exploring endless variations of material and form.
De Amaral’s experimental approach engages with materials, composition and geometry. Her complex weaving structures incorporate woven strips of various colors, thicknesses, and materials—alternating wool, linen, horsehair, and even plastic threads. This experimentation allows her to transcend the flatness of traditional tapestries, creating volumes and surfaces that explore endless combinations and new visual codes. For instance, the Entrelazados (Interlaced) series intertwines strips of differing colors and textures, while works like Elementos rojo en fuego (Red Elements on Fire) combine wool and horsehair, and Luz Blanca features woven plastic strips that are braided, coiled or knotted.
The artist writes in the exhibition catalog: “As I build surfaces, I create spaces of meditation, contemplation and reflection. Every small unit that forms the surface is not only significant in itself but also deeply resonant with the whole. Likewise, the whole is deeply resonant of each individual element.”
Floating freely, Olga de Amaral’s textile works trace their architecture and circular forms as the threads intertwine, giving viewers a glimpse of the broader conceptual explorations she embeds in them—one that transcends materiality and highlights the potential role of textiles as a bridge between earth, human creativity, and the cosmic order. Her weaving process is almost ritualistic, connecting deeply with ancestral traditions and symbolism while incorporating contemporary influences, such as her Bauhaus studies. It’s no surprise that many of her works feel rooted in pre-Columbian tradition, referencing sacred geometries and compositions reminiscent of feather art. For instance, Encalado en la azul (Whitewashed in Lime and Blue Lacquer) features purple and orange rectangular strips sewn together, painted in turquoise with a dense, irregular pattern on a woven cotton base.
De Amaral’s works elevate textiles into a three-dimensional space, as seen in her Lienzos ceremoniales (Ceremonial Cloths), where gold leaf interacts with light, resonating with the spiritual energy of Pre-Columbian Inca artifacts. This transcendence is also evident in the Estelas (Stars/Stelae) series from 1955, where gilded woven cotton structures are reassembled into monumental totems or menhirs. By applying layers of gesso, acrylic paint and gold leaf, she transforms these textiles into evocative forms reminiscent of the funerary and votive sculptures found at Pre-Columbian archaeological sites, unlocking secrets of the universe within their woven forms.
Olga de Amaral’s exploration of light, both in and emanating from her materials, is central to her practice. Her golden surfaces radiate a brilliance reminiscent of sacred pre-Columbian gold craftsmanship or astronomical phenomena, inviting contemplation of the energies that shape life in the universe. In parallel, other work mirrors and evokes the relationship between tecnè (craftsmanship) and nature, creating mystical landscapes or natural sensations through powerful material metaphors.
The immersive installation on the upper floor presents both earthy and ethereal works, transforming textiles into organic forms like rocks, lianas or the lightness of fog and moisture. For example, in her Brumas (Mists) series from 2013, suspended, coated threads transition from flat to three-dimensional forms, resembling fine rain. These colorful geometric shapes interact with the surrounding glass walls and the greenery outside, poetically reflecting the elements of air and water. In other works with earthier tones, such as Muro en rojos and Gran Muro, Amaral introduces horsehair, grounding the pieces in a more solid, layered texture, reminiscent of geological formations. These massive textile surfaces evoke the Colombian landscape, with its rivers, mountains and valleys around Medellín. Through these works, de Amaral captures the essence of the Andes, embodying their primordial energy and reinforcing the connection between human labor and the cyclical forces of nature.
The exhibition at Fondation Cartier successfully showcases one of the most significant aspects of de Amaral’s practice—her ability to root her work in ancient traditions and spiritual connections with nature, while transcending cultural boundaries. Her exploration of textiles reflects these materials’ ceremonial, historical and symbolic significance across cultures, grounding her creations in the earth and linking them to the natural world.
The shared etymology of “text” and “textiles” from the Latin texere (meaning both weaving and telling) further deepens the resonance of her work, aligning with the Inca’s use of knotted cords as a system for recording information. Through her practice, de Amaral reawakens textiles as a universal language, one that transcends cultural specificity and continues to evolve. As her work demonstrates, textiles are a language that speaks of time, place, and human existence, capable of endlessly unfolding and expanding as it leaves the loom.
OSLO — It was a July afternoon in 2011 when a car bomb exploded just a few blocks from Robert Ullmann’s office. Because it was the summer, only two employees from Kanvas, his nonprofit that manages 64 child care programs around Norway, were at their desks on the third floor of a narrow, nondescript building in central Oslo. Although the floor-to-ceiling glass windows shattered when the bomb exploded at 3:25 in the afternoon, both members of his team were unhurt.
When I arrived at Ullmann’s office a few months ago to interview him about Kanvas, he led me to one of the windows that looks out over Møllergata street. Just past the rusty roof of the building across the road, we could see the top of Regjeringskvartalet, a cluster of government offices, the target of that car bomb. “That’s our ‘Capitol Hill,’” Ullmann explained. The complex never reopened after the blast, which killed eight and injured more than 200. A few hours later, the far-right extremist behind the bombing opened fire at a youth summer camp on an island 24 miles from central Oslo, killing 69 people, most of them teenagers and young adults affiliated with the youth wing of the country’s Labor Party.
The violent attack, extraordinarily rare for Norway, affected Ullmann deeply.
“I started some reflection,” he said as we stood by the window. “How can a young guy come up here and become a terrorist?” In the context of his work with young children, the goal became very clear. “What’s important is that everyone feel they’re included,” he said.
Paula García Tadeo, a teacher at the Turi Sletners child care program in northwest Oslo, helps children as they play in the snow. Children at Turi Sletners spend hours outside each day and learn how to make fires and safely use knives starting at age five. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
Ullmann’s conclusion embodies one of Norway’s goals for its citizens: to build a nation of thriving adults by providing childhoods that are joyful, secure and inclusive. Perhaps nowhere is this belief manifested more clearly than in the nation’s approach to early child care. (In Norway, all education for children 5 and under is referred to as “barnehagen,” the local translation of “kindergarten.”) To an American, the Norwegian philosophy, both in policy and in practice, could feel alien. The government’s view isn’t that child care is a place to put children so parents can work, or even to prepare children for the rigors of elementary school. It’s about protecting childhood.
“A really important pillar of Norway’s early ed philosophy is the value of childhood in itself,” said Henrik D. Zachrisson, a professor at the Centre for Research on Equality in Education at the University of Oslo. “Early ed is supposed to be a place where children can be children and have the best childhood possible.”
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A playground for children at a Kanvas child care program in south Oslo. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
On a drizzly Thursday morning this spring in south Oslo, at Preståsen Kanvas-barnehage, one of Kanvas’ child care programs, children roamed around an expansive play yard, building sandcastles under a large evergreen tree and zooming down a hill on bikes. On an adjacent playground, children shrieked as they splashed through a large puddle. As more children were drawn to the water, rather than caution them about getting wet, a teacher handed them buckets to have at it.
There was a clear focus on inclusion: Children with disabilities, who would often be segregated in American child care programs, were included in activities, at times with the help of a city-funded aide. Posters on some kindergarten walls showed pictures of common items or requests so children who were still learning to speak Norwegian could point to what they needed. Children were learning about the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr. A rack of free clothes and boots was parked inside the front lobby, with instructions for parents to take what they needed.
“Kindergarten is so important to level out social inequities,” said Ullmann as we drove to a second site run by Kanvas. “In Norway, we think it’s democratic that everyone can have the same opportunities and move out of being poor. Social differences are something Norway does not accept.”
I traveled to Norway in April, disillusioned after nine years of reporting on child care in the U.S., where parents often pay exorbitant sums for care that comes with no guarantee of quality and relies on underpaid workers. I was eager to see a country that prioritizes child care and generously subsidizes that system, two things that feel wholly out of reach in the United States.
A toddler plays outside at the Turi Sletners child care program in north Oslo. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
Norway’s model comes from a deep-seated belief that creating productive, contributing members of society starts at birth. The country offers robust social support for residents, making occurrences like the 2011 attacks that much more shocking. Investing in early childhood is seen “both as an investment for the society and an investment for the child,” said Kristin Aasta Morken, program leader of the city of Oslo’s initiative for upbringing and education. Unlike in America, no attempts have been made to lower age requirements for kindergarten teachers or increase student-teacher ratios and group sizes, and there have been few debates over whether child care is ruining children or families. Ironically, Norway’s policies have been inspired in part by American studies that found language gaps between higher- and lower-income children, as well as a high return on investment for early childhood programs.
“The argument I’ve heard is that if you don’t send your children to kindergarten, then you steal some possible experiences from them,” said Adrian Kristinsønn Jacobsen, a doctoral candidate at Norway’s University of Stavanger who studies nature-based early childhood science education and is a parent of two young children. “You sort of don’t give them the chance to play with other children so much, for instance, or get to know other adults.”
At a time when the U.S. has yet to meaningfully invest in widespread, high-quality child care for all, especially for infants and toddlers — and federal child care spending, provided to states through block grants, reaches only 13 percent of eligible American children — Norway provides an example of what affordable, universal, child-centric early care can look like.
Posters about dinosaurs hang on the wall at Jarbakken, a child care program in northwest Oslo. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
To be sure, there are important contexts behind each country’s approach. Norway, a democracy with a figurehead monarchy, is home to about 5.5 million people, about 82 percent of whom are of Norwegian ancestry, across a space roughly the size of Montana. The U.S. has 62 times the number of residents and a far more diverse population. Norway is a top producer of oil which helped generate a per capita household income that was over $104,000 in 2022, according to the International Monetary Fund. In 2022, per capita household income in the U.S. was about $77,000.
The countries’ priorities are different as well. Each year, nearly 1.4 percent of Norway’s GDP is spent on early childhood programs, compared with less than 0.4 percent in America. Public funding covers 85 percent of operating costs for child care programs. The tuition parents pay has been capped at 2,000 kroner (about $190) a month for the first child, with a 30 percent discount for the second. Tuition for a third child is free. This applies to both public and private programs, including in-home centers, giving parents some choice. Programs receive funding based on the number of children served, with sites drawing double the amount of money for each child under 3 to account for lower student-teacher ratios.
A teacher at a child care program run by Kanvas, a Norwegian nonprofit, sets out a packet created to help children learning Norwegian communicate with staff members. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
Norwegian children are guaranteed a spot in a kindergarten after they turn 1, around the time many parents’ paid leave ends. All kindergartens are governed by the same framework and requirements, designed to protect the sanctity of the early years. If parents don’t send their children to child care, they receive financial assistance to keep them at home.
Norwegians are so serious about the right to child-centric early care, they wrote it into law. The country’s Kindergarten Act, which took effect in 2006, states that child care programs must acknowledge “the intrinsic value” of childhood. Programs must be rooted in values including forgiveness, equality, solidarity and respect for human worth. Through kindergartens, children are meant to learn to take care of each other and develop friendships. Programs are ordered to respect children, “counteract all forms of discrimination” and contribute to a child’s well-being and joy. They must be designed around the interests of children and provide activities that allow children to develop their “creative zest, sense of wonder and need to investigate.”
That doesn’t mean kids run free all day, though at times it can look like that. “If you’re standing outside a Norwegian kindergarten or just passing through, I would think you are looking at chaos,” said Anne Karin Frivik, head of kindergartens in the Bjerke borough of north Oslo. “But for us on the inside, it’s organized chaos. The autonomy of the child, the child’s own ability to choose and to learn and to interact, it’s very, very highly appreciated.”
Sylvia Lorentzen, director of two child care programs in north Oslo, talks to children as they prepare to leave for a hike in a nearby forest. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
About 7 miles north of Oslo, Sylvia Lorentzen’s two child care programs straddle a narrow, winding road amid the lush forests that encircle part of the city, offering limitless opportunities for children to immerse themselves in nature. Throughout the year, those in Lorentzen’s care ski, sled, swim, canoe, climb rocks and rest in hammocks. Around age 4, they learn how to safely use a knife. Then they huddle together outside, whittling wooden figures out of sticks to practice. At 5, they are cutting logs with a saw and building fires.
By 11 on a Tuesday morning this spring, it was barely above freezing, but toddlers at one of Lorentzen’s programs, Turi Sletners Barnehave, had yet to set foot inside. Bundled up in colorful snowsuits and boots, they crunched through several inches of snow blanketing their picturesque play yard, splashed through muddy puddles and giggled as they chased Lorentzen’s petite, playful dog around the yard.
“Children should feel more like it’s a second home,” said Lorentzen. “We take the kids into our heart and we take good care of them.”
A toddler leaves a tent to play in the snow at the Turi Sletners child care program in northwest Oslo. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
As the morning wore on, the five toddlers made their way up a gentle slope and stepped inside a large tent, modeled after one commonly used by the Indigenous Sami people of Northern Europe. There, the children crowded around a metal firepit and peered at the remnants of their last bonfire.
“What did you find?” their teacher, Paula García Tadeo, asked in Norwegian as a child held up some charcoal remnants. García looked closely and nodded, before instructing the child to put it back.
Another child reached into the remnants and started to taste an ashy piece of wood.
“Don’t eat it,” Garcia said calmly.
“In the kindergarten in Norway, the children find their own food!” Lorentzen joked to me, laughing. “Don’t write that!”
After a bit more exploring and singing some nursery rhymes, the toddlers set off across the play yard. Some wandered over to watch a rushing stream a few feet away, and others stumbled through the snow before sitting down to rest. The more confident walkers among them marched ahead, toward the warm meal that awaited them inside.
For Lorentzen and many other early educators here, this sort of laid-back morning, marked by child-led outdoor exploration, signifies how childhood and child care should look. Nature and outdoor play are staples of Norwegian culture. There’s even a word for it: “friluftsliv,” which translates to “outdoor life.” Norwegians are so protective of this outdoor time, they have a saying, “There is no bad weather, just bad clothes.” It’s standard for Norwegian kindergartens to have rows of cubbies just inside the door to the play area to store layers of spare clothes, rain and snow gear, boots and mittens.
A child plays in a puddle on the playground of a child care program run by the Norwegian nonprofit Kanvas. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
Some of this outdoor focus is baked into the country’s 63-page kindergarten framework, based on the national law, which dictates the content that must be covered, staff responsibilities and kindergartens’ general goals. The framework focuses heavily on play, a word that is repeated 56 times in the English version of the document. Programs are required to facilitate a good childhood, with “well-being, friendships and play.” Learning about nature and the environment is one of the framework’s seven learning goals for children, and programs are instructed to “use nature as an arena for play.” Much of the other content, like health and movement, communication and art, is taught while children are playing, either inside chaotic-looking classrooms or while traipsing through forests.
In rain, snow or wind, children at Turi Sletners, and in programs across the country, spend their days climbing trees and getting muddy. Toddlers nap outside, bundled inside puffy, miniature sleeping bags affixed to their strollers. During the summer, Norwegian children in kindergartens spend, on average, 70 percent of their time outside. In winter about a third of the time is outside. The country’s embrace of nature is likely a factor in its high international happiness ratings, given that research has found spending time in nature can decrease anxiety and improve cognition.
Researchers have found that Norway’s kindergartens have positive effects on academic success and the adult labor force. “Putting all the pieces together, it’s a pretty consistent set of evidence that there are fairly long-term effects” of Norway’s early childhood programs, said the University of Oslo’s Zachrisson. “Which is funny, because what they do the first year is walking around in the woods eating sand and hugging trees, and [it] is super interesting to try to think of what causes them to do much better on the math test in fifth grade.”
It may be because play is the main way children learn, and Norwegian kindergarten days are overflowing with just that.
Children at Blindern Barnestuer, a child care center, or “kindergarten” in Oslo, watch a tractor drive by their play yard. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
At Blindern Barnestuer, a child care program run out of four wooden houses across the street from the University of Oslo, children roam for hours, playing in a magical, expansive play yard while their parents research and teach at the university. On an April afternoon, a group of children crowded around a teacher sitting at a bench outside as he painted various insects on their faces on request.
Other kids chased each other up gentle hills as a nearby pirate flag, suspended from the branches of a knobby tree, waved. A group of preschoolers traversed an obstacle course constructed of wooden pallets and boards, clutching each other’s coats for stability. Some climbed trees and dangled from branches.
As Anne Gro Stumberg, one of the kindergarten’s lead teachers, known as a “pedagogical leader” in Norway, showed me around the outdoor play space, I commented on how Norwegians seemed to have a much higher risk tolerance for children’s play. In addition to the fire and knives that I had seen at other programs, preschoolers chased each other with brooms, fell several feet from tree limbs and stood on swings, things that gave me, a cautious American, pause. Nary a Norwegian looking on, however, batted an eye.
“We allow them to experience, and if they fall down, so what?” Stumberg said.
I asked if she’s had many injuries among the children.
She thought for a moment. “I can’t remember having one injury, not a serious injury,” she said.
Children play with a broom at Blindern Barnestuer. Teachers at the child care program, called “kindergartens” in Norway, emphasize free, outdoor play in the early years. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
Stumberg sees endless lessons for children through play. At Blindern, teachers purposefully avoid teaching formal academics, like letters and numbers, unless a child is expressly interested in them. “We think that’s what they’re going to learn in school,” she said. “I don’t think it’s necessary to try to learn [reading] before school. There are so many other things that are very important, like all of the social skills, and how to move and do things on your own and to be able to have your own limits.”
This can only happen, Norway believes, with trained, qualified staff. The national framework instructs staff to behave as “role models,” and Norway’s law is strict about student-teacher ratios and qualifications. Programs are required to have one pedagogical leader, someone with a multiyear college degree or comparable education, per seven children under the age of 3, and one per 14 children older than that. Each leader is supported by two other teachers, who often have less education. For children under age 3, there may be no more than three children for each staff member, and there is a maximum of six children per staff for older children. In America, by contrast, no state has a ratio that low for toddlers. In some states, as many as 12 2-year-olds are assigned to one teacher, who is subject to far fewer training requirements than a peer in Norway.
Mailinn Daljord, director of the Jarbakken child care program in Oslo, looks at seedlings children are growing in one of the program’s rooms. Daljord emphasizes inclusion in her program and regularly meets with teachers to make sure children are forming connections with peers and teachers. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
At Jarbakken Barnehage, in northwest Oslo, director Mailinn Daljord said qualified teachers are vital, as they have a challenging job. One of the most critical lessons is teaching children emotional regulation, a skill that is imperative as children grow. “I want [children] to like being in kindergarten,” she said, as we sat in her office, surrounded by rows of early childhood pedagogy books and a pile of donated, toddler-sized skis. “But I also want them to feel disappointment, sadness and disagreement with others, because here we have grownups that will help them with their emotions, so they will learn to handle those situations on their own when they get older.”
Like Ullmann, one thing Daljord does not want children to experience is bullying or exclusion. As we spoke, she went on her computer to pull up Jarbakken’s annual plan, something every kindergarten must create to explain how it will meet the requirements of the law. This year, Daljord is especially focused on interactions and inclusion. Teachers gather small groups of children during play to provide support with interactions and give them ample opportunity to form connections with peers. During the year, Daljord’s teachers meet to evaluate how much they interact with individual children, a practice Ullmann spoke of as well. Daljord uses a scale: Green means frequent interaction with a child, yellow occasional, red infrequent. Then the kindergarten zeroes in on those getting less interaction. Often, those are the most challenging children, Daljord said.
“You need to do something to make sure all the kids are getting the same, and that they are seen and acknowledged for the person they are,” she said.
Later in our visit, as Daljord walked me through the bright kindergarten, housed in a boxy, modern building surrounded by outdoor play spaces, I was struck by the freedom children had. They could move from room to room and play with other groups of children, as long as they stayed in the area designated for their age group. As we toured, Daljord pointed out what children were learning about: dinosaurs, insects and the life cycle of plants. All around us, children scurried in and out of play areas — the word “classroom” is not used in Norwegian child care settings — laughing and chasing friends. While teachers engaged small groups of children in spontaneous activity at times, for the most part, the emphasis was on child-led play.
Daljord agreed that children in Norway have “way more” freedom — and responsibility — than in America. She told me a story that, to her, demonstrated the former. Nearly a decade ago, while visiting a park in the United States with her then almost 3-year-old daughter, she was approached by an American parent who chastised her for sitting on a bench while her daughter ran free. “Child abuse,” Daljord recalled the woman telling her. She said Daljord “needed to watch her, and stay close.”
Daljord seemed amused by the whole interaction. “Different culture,” she said, as she recalled the story.
Strollers sit outside Grønland Torg, a child care program in Oslo. Teachers in Norwegian child care programs often place infants and young toddlers outside in strollers to sleep during nap time. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
Norway’s early childhood policies are indeed part of a distinctly different culture. In 2020, UNICEF ranked Norway No. 1 among 41 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and European Union countries for conditions that support child well-being. Norway spends 3.3 percent of its GDP on family benefits, one of the highest rates among OECD nations, and about three times what the United States spends. In 2020, the medical journal The Lancet ranked Norway first out of 180 countries in a “child flourishing index.” That same year, UNICEF ranked Norway third among 41 wealthy countries in child well-being, as measured by mental well-being, physical health and academic and social skills. The United States, by comparison, ranked 36th. Norway also ranks highly in work-life balance, meaning even if children attend kindergarten, parents still spend hours with them each day, parents and educators told me.
Perhaps in part thanks to these circumstances, children and their families fare well in Norway. Child mortality and poverty rates in Norway are low, and most children report good family relationships. International test scores from before the pandemic showed Norwegian teenagers performing at or above international averages in science, math and reading, though scores have fluctuated over recent years, with the arrival of more immigrants, who tend to score lower on such tests. Nearly 86 percent of Norwegians graduate from high school, and 55 percent earn a college degree. College tuition is free for Norwegian and European Union residents at the country’s public universities.
Many of the Norwegians I interviewed spoke of a strong cultural expectation that adults contribute to Norway’s economy. More than 72 percent of the country’s labor force works, 10 percentage points higher than in America. Norway’s child care policy has supported this.
Many of Norway’s values are uniquely Scandinavian and deep-rooted. But as my visit went on, I began to wonder if part of Norway’s no-nonsense, easy-breezy approach was because many of the things that keep American parents up at night, like school shootings, mass shootings — pretty much shootings of any kind — aren’t things Norwegian parents told me they regularly, if ever, think about. Norway has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. Maybe in America, the strict, highly regulated approach we continue to take when it comes to child care is an attempt to control what we can for our children in a life where so many things feel very much out of our control.
Artwork hangs in an Oslo child care program. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
I ran this theory by Ullmann as we drove to one of his kindergartens. I told him some of the things I worry about with my own children: If I hear sirens near my child’s school, is it America’s next school shooting? If I’m at a concert or mall, where will I hide my child if someone opens fire? Do Norwegians ever worry about those things?
Ullmann was so horrified, he missed the exit on the freeway. “That’s really very sad,” he said sympathetically, glancing at me as he took the next exit, crossed over the highway and headed back in the opposite direction.
To be sure, aspects of Norway’s kindergarten system are still being developed, and the country must adapt as its population becomes more diverse. Its first step was expanding access, experts told me. Between 2003 and 2018, the percentage of children ages 1 to 5 attending kindergarten increased from 69 percent to 92 percent. Now, the country is focusing on improving quality and targeting children who are behind in language development.
When it comes to kindergartens, “we’ve known for some time that the quality varies,” said Veslemøy Rydland, a professor at the University of Oslo and one of the lead researchers for the Oslo Early Education Study, a research project into multiethnic early childhood programs that was launched in 2021. Despite standardized requirements, finding staff for lower-income kindergartens, where turnover rates are higher, can be difficult.
Food sits in the kitchen of Jarbakken, a child care program in northwest Oslo. Director Mailinn Daljord prioritizes inclusion and buys a variety of food so children with dietary restrictions feel included during meal time. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
As kindergartens have developed a stronger footing, the country is contending with a changing demographic and growing social inequality, testing its devotion to equity and progressive social values. Kindergartens are seeing this firsthand. Over the past decade, the number of “minority-language” children, kids with two parents who speak a language that is not native to the Scandinavian countries or English, has nearly doubled. Almost 20 percent of children in kindergarten primarily speak a language other than Norwegian, and in some cities as many as 35 percent of children are minority-language speakers. During the past decade, child poverty rates rose.
Part of my goal in visiting Norway was to see how, and if, the country’s system and approach to child care has been able to meet the growing needs of more diverse children. Not all of Norway’s early childhood researchers are convinced that the country’s informal approach to learning works as its demographics evolve.
“This pedagogy has been doing a great job in protecting childhoods … and giving children the opportunity to explore,” said Rydland, At the same time, Rydland said when children have that much freedom, they may not be exposed to activities that could be beneficial, like whole-group reading, simply because they aren’t interested in them. “That might be the same children that are not exposed to shared reading at home,” Rydland said. “That’s the challenge with this pedagogy … I think it works better in a more homogenous society than what we have now, with much more social differences.”
The Norwegian version of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” sits on the shelf inside a child care program in Oslo. Early learning programs in Norway emphasize play more than formal academic learning. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
There have been efforts to find a middle ground between the playful freedom inherent to Norwegian kindergartens and a more structured setting.
In Oslo, Rydland leads Språksterk, an initiative run by the University of Oslo, kindergartens in five Oslo districts and officials with the city of Oslo. The project, which roughly translates to “strong language skills” in English, is funded by the city and the Research Council of Norway and is aimed at improving adult interactions with children and ultimately enhancing language development. It’s one of several special projects and interventions in Oslo targeting children and families who are the most in need.
Like many Norwegian initiatives, Språksterk aims to “try to make the social inequalities less,” said Helene Holbæk, who develops projects for children in the Bjerke borough.
Grønland Torg is one of 80 kindergartens participating in Språksterk to help a growing number of immigrant children master the Norwegian language. Fifty-nine children attend Grønland Torg, and they altogether speak 40 different languages.
Hilde Sandnes, a teacher at the Grønland Torg child care program in Oslo, teaches a child the names of birds using felt animals. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
On a spring afternoon, teacher Hilde Sandnes sat on the floor of her room for 1-year-olds, next to a small cardboard box shaped like a birdhouse, as 11 children lumbered around the room, some playing alone while others interacted with the room’s two other teachers. Sandnes invited a toddler near her to come look at a collection of small, felt stuffed animals shaped like birds stacked inside the cardboard birdhouse, which had been sewn by her mother for the bird unit the children were embarking on. A child reached inside and pulled out a duck, proudly naming it in Norwegian.
Sandes repeated it and pulled out another bird, waiting to see if the child could identify it.
“Stork!” he proclaimed, a word that is the same in both English and Norwegian.
The child looked back over at the duck and excitedly proclaimed something in Norwegian.
“He told me the duck is taking a bath,” Sandnes said.
Hilde Sandnes, a teacher at the Grønland Torg child care program in Oslo, wipes the face of a toddler. Grønland Torg serves 59 children ages 10 months to 6 years who speak a total of 40 different languages. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
While kindergartens like Grønland Torg are attempting to adapt for immigrants, educators say not all newcomers are sold on the Norwegian model. Children who have immigrated to Norway are eligible to attend kindergarten soon after arriving, and their parents pay the same low rate, or lower, based on income. Educators said families new to Norway who enroll their children often struggle to accept the Norwegian approach to child care, expecting more academics or structure.
Many families choose not to enroll their children at all, an unintended consequence of a generous but divisive social policy in Norway: cash-for-care, which pays parents who stay home with their children. The idea is to support parents who wish to keep their children home longer — toddler enrollment in Norway’s kindergartens is lower than for older age groups — or sustain families if a child can’t get a spot in a kindergarten. Norwegian educators say children new to Norway are the ones who could benefit the most from child care and exposure to Norwegian language, yet are less likely to enroll before the subsidy expires when children turn 3.
At the same time, kindergartens are reckoning with how to support a steady rise in children with disabilities. Seventy percent of the country’s programs enroll children who qualify for special education support.
As these needs have grown, Oslo has responded with sufficient funding, educators told me. For students with disabilities, the city pays for and sends in specialists for added support. While these services are required for children under Norwegian law, national experts said the quality and extent of services can vary by city.
Lene Simonsen Larsen, director of the Grønland Torg child care program in Oslo, peeks in the window of a toddler room. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
In America, the quality of publicly funded early learning programs is often scrutinized, especially in the pre-K years. I wondered how the Norwegian government makes sure all this public money is in fact leading to high-quality kindergartens that are adequately serving children.
While there is copious federal tracking of staffing numbers as well as quality and parent satisfaction metrics, Norwegians are skeptical of monitoring and measuring children’s development and do not focus much on the cost-benefit argument around early education. Norwegians largely see early childhood programs as a good that “leads to more equal and happy childhoods,” said Zachrisson from the University of Oslo. “This is what the public discourse is about,” he added. The value of Norway’s early childhood services is not contingent on long-term effects.
Elise Kristin Hagen Steffensen, director of Barnebo Barnehage in north Oslo, described a system based on trust. Programs report issues to their municipality as small as forgetting to lock a window or as big as teacher mistreatment of children. Hagen Steffensen regularly writes reports for the city to explain how her school is meeting various parts of the law’s requirements, and officials may visit, especially if they’ve heard a kindergarten is struggling. There is also copious federal tracking of staffing numbers as well as quality and parent satisfaction metrics. Programs failing to meet regulations face no fines, however; educators were somewhat confused when I asked about penalties for failing to meet regulations, as can be the norm in America. Instead, they told me, local kindergarten officials help programs improve.
“That approach is just the Norwegian model,” said Hagen Steffensen. “I like that very much.”
This sense of trust seemed so inherent to Norwegians that they were baffled that I was asking questions about it. One afternoon, as Frivik, head of kindergartens in Bjerke borough, walked me to a bus stop, she pointed out how fences are few and far between in Norway. The country’s “right to roam” law allows individuals to freely and responsibly enjoy “uncultivated” areas, regardless of who owns them. I mentioned that fit right in with the level of trust I discovered, both by the government toward residents and residents toward the government.
“Nobody regularly checks or scans my Metro ticket to make sure I paid,” I pointed out.
“Why wouldn’t you pay?” Frivik asked me.
Looking forward, Norway’s early educators and experts aren’t quite ready to declare success in building their system, especially as demographics change. They want to see higher quality across kindergartens and more teachers in the classroom to reduce student-teacher ratios, which are already low by American standards.
Ullmann, too, thinks there is still room for improvement. “If you take the money and the structural quality that we offer in Norway, yeah, compared to every other country in the world, these are more or less the most expensive kindergartens in the world,” Ullmann said. “It’s fantastic when you compare it to every other country.” But, he added, even that may not be enough when it comes to the youngest of children, on whom the future rests.
This story about Norwegian children was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, with support from the Spencer Fellowship at Columbia Journalism School. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
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While Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung has denounced the film in a statement, the former president, at least based on reports, hasn’t made any new legal threats against the film nor has he been issuing headline-making statements about it on Truth Social or at his rallies.
When asked about the possibility of future Trump threats at The Apprentice‘s New York premiere, just a little over a block away from Trump Tower, director Ali Abbasi stood by his movie and doubted Trump’s team would sue.
“I doubt they have the balls [to come after the film],” Abbasi told The Hollywood Reporter. “I don’t think so, because they know we’re right. They know there’s nothing to be sued about. They know that things are accurate and double and triple, quadruple checked journalistically and legally. There’s nothing there, you know.”
Still he was defiant about future threats: “I mean, bring it on. That’s what I tell them.”
The screening, at New York’s DGA Theater, was attended by stars Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong and Maria Bakalova; writer Gabriel Sherman; producer Daniel Bekerman; and executive producer Amy Baer and even former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who walked the red carpet and spoke to media outlets.
Cohen, who told THR that he was invited by longtime acquaintance Sherman and said he was curious to see the film, offered some insight into how Trump might publicly react to the movie.
“It all depends on … what the reviews are. If the reviews are scathing to him, he will respond to it,” Cohen told THR. “You know, what he doesn’t want to do is fuel the conversation about something that he didn’t want to be released. The more he talks about it, the more he exposes the movie, and the more people obviously will want to see it. As Donald will always tell you, sometimes bad press is good press.”
The film focuses on the relationship between Trump (Stan) and New York power broker Roy Cohn (Strong), when Trump was an up-and-coming real estate mogul in the 1970s and ’80s, showing how Cohn shaped Trump into the man he is today.
And Cohen said he “absolutely” saw the effects of Cohn’s influence during his time working for Trump.
“The loyalty that you were required to provide was something you don’t see in other companies,” Cohen said. “It was demanded, and I gave it. And that was something that I do know that Roy Cohn told him.”
Though the film is being released less than a month before the 2024 election, the filmmakers have maintained that it’s not a political hit piece and instead offers a nuanced portrayal of the Republican presidential candidate’s early career.
But when asked what they wanted voters to take away from the film, Bekerman said he hoped it would give them a “new perspective.”
“I really hope that this movie does offer a new perspective on things that people have sort of shut off their brains on because they’ve formed a very hard opinion one way or the other, and they sort of stop really looking at it. I think this movie does offer a new way to look at it, and the way really is a humanistic storytelling lens that we look at this, these characters through,” he told THR. “By connecting with the characters as human beings, as Ali directed them, as the actors gave the characters the respect they deserved and didn’t just portray them as cartoons like they’re, frankly, mostly portrayed in most most of the media these days, there is a new potential for a new perspective, and I think that’s valuable any time, especially now.”
Abbasi meanwhile, urged people to “see it with an open mind.”
And while highlighting the entertainment factor of the film more than its influence on the election, he insisted this was the right time for it.
“I think it’s a ride. I think it’s an experience. I think it’s actually quite entertaining. I love the soundtrack. There are amazing performances. So not everything is about Donald Trump for or against,” he said. “It comes before the elections, because this is the biggest event. And I would be crazy if I said, ‘Oh, I have the possibility of doing it and not do it,’ because this is very much about the character who’s running for president. And I’m not going to tell you how to vote. But if you are wondering what kind of character he is, if you are wondering how he got to the place he is, we have some answers for you.”
Emilie Anthonis will replace Stan McCoy as the new president and managing director of the Motion Picture Association (MPA) for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions, the MPA said on Monday.
Anthonis will take over on January 1, 2025. McCoy is stepping down after leading the MPA in the region for over a decade.
“I’m proud to pass the baton after an exciting decade leading what is undoubtedly the EMEA region’s most skilled trade association across public policy, antipiracy, and all its other fields of expertise,” McCoy said in a statement.
“I am looking forward to serving the MPA members in this new capacity while continuing the spirit of teamwork that Stan has inspired across all of our MPA EMEA operations,” said Anthonis. “Europe is such a key market for the MPA’s members, and they have a very long history of storytelling and partnerships in the region.”
Prior to joining the MPA in 2017, Anthonis served as director of legal and public affairs at the Association of Commercial Television in Europe (ACT). Her career also includes a stint as in-house counsel at Viacom and work as an IP lawyer specializing in copyright and media law at a Brussels law firm.
Charles Rivkin, chairman and CEO of the MPA, expressed confidence in Anthonis’s appointment, citing her extensive experience in the European audiovisual sector and her reputation as an advocate for the creative industry.
“Emilie is a veteran of the MPA and the European audiovisual sector, and she’s earned a strong reputation as a powerful advocate for the creative industry, an expert in policymaking, a respected voice in European capitals, and a leader of integrity,” said Rivkin, “[she is] ready to take the reins of our operations and serve as an effective voice for our industry across this region, and I have full confidence in her ability to keep advancing the MPA’s priorities, leading our policy engagements and accompanying our member studios’ partnerships with stakeholders.”
Based in Brussels, Anthonis will report to Gail MacKinnon, senioreExecutive vp of global policy & government affairs. In her new position, Anthonis will be responsible for advancing the MPA’s priorities, leading policy engagements, and fostering partnerships between member studios and stakeholders throughout Europe and beyond.
The MPA lobbies lawmakers on behalf of its member studios: Netflix, Paramount Global, Sony Pictures, Universal Studios, Walt Disney Studios, Prime Video & Amazon MGM Studios, and Warner Bros. Discovery.
Cillian Murphy has reprised his iconic Peaky Blinders role and reunited with Steven Knight, the mastermind behind the hit Birmingham gangster drama, in a first look photo released Monday.
The Peaky Blinders Netflix film, directed by Tom Harper, is officially in production, the streaming giant announced on Monday. The film follows a six-season series met with critical acclaim, with Oscar winner Murphy, Paul Anderson, Helen McCrory, Tom Hardy, and Joe Cole leading the cast. So far confirmed for the movie are Saltburn‘s Barry Keoghan and Dune‘s Rebecca Ferguson.
“By order of the Peaky Blinders,” it said, “Tommy Shelby is back. Cillian Murphy and Steven Knight are reunited on set as production officially starts on the upcoming Netflix film.” Murphy and Knight were photographed together for the post.
By order of the Peaky Blinders… Tommy Shelby is back.
Cillian Murphy and Steven Knight are reunited on set as production officially starts on the upcoming Netflix film. pic.twitter.com/qWsQuntzCe
The series first premiered on BBC Two in 2013, though Netflix later acquired the rights to release the show in the U.S.
Knight was tight-lipped about the film’s plot at the Royal Television Society‘s London Convention earlier this month. The writer told the audience: “It’s set in the second world war and it’s really good.” When the confirmation of the Peaky Blinders film came through, Murphy said in a statement: “This is one for the fans.”
The show culminated with season six in 2022, shortly before the Irishman went on to star in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, nabbing him an Academy Award.
Murphy’s latest project Small Things Like These, depicting the horrors of Ireland’s church’s abusive workhouses for unwed mothers, is set for a Nov. 1 release in the U.K., and Nov. 8 in the U.S.
More than 100 Ukrainian drones were shot down over Russia Sunday, officials said, sparking a wildfire and setting an apartment block alight in one of the largest barrages seen over Russian skies since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
What You Need To Know
Russian officials say more than 100 Ukrainian drones were shot down, sparking a wildfire and setting an apartment block alight in one of the largest barrages over Russian skies since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022
Russia’s Ministry of Defense reported that it had shot down 125 drones overnight across seven regions
The southwestern region of Volgograd came under particularly heavy fire, with 67 Ukrainian drones reportedly downed by Russian air defenses
In Ukraine, 16 civilians were injured in an overnight barrage on the southern city of Zaporizhzhia after Ukrainian military leaders warned that Moscow could be preparing for a new military offensive in the country’s south.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense reported that it had shot down 125 drones overnight across seven regions. The southwestern region of Volgograd came under particularly heavy fire, with 67 Ukrainian drones reportedly downed by Russian air defenses.
Seventeen drones were also seen over Russia’s Voronezh region, where falling debris damaged an apartment block and a private home, said Gov. Aleksandr Gusev. Images on social media showed flames rising from the windows of the top floor of a high-rise building. No casualties were reported.
A further 18 drones were reported over Russia’s Rostov region, where falling debris sparked a wildfire, said Gov. Vasily Golubev.
He said that the fire did not pose a threat to populated areas, but that emergency services were fighting to extinguish the blaze, which had engulfed 20 hectares (49.4 acres) of forest.
Russian ground assault warnings
Elsewhere, 16 civilians were injured in an overnight barrage on the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia after Ukrainian military leaders warned that Moscow could be preparing for a new military offensive in the country’s south.
The city was targeted by Russian guide bombs in 10 separate attacks that damaged a high-rise building and several residential homes, regional Gov. Ivan Fedorov wrote on his official Telegram channel. More people could still be trapped beneath the rubble, he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also said that the Zaporizhzhia attack had damaged the city’s transport links. “Today, Russia struck Zaporizhzhia with aerial bombs. Ordinary residential buildings were damaged and the entrance of one building was destroyed. The city’s infrastructure and railway were also damaged,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X.
The Ukrainian leader appeared Sunday at a memorial service to make the 83rd anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre, one of the most infamous mass slaughters of World War II.
Babyn Yar, a ravine in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, is where nearly 34,000 Jews were killed within 48 hours in 1941 when the city was under Nazi occupation.
“Babyn Yar is vivid proof of the atrocities that regimes are capable of when led by leaders who rely on intimidation and violence. At any time, they are no different,” Zelenskyy said in a statement. “But the world’s response should be different. This is the lesson the world should have learned. We must guard humanity, life, and justice.”
The Ukrainian military warned Saturday that Russian forces may be preparing for offensive operations in the wider Zaporizhzhia region. Vladyslav Voloshyn, spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern military command, said that Russia was amassing personnel in this direction.
Ukraine’s air force also reported that 22 Russian drones were launched over the country overnight. It said that 15 were shot down in Ukraine’s Sumy, Vinnytsia, Mykolaiv, and Odesa regions, and that five more were destroyed using electronic defenses. The fate of the remaining two drones was not specified.
The British star has done it all: shooting webs, making musicals — you name it. Over the last few years, however, he’s felt it right to take a break from the spotlight. Now, with We Live in Timeset to close the San Sebastian Film Festival on Saturday, the Oscar nominee makes his grand return to the screen.
Garfield has dabbled in recent years with, for example, TV miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven in 2022. And who could forget his iconic appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home?
This year, the star confirms to The Hollywood Reporter that he is ready to make a comeback. “I feel looser, I feel less precious, I feel more joyful,” the 41-year-old says. He has been surfing and eating his way around the Spanish coastal town over the last week, spending time with old high-school friends: “I’ve been a proper tourist.”
On Saturday, he won’t be a tourist. He’ll be on the red carpet with hundreds of cameras pointed at him, Florence Pugh on his arm. The two lead John Crowley’s We Live in Time, a south London-set romantic drama about an up-and-coming chef and a recent divorcée who fall in love. As they meander their way through life — and even welcome a child — they learn to cherish their time together when a late-stage cancer diagnosis rocks the happy home they’ve built.
The film is penned by Nick Payne, who Garfield admits was a big draw for him boarding the project. The actor found the “Hugh Grant, Richard Curtis vibrational archetype” of the movie rather charming. It also, he says, has been something of a healing experience after losing his own mother to cancer in 2019. “Every species of every living thing on this earth has lost a mother. Young dinosaurs were losing their mothers,” he says. “So in terms of my own personal experience, yeah, it felt like a very simple act of healing for myself, and hopefully healing for an audience.”
It isn’t the only feature Garfield’s been working on. The Magic Faraway Tree, with Claire Foy and Nicola Coughlan, is on his schedule, and Luca Guadagnino‘s After the Hunt, alongside Julia Roberts and Ayo Edebiri, is also set to mark a huge moment in his career.
Garfield spoke to THR about why it felt like the right time to come back into the film fold with We Live in Time, what audiences might be surprised to know about his co-star Pugh and the 28 — yes, twenty-eight — actors he named when asked who he would love to work with next: “I did a screen test with Ryan Gosling 20 years ago and ever since then, I wanted to do something with him. He’s very inspiring to me.”
What came first with We Live in Time? Was it Nick’s script? Was it John, or Florence?
It was all very, very hot on the heels of each other. I guess it was John first, in a way, because John was the the script bearer and I wanted to work with John again, since Boy A (2007), for a long time. And then when I saw it was Nick Payne as the writer of the script, that was an immediate, exciting prospect. I love his writing. I think he writes so sensitively and full of humor and heart, an amazing balance of things. I think it’s a hard needle to thread. And then it was me reading that with John’s directing in mind, and going, “Oh yeah, this could really be something quite beautiful.”
And then it was Florence, which was kind of a vital ingredient. Any two actors that did Constellations (2012) for Nick or this film, it would require a certain courage. Obviously Florence is just very inherently right for the part. It requires a level of depth, a level of rawness, vulnerability, and, I don’t know, a lightness of touch — but also an ability to go to the depths of the soul of the character. And very few actors can do that.
So it was all of those things, which kind of annoyingly brought me out of my sabbatical that I was taking but in fact, I’m realizing as I speak about it 1727545989, it felt very much part of my little break I was taking. It felt like I could continue the sabbatical while making the film. So this was just a wonderfully timed thing where I read the script and was like, “Oh, this is the inside of my heart right now.” And what a gift to be able to actually put all that to good use and create out of it.
Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield in ‘We Live in Time’.
Courtesy of TIFF
Why did this rom-com-drama feel like the right moment in your career to re-enter the spotlight?
I wasn’t looking for a romantic drama. I wasn’t really looking for anything and it just kind of arrived. It was just the right themes, the right expression of where I am at, personally, being kind of midlife at 41. Whenever I say that to people, they’re like, ‘No! It’s not midlife.’ But I think that’s just death denialism. I’d be lucky if I lived to 80. I’d be so grateful to live that long. So I feel this moment of standing in the middle of my life — looking back, looking forward, looking at where I am — and trying to identify and feel what actually matters, where I want to be, how I want to be, where I want to put my diminishing time and energy. To make sure I can get to the end of my life and say, “Well, I did my best with what I was given.”
It just happened to be a romantic drama. And of course, a romantic drama is going to have life and death and love and risk-taking and courage and terror and mortality and dread and joy and exuberance and longing. This film is so full of longing. I watched it with an audience for the first time in Toronto [at the film fesitval], and it was a few quiet moments that really struck me about it quite beautifully and profoundly. It was like, “Oh, these are just two people that want to live.” It’s very simple. They want to live. They’re not asking for a lot. They’re not asking for the most extraordinary life. They’re not asking for anything unreasonable. They are simply asking, like all of us, to survive and to be here and to be able to be together while being here and try to make meaning out of their lives. That’s all I think any of us can can hope to ask for.
Are you firmly out of your sabbatical now?
[Laughs.] I think so. Yeah, I think I’m excited to work again in a different way. I feel looser, I feel less precious. I feel more joyful. I feel more aware. I feel established enough as a person in the world, as an actor within myself and within the world. I know myself well enough now to feel more enjoyment… I’m still a headcase — when I’m on a set, I’m like a dog with a bone and get taken over by some weird spirit that is never satisfied — but that’s never going to change, and I don’t want it to, but within that, I can feel a lot more pleasure and a lot more enjoyment, play and freedom.
I know that you and Florence have both spoken quite candidly about this film and how it ties quite intimately to your own experiences of grief and cancer. I don’t know if you’d be comfortable talking about why it was important to portray this on the big screen.
Thank you for asking sensitively. I appreciate that. Yeah, I’m not special in that regard. It’s garden variety in a way. And in my processing of my grief, one of the most healing and reassuring, soothing moments I’ve had, is realizing that this has been the way it’s been since time immemorial. Sons have been losing their mothers, daughters have been losing their mothers [since the beginning of time]. We’re lucky if it’s that way around, rather than the other. And of course, countless parents lose their children in one way or another too, I can’t even imagine what that must feel like. But I don’t have to imagine what the other way feels like. And it’s so wonderful to know how how ordinary the experience is in terms of how universal it is, while it is still so very, very truly, uniquely extraordinary to the individual.
So there’s something beautiful [about it]. There’s just lots of grace. And maybe I seek grace out. I don’t know. I naturally tend to. The only way to true joy, actually, is through terrible loss and acceptance of reality as it is, not as we think it should be. There’s so many moments, of course, that I’ve had in the last five years of saying, “Well, she shouldn’t have died. My mother shouldn’t have died so young, and she shouldn’t have died in suffering, and she shouldn’t, she shouldn’t, shouldn’t, shouldn’t.” It’s so arrogant of me. It’s so egotistical of me when I’m in those moments. And it’s human. I’m not shaming myself for it. It’s a human response, because it it doesn’t make sense, it feels unjust, it feels unfair. And then you take all those troubles to the ocean or the moon or the woods. And I believe that the moon, the ocean and the woods would all say the same thing, which is, “Yeah, I get it, dude.” Every species of every living thing on this earth has lost a mother. Young dinosaurs were losing their mothers. So in terms of my own personal experience, yeah, it felt like a very simple act of healing for myself, and hopefully healing for an audience.
Is that something that you want audiences to feel, coming away from watching We Live in Time?
I know it’s saying the most obvious thing, but when we go to a concert altogether or when we go to the theater, something about the collective experience helps us to feel less alone in our pain and less alone in our joys and less alone in our lives generally. So it felt like, “Oh no, this is part of what I’m on this earth to do. I love working with a group of people on something that matters. I love working with a group of people where we all get to bring our own woundedness to it and our own fragility to it, and see each other in our fragility and our woundedness, and say: “Me too.” Healing collectively is a privilege.
I don’t get to comment on how people respond, or how I want them to respond. I guess what I would want is for them to come in open hearted. Because I think we, as a culture, have been conditioned and led towards a more calcified, hardened state. And it makes sense, because the world is so divided and uncertain and full of trepidation and fear right now, and violence and ugliness. And we have such access to it at the drop of a hat. Right? We’re all terrified of being open hearted. We’re all terrified of saying the wrong thing. We’re all terrified of feeling the wrong thing, thinking the wrong thing, being inherently wrong in some way. But I think people that come and see this will, on some level, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, want that calcification to be cracked open.
I also want to talk about the Britishness of this film.
Very British, yeah. In the sex, in the food…
It feels very Richard Curtis. Can you speak to being on a London set and acting with a fellow Brit?
It was joyful. I haven’t had a chance to do it very often. Just being able to stay at my house is so nice and Florence being able to go for a run around Battersea before work. It’s heavenly. All these liminal spaces of locations that we were shooting on — petrol stations, NHS hospital waiting areas. You know, turnpikes, A-roads, traffic jams — like heaven. It’s the text we live in every day. To be able to honor that, and to live in that as these characters was really, really joyful. And the snacks, the Celebrations, the Jaffa Cakes and the digestives and the tea in the bath. To be able to lean into that Hugh Grant, Richard Curtis as you say, vibration archetype was just … yeah. And one of my favorite of his films is About Time with Domhnall [Gleeson] and Rachel [McAdams]. That film holds a very special place in my heart for multiple reasons. So when this came along, I was like, it’s About Time, but maybe a little more dramatic. They’re kind of related in some way.
Do you have a favourite pub in Herne Hill?
[Laughs.] Herne Hill is not my hood.
What is your hood?
I’m not revealing that! It’s northwest London.
Do you have any recommendations there?
There’s The Stag [pub] which is great, by Hampstead train station. Primrose Hill has the best bagel shop in London right now — It’s Bagels.
I’ve been. It’s really good.
It’s a little hyped up right now, but it lives up to the hype. It’s really good. Like, I have their merch and everything. I really, really love bagels.
Before we digress further, let’s talk about Florence. Had you met her before this project? What was it like building a rapport that so effortlessly translates into onscreen chemistry?
We had never met. I had been a long admirer of her work, since Lady Macbeth (2016). When John and I were talking about ideas for Almut [Pugh’s character] — because I came on first — Florence was top of the list. I’d been wanting to work with her for a long time, and it turned out she had also wanted to work with me, and it was fortuitous that our schedules matched up. And she was dying to make a film like this as well.
But obviously starting out with a mutual respect for each other as actors was good. But then there’s a whole big question mark of: are we going to enjoy each other’s company? Are we going to even like each other? Are we going to dislike each other? Are we going to find each other problematic in any way? With a script like this, we have to travel to the most intimate places. At one point, I have to have my head right by her backside while she’s on all fours in a petrol station, naked. That’s scary for anyone to do, let alone the woman in that scenario. And that’s just one example of the kind of the intimacy that we would have to feel safe going to with each other. And it wouldn’t be possible if we didn’t feel safe.
It was very, very easy to do that with Florence, and I think she would say the same with me. I’m so grateful for that, because I don’t think we would have a film that works without that.
Florence Pugh, Andrew Garfield
Is there anything that surprised you about Florence, or can you share some sort of insight into her inner workings that maybe people wouldn’t know?
Oh, that’s a good question. I mean, a surprise I’m not sure, because I didn’t have any expectations. I was very, very pleasantly, like, grateful about how much of a professional she is in terms of the basic stuff — a lot of people don’t see as the basic stuff, like being on time, being ready, being prepared.
She’s someone who wants everyone to feel included. Whether you’re on set with the crew or on a night out or at a dinner party, she wants everyone to feel like they’re part of the gang. She doesn’t want anyone to feel left out. She’s very, very aware of people’s feelings around a table. And I think that was something that I found really touching and moving about her. And she really, really cares about the work. She really, really is devoted to her work as an actor.
You’ve done so much in your career. You’ve done the period pieces, you’ve done the rom-coms, you’ve done Spider-Man, the superhero stuff. You’ve done a biopic with Tick, Tick… Boom! I know you have The Magic Faraway Tree coming up and After the Hunt with Luca Guadagnino. What can you tell us about what’s on the horizon?
I’d like to get back to the kind of origins of making home movies with my dad, or making home movies with my high school friends, who were just in San Sebastian with me. We were reminiscing about the [fact] we had a production company called Budget Productions, which is “budget” but in a French pronunciation, like boo-shay. And, led by our friends Ben and David Morris, we would make genre films. Like we would just do handy cam, stop and start editing, in-camera, James Bond rip-offs when we were very drunk and very high, when we were 15 or 16. In between skateboarding sessions.
So it’s coming back a little bit to to that first impulse of like, we’re playing and we’re making something that is just joyful and fun. I was able to bring that to Tick, Tick… Boom! for sure. And then these last two [The Magic Faraway Tree and After the Hunt], even though they’re very, very different tonally and process-wise — one’s a big, sweet family fantasy film, and the other is a very serious, grown-up drama — it was still very, very playful. Luca is a very playful director. Luca’s like pure imagination and freedom. His creativity is this free, radical, sublime thing. And then Ben Gregor, our director on Faraway Tree, and everyone involved in that process, including Simon Farnaby, the writer, and all the actors, it was just this very playful experience. I’m really excited about both of them being in the world. I feel reinvigorated towards that feeling of putting on plays with my cousins and our best friends for our families over Christmas time or whatever. That’s what it feels like again.
I want to see a Budget Production.
[Laughs.] Let me see if I can… I don’t know. They’re definitely out there. I don’t know whether they’re suitable for public consumption.
It’s great to hear that it was fun working with Luca. Have you seen Queer?
He’s been trying to get me in for a screening. He’s only shown me one blowjob scene, which I thought was so genuinely beautiful, like it was such a beautiful love scene between Daniel [Craig] and Drew [Starkey] and it’s just so tender and full of longing. And obviously, graphic in certain ways. But I just thought, “Oh, I’m gonna love this film.” He’s such a sensualist and a humanist and in touch with his own longing.
Is there a genre of film or TV Show that you haven’t done that really appeals to you?
I’m considering all these things right now. I would love to make a film or a show or something that has the feeling of the stuff that I was brought up on, like ’90s, early 2000s. Amblin Entertainment, adventure, swashbuckling, Indiana Jones-style. Humorous, dramatic, romantic — a big crowd-pleasing epic adventure. That would be really, really fun to do. I was [also] thinking about great like films of Fatal Attraction, Unfaithful, Adrian Lyne. Like an erotic thriller.
Like Queer?
Kind of like Queer. Or Babygirl. But from what I understand young people want less sex on their screens! It probably makes sense because they’ve been exposed to so much insane, graphic pornography, accessible at the click of a switch that they’re like: “No more.” So eroticism has been killed somehow, because of the overtaking of pornography. Anyway, I don’t know. I want to go do theater again, do something on stage again. I don’t know. I’m very, very grateful. I also want to help. I think maybe the focus is more as well towards helping others get to where they want to get to. I don’t know what that looks like exactly, but I feel like I’m in a position that I can be a mentor to other actors and filmmakers and assist in that way. That feels like a good way to spend my time. It’s all up for grabs. Midlife is not so bad.
Midlife sounds great. Okay, who would you love to work with or act alongside next?
My God. Where do I begin? Jesus Christ. Older generation actors like Meryl [Streep]. I’ve been in a film with Meryl, but I’ve never worked with Meryl. Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Daniel Day Lewis, if he ever decides to work again. Robert Duval, Gene Hackman. I got the opportunity to work with Robert Redford and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Vincent D’Onofrio, Linda Emond, Sally Field. These are the people that I feel are the custodians of that deep dive of acting. There are other people, of course, in my generation and younger. I just saw Colman Domingo in Sing Sing — one of my favorite films of all time at this point.
I got to work with Zendaya [in Spider-Man: No Way Home], who is just wonderful. I would love to work with her again. I want to work with my friends. I’ve never worked with Eddie Redmayne or Charlie Cox or Tom Sturridge. Cillian [Murphy]. I did a screen test with Cillian once and Ben Whishaw, which was very exciting. There are certain people in the younger generation that I find really exciting as well. Obviously, Timothee Chalamet is just incredible. And Austin Butler is great. I’d love to work again with my friend Laura Dern. It’s really, really endless. I was so happy to get to work briefly with Ayo [Edebiri in After the Hunt], who I love, and got to do some real work with Julia [Roberts], which was a heavenly thing.
And Tom Hanks. That’s part of my dream as well. I would love to work with Will Ferrell, who I got to meet recently. Steve Carell. Ryan Gosling I would love to work with. I did a screen test with Ryan 20 years ago and ever since then, I wanted to do something with him. He’s very inspiring to me.
And how is it closing San Sebastian with We Live in Time?
It’s such a gorgeous festival, and it’s such a nice time. I came out at the beginning of the festival and, because I had a break, I brought two friends out from high school. I had always wanted to come and eat here and surf, so that’s what I did. I came out early and I ate and I surfed, and I was hanging with my old buddies, and we were just rambling around and cycling about and and eating our way through this city and drinking a little bit too. It was really, really beautiful. I managed to see three films. I saw Anora and and I saw Hard Truths which was incredible. I’ve really enjoyed being here with the backdrop of the festival. It’s a beautiful city, and I got to go to Bilbao yesterday, to the Guggenheim — holy shit. So I’ve been a proper tourist. I love being a tourist. I love a city break and and just walking, getting lost and finding the nooks and crannies of a place. So yeah, it’s been a beautiful time, and the reception from people has been really lovely. I’m excited to see how people respond to the film tomorrow.
A super quick question to end on. Did you know your TikTok fans absolutely love that scene from The Social Network? Where you smash the laptop and say: “Sorry, my Prada’s at the cleaners! Along with my hoodie and my fuck you flip-flops, you pretentious douchebag.”
[Laughs] It’s passion. It’s justice. I guess people on TikTok like justice, and they like outraged, righteous indignation and someone searching for justice — where Eduardo Saverin is in that moment. And I think they probably subliminally like seeing technology being smashed too.
We Live in Time closes the San Sebastian Film Festival on Sept. 28 and releases in U.S. theaters on Oct. 11.
Johnny Depp has had, it’s fair to say, a rocky few years in Hollywood.
After a public divorce and subsequent defamation trial involving ex-wife Amber Heard — claims of domestic violence and extensive abuse erupting from both parties — he is dipping a toe back in the film waters with Modi — Three Days on the Wing of Madness.
Depp’s second directorial feature, Modi follows a few days in the life of Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani. Riccardo Scamarcio stars in the titular role alongside Antonia Desplat, Al Pacino and Stephen Graham. Backdropped by Paris in the middle of World War II, the film focuses on the painter and sculptor as he grapples with his artistic freedom, pride and class-based snobbery while searching for recognition.
It was, Depp revealed at the movie’s press conference Tuesday, Al Pacino who urged the actor — or in this case, director — to take it on. “When Pacino speaks, you must listen,” the Pirates of the Caribbean star told the room of reporters at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
The film is receiving its world premiere on the Spanish coast with Depp and his cast putting on a united front. “Let’s celebrate Johnny and this movie,” Scamarcio tells The Hollywood Reporter. His co-star, Antonia Desplat, adds: “People need to move on.”
Depp likened his bumpy life to Modigliani’s at the press conference. “I’m sure we can say that I’ve been through a number of things here and there. Maybe yours didn’t turn into a soap opera,” he said, referencing the trial. “I mean, literally, televised.”
His cast are nothing but complimentary — and that’s an understatement. They describe him as full of love and “a fatherly figure,” who has “heart and trust.” Below, Scamarcio and Desplat speak candidly about what it is to be on a Depp set, while the film’s supporting cast — Bruno Gouery, Luisa Ranieri, and Ryan McParland — weigh in too. “He’s the nicest, the kindness, the sweetest man I’ve ever worked with in my life,” Scamarcio says. “The industry, I think, should be very careful.”
Congratulations on this film and being here in San Sebastian. Can I start by asking what drew you to this project?
ANTONIA DESPLAT I was sent the script to be considered for Beatrice’s part [Beatrice Hastings, a British poet and literary critic, was Modigliani’s partner for two years], and when I read the script, I hadn’t read a script that felt so uncensored in forever. And it felt like a very intriguing woman. I was also very knowledgeable on Modigliani because I grew up in Montparnasse, and I was very close to that world. And the fact that Johnny Depp was directing, the fact that Mr. Scamarcio was the lead, it felt incredibly exciting. So I taped because I was like, “They need to see how much I want this part.” And then I had a Zoom with Johnny, waited for two weeks, had a screen test, and then had another Zoom where he announced that I got the part. It felt like a huge moment.
RYAN MCPARLAND It was an incredible opportunity, I think, to play something so far removed from me and my existence growing up in Ireland, and I thought it would really challenge me as well. And of course, the opportunity to work with Johnny Depp and be in a film with Al Pacino, these guys I looked up to as a kid.
BRUNO GOUERY Being directed by Johnny Depp with this fantastic cast, it was such a great opportunity. I have to say that [playing] Maurice Utrillo, a French painter very famous in Paris, for me, obviously it resonates a lot. I love paintings, I love art.
LUISA RANIERI Johnny and Al Pacino, even if we don’t have a scene together, it’s a big honor to be in this insane movie with all the actors attached. Riccardo, too, we’ve known each other for several years, but we’ve never worked together.
Johnny Depp on the set of ‘Modi.’
‘Modi’/DDA
RICCARDO SCAMARCIO It was a crazy thing because I had this Zoom call with Johnny and I was driving on the highway, so I had to stop. It was 9, 10 o’clock at night, and so the first meeting I had with Johnny was at a gas station. And while we were having this conversation, he realized that there was something strange behind me, like oil for cars… And he said, “Where are you?” and I say, “I’m at the gas station, I’m sorry Johnny, but I was driving down with my daughter, it was a little bit difficult…” and someone else was there, I think Stephen [Graham] or one of the producers and he said: “That’s our man.” [Laughs.] So we met, then we saw each other in London. But for me, Modigliani is very important because my mother, she’s a painter. So I grew up with this big book on Modigliani and my mother told me, because I was very, very young, that I was obsessed with this book. I still have it, with broken pages. I knew I had to be a part of this incredible project.
That’s almost like fate, you having that book.
SCAMARCIO It was exactly that. It’s very strange. And I always grew up thinking that I wanted to buy a Modigliani one day. Impossible, because the last one to sell, five months ago, sold for $170 million.
DESPLAT It’s amazing, because we both have these… in French, we say underground rivers, which is when things are meant to be. I lived at 54 Rue de Montpernasse, which was [Romanian sculptor Constantin] Brâncuși’s and [French-American sculptor Jacques] Lipschitz’s studio. Modigliani wrote a postcard to Brâncuși to our address and we have a copy of it. We’ve had that in our house my whole life. And then Beatrice, it varies in certain books, but she either lived at 53 or 55 Rue de Montpernasse, and I was at 54.
So it’s safe to say working with Johnny Depp was a huge pull for youall on this?
SCAMARCIO It is very, very safe to say.
DESPLAT He’s the best actor of our century.
SCARMARCIO He has heart and trust, which is, I think, the most important things for an actor. They need to feel this trust from the director. It’s critical. And it’s very strange because [Depp] puts you in a position where you feel free to deliver whatever you want but then he drives you with very smart and precise indications. It’s fantastic, because you feel free, but safe.
DESPLAT Also, Johnny is a definition of an artist. He’s a painter, he’s a musician, he’s an actor, he’s a director. And like [Scamarcio] said, he has a heart, which brings sensitivity and he refuses to be boxed. He refuses to go into the conformity of things, so he’s fully uncensored. Being directed by someone who’s just doesn’t — excuse my French — give a shit about other people’s opinion, and who’s just going to do things for the art and for the love of it and the passion of it, is just completely enthralling.
Was it peculiar reconciling Johnny Depp the actor with Johnny Depp the director?
DESPLAT I first had 10 minutes where I needed to get my fandom out in our first Zoom meeting, and tell him how much I admire him. He calls me kiddo, and he just felt like a very fatherly figure that was going to guide us very gently and carefully into the world. But I think each character Johnny has played has a part of him. He does imitations of characters and people all the time, and so you see all these different characters that he’s played over the years come alive as he’s directing us and demonstrates what he wants, sometimes just when he’s speaking about it, because he gets passionate. So I think the director and the actor just merged into one thing.
McParland, Scamarcio, Ranieri, and Gouery in ‘Modi’.
Modi Production Ltd
Do you have any tidbits or memories from set that would give audiences insight into Johnny Depp as a director?
DESPLAT [Laughs.] There’s a scene in the cemetery that is the definition of how he allows things to happen.
SCAMARCIO When we are running and we just went crazy, and in one take, which is the one in the movie, [Antonia] falls — and she was never supposed to end up on the floor. Instead of stopping the scene, I go and say, “Are you okay?,” we kept going, and it was fantastic. And Johnny, he loved it.
DESPLAT He calls it “movie magic.”
SCAMARCIO That’s what he’s looking for: accidents.
DESPLAT And of course, we had the whole crew and Johnny was going [whispering]: “Is she okay? Is she okay? Is she okay? Can we keep going?” Obviously we didn’t hear that, but we heard about it later on. And he came out and was like, “This is movie magic!”
GOURERY I have to say that I don’t work with many directors who give me the possibility to show my fantasies and give me such confidence.
MCPARLAND It was deeply collaborative. He really, really encouraged us to take risks with the work and with the performances.
Alot of people will view this as as Johnny’s big return, in lots of ways, to Hollywood after some instability these last few years. Do you think that he deserves a second chance?
DESPLAT Yeah. People need to move on.
SCAMARCIO Second chance? Why? I think Hollywood needs Johnny Depp, an artist of that kind. It’s very important for Hollywood and for cinema in general. And yeah, it’s a very controversial thing but at the end of this process, can you imagine how such a big sufferance there is behind these things? When you feel attacked by a world, why? And actually, you’re a good man. He’s the nicest, the kindest, the sweetest man I’ve ever worked with in my life. The industry, I think, should be very careful, because artists are very, very fragile. It’s not easy to just arrive. Of course, there are privileges, but at the same time, it’s a difficult job.
DESPLAT And he’s a human being.
SCAMARCIO Yeah, we need humanity. That’s what we need. So let’s celebrate Johnny and this movie, which is about another artist that, let’s not forget, died with no money, was terribly sick. [Modigliani] was punched by the police the day before he died, which increases sickness, and five months ago, his painting has been sold for $170 million. Shall we learn something from those things? I think we should. We should be careful. I’ve done another movie about another painter called Caravaggio, who has been canceled for years by the church and is from the 1600s. So this cancel culture, it’s something that comes from a very long time ago.
DESPLAT Exactly.
MCPARLAND I think whatever Johnny decides to do with the rest of his career, his life, is up to him. I personally can only speak about my experience working with him and getting to know him. He’s an incredibly kind, down to earth, humble, extremely humble human being. He looked after us and protected us and took care of us. The work was always most important. There was nothing else going on. To have the freedom to explore and to experiment and to improvise, it could be one of the greatest acting experiences I may ever have the pleasure of being part of.
Riccardo, Antonia — had you two met before you worked on Modi? Because you were such a convincing couple. Your chemistry was amazing.
SCAMARCIO We just met in Budapest, a week before we started shooting. [It’s good] you believe in us as a couple.
DESPLAT I think we bounce off each other very well. And I think Johnny created a very safe playground for us too, and he was very collaborative.
SCAMARCIO And she speaks a perfect Italian.
DESPLAT It was a very collaborative process, and I think Johnny allowed us to take part in rewriting the scenes with him so that they felt more truthful to each of our characters, to bring in ideas and research that we had done. So it felt like a very collaborative effort and we just had fun doing it.
Antonia Desplat as Beatrice in ‘Modi – Three Days on the Wing of Madness.’
This is a film about art, about pride, about snobbery. What else is Modi honoring, what is its message?
SCAMARCIO Well, for me, the most important thing is that this movie established that it is very important to be an artist, but also to be a man. I would say, beyond that, for an artist, there is something that can’t be for sale. A private dimension of you, your soul. It’s very important to create and if you sell that… you will be contaminated forever. So there is this message that no matter how powerful you are, how much money you have, there is the reason we do this job.
DESPLAT I think for me, we should take away from the film the freedom that those characters have, because we live in a world where art is censored all the time. But art is supposed to be provocative, it’s supposed to be exciting. And I think if we start controlling art, we just lose the soul, we lose the freedom of it. And I think with this film, because it’s not a biopic, we’re just sort of zooming in on three days of an artist, you get to experience and witness the freedom that these characters had. They were all revolutionaries, these four characters, and they were artists struggling to be recognized, which I think speaks to everybody nowadays too, but it’s taking away the freedom of art. Art needs to be free. Otherwise it can’t exist.
GOUERY It’s all about, I think, the freedom of creation. It’s unbelievable for me to think that those painters at the beginning…. They never sell the paintings! And they’re continuing all the same. It’s very strange. I don’t know. If I, as an actor, if no one casted me, I think I would change [careers].
MCPARLAND Yeah, perseverance.
Johnny isn’t the only big name you worked with on this film. You all got to work with Al Pacino. Can you speak a little bit about about that experience?
DESPLAT Can I just say how great the scene is?
SCAMARCIO We went to Los Angeles to shoot that scene, and Johnny wanted to rewrite the scene. And so we had two days to shoot the scene, but actually one day he was rewriting so me and Al were chilling out, home alone. “Okay, well, we’re not gonna work today.” So basically [Depp] rewrote the scene completely. And the second day, like an hour from when we were supposed to start shooting, I’ve received this brand new scene, completely new, which from 15 pages became 27 and the page 28 was: “More dialogue to come…” I said, “This is a joke.” [Laughs.] I’m not English, not American, I’m 100 percent Italian, so English is not my language, but I said to myself: “If Johnny thinks that I can make it… He’s not worried. Well, I’m gonna make it.” I learned this scene in one hour, and it was wonderful. It was incredible. Al is such a generous and incredible man, very humble, very sweet with me, he helped me a lot. So it’s an honor, of course. I’ve been very lucky to be protected by these two incredible human beings and immense artists.
DESPLAT He’s just the sweetest man alive, he’s not at all pretentious. You know, sometimes, when you meet your idols, there can be a time where you’re disappointed. But he was so sweet. He just wanted ice cream.
GOUERY I tell you the truth, when I saw the scene [with Pacino], it was better than what I imagined.
Are you excited to be here in San Sebastian for the festival?
SCAMARCIO [Claps hands excitedly.]
RANIEIRI It’s so welcoming, so beautiful to be here. It was incredible arriving. All the world came out to say hello.
DESPLAT This festival feels very authentic. It feels like it’s about the actual films, whereas I think sometimes you can get lost in all the glitz of other festivals. To show the movie, this is the best place to appreciate the art of filmmaking. So it’s very exciting!
This year, 22 Catalan productions have been selected for the 72nd San Sebastian Film Festival, highlighting just how much the region’s film industry is booming.
Among them is Mamífera, directed by Liliana Torres. The Barcelona-born filmmaker wanted to tackle the subject of “non-maternity” — a woman’s decision not to have children — in response to a stigma she has felt personally.
Torres’ project, screening in San Sebastian this week, follows Lola (played by Maria Rodríguez Soto) and Bruno (Enric Auquer), two 40-something-year-olds in a happy relationship. As Lola watches her friends and family obsess over either their own children or having children, she is shocked to find herself pregnant and unhappy about it. Everyone around her is so connected to the experience of motherhood, Lola grapples with the idea that something is wrong with her.
The film offers a poignant commentary on the societal pressure placed on women to surrender to what Torres says is falsely described as “instinct.” The movie is also a celebration of Catalan as a language and Catalonia as a region — the Catalan government is, after all, year-on-year investing more money in film and television, with an estimated budget of around €50 million ($54.5 million) in 2024.
Torres spoke to The Hollywood Reporter on the Spanish coast about addressing “non-maternity” and why Catalan film is currently at its best — especially for female filmmakers.
Congratulations on such a thought-provoking film. How did Mamífera come to be, and why did you want to make a movie on this subject?
For me, it was an ongoing subject. Since I was a child, I already knew I didn’t want to have children. So when I was my 20s, most people were telling me, “Oh, no, that’s not what you think, it’s because you’re so young.” And then when I was in my 40s, people were telling me: “You will regret it.” So it’s a subject that has accompanied me for my whole life, and Mamífera is for me, a way to create a little bit of justice. Because all my references of women who didn’t want to be a mother used to be secondary characters, very stereotypical, very cliché, the typical woman who lives alone and doesn’t like children or the woman who has a very high-status work, so she has no time — but she’s doing such a great job that we forgive them. And that wasn’t real to me. It’s like, I have to have a reason to not want to be a mother. Why do I have to have a reason? I don’t. That’s my reason. And if I want to do something very superficial, trivial, with my life, I’m allowed to! That was the main reason for me making this movie, because I think we were lacking that reflection for us, to unstigmatize these women.
And this stigma, is it something that you think is specific to Spain?
No. For me, it’s global. It transcends every country. It has to do with the traditional point of view, over women — the patriarchy which puts motherhood in the center of our lives, as if that’s what makes our lives worth it. The other options seem futile for the patriarchy. You know, what is a woman without children meant to do with her life? It seems to be the question: what is she planning to do? It’s suspicious somehow, and it also pulls us outside from domesticity for a long time. We don’t have to be raising children, which normally takes women away from their professions.
This word, “non-maternity,” that is used to describe the film’s plot, I’ve not seen it before.
We have so many terms regarding not having children. Child-free sounds to me like if I was a slave of a child and childless sounds like I’m lacking something. There is also a technical, biological term in Catalonia for that, but we don’t use it very much in the conversation. It means “never put an egg.” But for me, non-maternity [is suitable].
There’s a few elements in Mamífera I want to ask about. Lola sees her friends who so desperately want kids — or already have them — and sees something wrong with her own mind and body.So this pressure comes from there, too.
I still think it has to do with the patriarchy, and specifically in the way that they have taught us for a long time that motherhood is an instinct. So you think, if motherhood is an instinct, what is wrong with me? Biologically, there has to be something wrong with me. That was a question that came up for me for a long time before I started studying. And I went through many books, and [French philosopher and feminist] Simone de Beauvoir helped me a lot with this idea of motherhood. I read a lot of books that said motherhood wasn’t an instinct, it was just a social construction.
Even if you’re a mother, it’s your decision.
And I want to ask about the support Lola gets from her partner, Bruno. She acknowledges that becoming a parent can be a lot easierfor men. Or at least an easier decision. So was writing Bruno as supportive as he was important?
I wanted to have a couple that [was] really in love. They have been in a relationship for a long time, they have discussed not having children. And for me, the idea to have a supportive partner was very important. Because on one hand, I wanted to say that you can get on very well with your partner and have a beautiful relationship, but that doesn’t make you desire children. And even if that desires arose, like in Mamífera, there is a reason. And even Bruno is very progressive and is never imposing his desire, always asking and also offering: “I change my work” and everything. Still, there is something physical to motherhood that you cannot escape. So even if he offers all of that, Lola knows that she will have to quit a lot of people in her life that she really likes, and that’s a fact that you cannot escape.
Maria and Enric put in fantastic performances. Great chemistry and I so believed them as a couple. You must have been very pleased with how it turned out.
They are very good friends in real life, so that helped us a lot. And they are very good actors. I was so grateful. Both are really professional and they really had a lot of fun while rehearsing and reading the script and talking about the topic. Also, they are very different. For example, Maria got into Lola very fast with the humor and irony and also being caring but very assertive. For Enric, he was very used to playing men from a male perspective. There were many times he would start talking with Lola from a point of testosterone, like arguing. And she would say, “No, no, no, you’re not discussing, you’re just talking at her.” And he was like, “Okay. I get it. We can talk about this.” He was learning something from Bruno’s character.
I want to ask about filming in Catalan, representing Catalonia and where Catalonian film’s place is in the industry?
Catalan productions are going really well, most of all, in terms of authorship. We have a lot of women who are writing. So you have [Barcelona native filmmaker] Carla Simón, who won at the Berlin Film Festival last year.
We have a lot of names and writers that are going international, out of Spain, and winning prizes and position in Catalan, which for us is very important, because keeping the language, keeping the culture, it gets tricky sometimes. Because you have to dub the movies so they will release in many Spanish cinemas. That is something that really sucks. Because it should be easier. We are in Spain, we should have subtitles.
Why do they insist on dubbing?
I think it is because exhibitors are always afraid to put a movie with subtitles in Spain, because people will automatically discard a movie because they’re lazy, they don’t want to read. And it also has to do with the dominant culture. They treat Catalans and the Basque Country country like separate cultures inside Spain.
Would you say that Catalonian film is at its best at the moment, in terms of production? There are 22 Catalan productions at San Sebastian this year.
In terms of authorship, for sure. The amount of productions, yeah, a good amount.
How important is it that Catalonia is represented on the big screen for you as someone from Catalonia?
Of course it’s important because it has to do with our culture, but it’s also important because there is a big movement in Catalan with women directors. In this sense, for us, it’s very important because we are slowly reaching equality and I’m very happy that all these friends around me are getting prizes and debuting in the principal sections of festivals. I think it’s a very huge moment in Catalonia. I’m so grateful. We are well-supported by the government.
Finally, what would you like to make a film about next? Is there anything on the horizon?
I’m working on a script now. It has to do with two topics that are very close to me. One is menopause, which I got very early on in my life and is something that is not talked about in public discussion. It changes your life even more than puberty — it’s more radical mentally, physically. But I’m linking that with climate change in a specific region of Catalonia, in which we have overexploitation of the resources: water, air pollution, deforestation, due to the factory farms of pork, mainly. So I’m linking this together in one character, one landscape.
Her involvement in Audrey Diwan‘s new film, in the titular role, was so influential that she says it helped her re-examine her own relationship with female pleasure. “Like Emmanuelle, I was completely disconnected with my body,” the French actress tells The Hollywood Reporter.
With its world premiere opening the San Sebastian Film Festival Friday night, Emmanuelle has received buzz for its graphic content. Diwan’s movie, starring Naomi Watts (Mullholland Drive, Birdman), Will Sharpe (The White Lotus) and Jamie Campbell Bower (Stranger Things), is inspired by Emmanuelle Arsan’s erotic novel — and this eroticism certainly helms the project.
Emmanuelle focuses on a woman on a business trip to Hong Kong working with a luxury hotel group. Searching for a lost pleasure, she seeks her arousal in experiences with some of the hotel’s guests. One of them, Kei (Sharpe), seems to constantly elude her.
Merlant’s performance is subtle. She plays a robotic woman attempting to exercise her autonomy over her own sex life and instead, finds a connection that requires no physical intimacy at all. Below, with answers edited for brevity and clarity, Merlant discusses with THR what she first thought upon reading the script, being inspired by France’s #MeToo movement, and why, if Merlant was a footballer, Cate Blanchett would be her Diego Maradona.
First of all, I want to say congratulations on your film.
Thank you so much.
What was going through your head when you first read that script?
When I first read the script, I thought: “Oh, I’m going to read a script that explores the feminine pleasure, and right now I just need that.” Because like Emmanuelle, I was completely disconnected from my body. After the #MeToo movement, I started to think about all these years where I am doing things just to give pleasure to others. I was like, okay, I know that I’m not really happy, that I don’t really have a libido. Why? As a woman who is already 30 years old, I don’t really share eroticism or orgasms with people. And there is sadness in this. In the script, that is there.
She takes the risk. Emmanuelle, who is like a robot and doesn’t get pleasure… She has the power of independency. But she’s alone. She can handle her life, but sometimes she’s in this luxury hotel where she has to always think, to spy on the others, to make sure everybody gets what they want quickly. I had a strong connection with her. And at the end, she says what she wants and when she wants it: “Can you put your hand here? I want this. Can you change the rhythm?”
Did you find then that playing Emmanuelle helped you explore your own sexuality and your own relationship with that eroticism?
For me, doing Emmanuelle, it was an exploration. It broke something – I feel more comfortable, more free, even just saying what I want out loud. So I can start living a new life of exploration, of my desires.
Were you daunted by the graphic nature of a lot of the scenes, or was it exciting? I wondered if you were at all nervous about shooting a film that some actors would deem so vulnerable.
I’m just vulnerable about being good, to be at the right place in the scene and to give emotion. I don’t feel vulnerable when exposing my body in sex scenes. When there is a respectful environment and strong ideas and a space of respect and consideration offered to me, I can go really far, as far as I want. And that’s what happened in this movie. So I was not scared at all, I was excited. It was, “Oh, this is the best for an actress. I have Audrey Diwan with a fabulous vision, I have a crew that knows what they’re doing.” We had a lot of rehearsals with the actors, with an intimacy coach to think about what we do.
After the #MeToo movement, there are a lot of people who say, “Oh, now with intimacy coaches, we can’t do anything anymore.” I think it’s just a little group of people. Yes, maybe they feel they have less freedom, but for the rest of us, there is more freedom. Audrey once said and I feel the same, that when there is space, a big collaboration between people and even an intimacy coach, we go way further. There are way more surprises because you have more people who give ideas.
I want to ask about the #MeToo movement. Its emergence came from the U.S. but the next country after that to be driving this movement is France, especially at the moment. Audrey said this film is an exploration of eroticism in the post-#MeToo era. What message is she putting out there with Emmanuelle?
Before any message, I think she wants it to be an experience of sensations. We’ve been fed so many images of sex, of nudity, of pornography, but in this patriarchal gaze completely dominated by violence. So she was trying to do a movie where we ask ourselves, “Is there still space for erotism and sensations in [women’s] lives?” She tries to make us take the time. Because erotism and sensation, I think, can grow when you are in the present moment. But to get to this place, it takes time. Same with the female orgasm. It takes time.
Just because it’s a feminist movie, doesn’t mean it’s not for a man, [Diwan] says. We hope that with this movie, when you see that she gets pleasure, the men can also get pleasure. Like all the movies we’ve seen about men, we were watching them, and sometimes we had emotions. So it should be the same in the opposite way. I think she also wants to say that consent is exciting. They work together. No one is forced. Everybody listens to each other. And you can feel excitement through this.
One of the focal points of the film is this amazing connection that you and Will Sharpe, playing Kei, have. I love how it develops and how it actually subverted my expectations in a lot of ways at the end of the film. I wonder how you viewed their connection.
For me, he was like a ghost sometimes. But I liked that he was a mystery, because most of the time it’s the woman who is the mystery in movies. I like the mirror between them, both are disconnected and don’t get pleasure. I like that you can still have a strong relation with someone without having sex. It’s not an obligation. This is the story I told myself with Kei: You represent, for me, the man who doesn’t fit the dominant dynamic of the male gaze. They will not have get pleasure if the woman doesn’t. He is also looking for equality and a real connection. It takes time for him, maybe at the end, after, he will have it again. But he is listening to her. I found it very poetic.
With something like Portrait of a Lady on Fire, I feel like you’ve become a real champion in film for the female gaze. How important was that to you, and how important is a film like Emmanuelle after decades of cinematic experiences for men?
It’s essential, in my life, to try give more space to women. And to work on this, not only for women but for all the people who don’t have faith in this world. Because you have to find sense in life. So for me, it makes sense and it makes things much more surprising and exciting.
How was it on set? You had Will, Naomi Watts, Jamie Campbell Bower. So many Brits. Do you hope to do more English language projects in future?
I would love to because I love this language. There are more opportunities because more movies are made in English. So, of course, you have more possibilities of crazy stuff, working with amazing directors and actors that you admire. I would love to work in different languages.
Is there any language in particular that you would love to do a film in?
Japanese or Korean.
Why?
Because I watch a lot of movies in Japanese and Korean, and I love the language, the culture.
You must have loved shooting in Hong Kong.
Yes! It’s amazing. I thought I would not like Hong Kong, and I loved it.
How come you thought you wouldn’t like it?
I don’t know. Because I felt that it was just too much. But actually, there is beaches, there is space with nature, the people are so nice.
You’ve worked with so many amazing people. Is there anyone on your list, a director or actor, who you would love to work alongside?
I love Yorgos Lanthimos. I love Phoebe Waller-Bridge. I love Nicole Kidman, Jane Campion, Justine Triet.
I wanted to ask about about working on Tár with Cate [Blanchett], who receives her Donostia Award at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival. How was it working with her?
It was fabulous. For me, she is Maradona if I was a footballer. I had the chance to meet an absolutely phenomenal actress. I could watch her so many times because I was the assistant in [Tár]. So I could just stand there and watch how she does the scenes, how much she gives with love to this job. There is something magical, because some people ask me, but how is she so good? There is a lot of things, but also there is something just magic that you can’t explain. She is so nice. I remember there was one scene we shot in one angle and we had to hug, and she was trying to hide her head to make sure I was the one on camera. It was very cute.
That is very cute. And last question, which is simply: What’s on the horizon for you?
My movie, The Balconettes, is out soon. Then there is the Pietro Marcello film [Duse] which will be out soon. There are two more movies I can’t say anything about. [Points.] That’s my agent. [Laughs.]
Read THR’s review of Emannuellehere. Neon has been announced to be circling U.S. distribution rights. Emmanuelle will get its theatrical release in France on Sept. 25 by Pathé.
On Sunday, the Israeli military said there was a “high probability” that three hostages found dead months ago were killed in an Israeli airstrike.
What You Need To Know
The Israeli military said Sunday that there was a “high probability” that three hostages found dead months ago were killed in an Israeli airstrike
The army announced the conclusions of its investigation into the deaths of Cpl. Nik Beizer, Sgt. Ron Sherman and Elia Toledano
A missile fired by Yemen’s Iran-backed rebels has landed in an open area in central Israel and triggered air raid sirens at its international airport, in the latest reverberation from the nearly yearlong war in Gaza
Israel hinted that it would respond militarily to the missile launch which happened early Sunday
There were no reports of casualties or major damage, but Israeli media aired footage showing people racing to shelters in Ben Gurion International Airport
The army announced the conclusions of its investigation into the deaths of Cpl. Nik Beizer, Sgt. Ron Sherman and Elia Toledano.
It said investigations had determined that the three were likely killed in a November airstrike that also killed a senior Hamas militant, Ahmed Ghandour.
All three of the hostages were kidnapped in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. Their bodies were recovered in December, but the cause of death was only recently determined.
In its report, the army said there was a “high probability” they were killed in the strike, based on where the bodies were recovered, pathological reports and other intelligence. But it said, “it is not possible to definitely determine the circumstances of their deaths.”
The conclusions could add pressure on the government to strike a deal to bring home the remaining hostages held by Hamas. Critics say it is too difficult and dangerous to try to rescue them.
The army’s announcement is the first time it has linked the deaths of hostages to airstrikes. In other cases of bodies being recovered, the army has said people were either killed on Oct. 7, died in Hamas captivity or were killed by the militant group.
In December, the army acknowledged mistakenly killing three hostages who had escaped Hamas captivity in a battle-torn neighborhood of Gaza City. It was believed that the three had either fled their captors or been abandoned.
Some 250 hostages were taken on Oct. 7. Israel now believes 101 remain in captivity, including 35 who are thought to be dead. More than 100 were freed during a cease-fire in November in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Eight have been rescued by Israeli forces.
Missile fired by Yemen’s rebels lands in Israel and triggers sirens at international airport
A missile fired by Yemen’s Iran-backed rebels landed in an open area in central Israel early Sunday and triggered air raid sirens at its international airport, in the latest reverberation from the nearly yearlong war in Gaza. Israel hinted that it would respond militarily.
There were no reports of casualties or major damage, but Israeli media aired footage showing people racing to shelters in Ben Gurion International Airport. The airport authority said it resumed normal operations shortly thereafter.
A fire could be seen in a rural area of central Israel, and local media showed images of what appeared to be a fragment from an interceptor that landed on an escalator in a train station in the central town of Modiin.
The Israeli military said it made several attempts to intercept the missile using its multitiered air defenses but had not yet determined whether any had been successful. It said the missile appeared to have fragmented midair, and that the incident is still under review. The military said the sound of explosions in the area came from interceptors.
The Yemeni rebels, known as Houthis, have repeatedly fired drones and missiles toward Israel since the start of the war in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, but nearly all of them have been intercepted over the Red Sea.
In July, an Iranian-made drone launched by the Houthis struck Tel Aviv, killing one person and wounding 10 others. Israel responded with a wave of airstrikes on Houthi-held areas of Yemen, including the port city of Hodeidah, a Houthi stronghold.
Israel indicates it will respond to attack
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted at a similar response in remarks at a Cabinet meeting after Sunday’s attack.
“The Houthis should have known by now that we exact a heavy price for any attempt to harm us,” he said. “Anyone who needs a reminder is invited to visit the port of Hodeidah.”
Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, a military spokesman for the rebels, said they fired a ballistic missile targeting “a military target” in the area of Tel Aviv.
The Houthis have also repeatedly attacked commercial shipping in the Red Sea, in what the rebels portray as a blockade on Israel in support of the Palestinians. Most of the targeted ships have no connection to Israel.
On Sunday, a European Union naval mission operating in the Red Sea said salvagers had begun towing a tanker that had been on fire for weeks after a Houthi attack. Operations Aspides said the Greek-flagged Sounion was being taken to a “safe location.”
The war in Gaza, which began with Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel, has rippled across the region, with Iran and allied militant groups attacking Israeli and U.S. targets and drawing retaliatory strikes from Israel and its Western allies. On several occasions, the strikes and counterstrikes have threatened to trigger a wider conflict.
International carriers have canceled flights into and out of Israel on a number of occasions since the start of the war, adding to the war’s economic toll on the country.
Iran supports militant groups across the region, including Hamas, the Houthis and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, its most powerful ally, which has traded fire with Israel on a near-daily basis since the war in Gaza began. Iran and its allies say they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians.
Rockets fired from Lebanon
The military said around 40 projectiles were fired from Lebanon early Sunday, with most intercepted or falling in open areas.
In a separate incident, Israeli forces dropped leaflets over the Lebanese border town of al-Wazzani calling on residents to evacuate. The military later said there were no such evacuation orders, and that a local commander had acted without the approval of his superiors. It said the incident was under investigation.
It was not clear if anyone had evacuated the town, or if any message had been conveyed to residents that the leaflets were dropped in error.
The strikes along the Israel-Lebanon border have displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides. Israel has repeatedly threatened to launch a wider military operation against Hezbollah to ensure its citizens can return to their homes.
“The status quo will not continue,” Netanyahu said at the Cabinet meeting. “This requires a change in the balance of power on our northern border. We will do everything necessary to return our residents safely to their homes.”
Gaza smuggling tunnels blocked
Hezbollah has said it would halt its attacks if there is a cease-fire in Gaza. The United States and Arab mediators Egypt and Qatar have spent much of this year trying to broker a truce and the release of scores of hostages held by Hamas, but the talks have repeatedly bogged down.
In recent weeks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted on lasting Israeli control over the Gaza side of the border with Egypt, which Israeli forces captured in May. He has said Hamas used a network of tunnels beneath the border to import arms, allegations denied by Egypt, which along with Hamas is opposed to any lasting Israeli presence there.
An Israeli military official said late Saturday that of the dozens of tunnels discovered along the border, only nine entered Egypt, and all were found to have been sealed off. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence, said it was not clear when the tunnels were sealed.
The discovery appeared to weaken Netanyahu’s argument that Israel needs to keep open-ended control of the corridor to prevent cross-border smuggling.
Egypt has said it sealed off the tunnels on its side of the border years ago, in part by creating its own military buffer zone along the frontier.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. State Department announced new sanctions on Russian state media Friday, accusing a Kremlin news outlet of working hand-in-hand with the Russian military and running fundraising campaigns to pay for sniper rifles, body armor and other equipment for soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
What You Need To Know
While the outlet, RT, has previously been sanctioned for its work to spread Kremlin propaganda and disinformation, the new allegations suggest its role goes far beyond influence operations. Instead, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said RT is a key part of Russia’s war machine and its efforts to undermine its democratic adversaries
The crowd-sourcing effort ran on Russian social media platforms and sought to raise funds for military supplies, some of which were procured in China, officials said
RT’s actions show “it’s not just a firehouse of disinformation, but a fully fledged member of the intelligence apparatus and operation of the Russian government,” said Jamie Rubin, who heads the State Department’s Global Engagement Center
President Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told The Associated Press that the allegations were “nonsense.” RT is “media” and “quite effective,” Peskov said
While the outlet, RT, has previously been sanctioned for its work to spread Kremlin propaganda and disinformation, the new allegations suggest its role goes far beyond influence operations. Instead, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said RT is a key part of Russia’s war machine and its efforts to undermine its democratic adversaries.
“RT wants its new covert intelligence capabilities, like its longstanding propaganda disinformation efforts, to remain hidden,” Blinken told reporters. “Our most powerful antidote to Russia’s lies is the truth. It’s shining a bright light on what the Kremlin is trying to do under the cover of darkness.”
RT has also created websites posing as legitimate news sites to spread disinformation and propaganda in Europe, Africa, South America and elsewhere, officials said. They say the outlet has also expanded its use of cyber operations with a new unit with ties to Russian intelligence created last year.
The crowd-sourcing effort ran on Russian social media platforms and sought to raise funds for military supplies, some of which were procured in China, officials said. There were no obvious connections between RT and the fundraising campaign, or any indication that Chinese officials knew their products were being sold to Russia.
The list of supplies also included night-vision equipment, drones, radios and generators.
RT’s actions show “it’s not just a firehouse of disinformation, but a fully fledged member of the intelligence apparatus and operation of the Russian government,” said Jamie Rubin, who heads the State Department’s Global Engagement Center.
President Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told The Associated Press that the allegations were “nonsense.” RT is “media” and “quite effective,” Peskov said.
The sanctions announced Friday target RT’s parent organization, TV-Novosti, as well as a related state media group called Rossiya Segodnya and its general director Dmitry Kiselyov. A third organization and its leader, Nelli Parutenko, were also sanctioned for allegedly running a vote-buying scheme in Moldova designed to help Moscow’s preferred candidates in an upcoming election.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested the sanctions against RT were unnecessary because it has already been sanctioned.
“I think a new profession should appear in the United States — a specialist in sanctions already imposed against Russia,” she wrote on her Telegram channel.
Russia’s global propaganda work is receiving extra scrutiny in the months leading up to the U.S. election. Last week, the Biden administration seized Kremlin-run websites and charged two RT employees with covertly paying a Tennessee company nearly $10 million for its content.
The company then paid several popular far-right influencers, whose content often mirrored Russian talking points. Two of the influencers said they had no idea their work was being supported by Russia.
This summer, intelligence officials warned that Russia was using unwitting Americans to spread its propaganda by disguising it in English on sites popular with Americans. Officials say Russia seeks to divide Americans ahead of the election as a way of reducing support for Ukraine.
Russia’s influence operations also appear designed to support former President Donald Trump, who has criticized Ukraine and the NATO alliance while praising Russian President Vladimir Putin.
When Torsten Neumann launched the Oldenburg Film Festival back in 1994, setting up the event as Germany’s answer to Sundance, it was near the peak of the ’90s indie film boom, when the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Kevin Smith and Robert Rodriguez were starting to hit the mainstream.
31 years later and indie cinema is living through what feels like a permanent crisis, with the gap between the mainstream and underground growing larger by the day. “Back in the ’90s indie cinema still had some contact with mainstream cinema, the budgets were bigger, and the indie films were screened in cinemas,” says Neumann. “I don’t think that exists anymore. Where are the distribution channels for small films like this?”
But Oldenburg is still giving them a platform. Its 2024 lineup features an ecclectic mix of U.S. and international indies, many of the feature debuts and “no-budget” passion projects. Behind them all, says Neumann, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter ahead of this year’s festival, is a passion to”open up new areas [find] new ways of telling stories, not being explored in the mainstream.”
31 years! Why are you still doing this after so long?
I don’t have a choice! I can’t do anything else! Oldenburg is the biggest part of my life. When it happens, when everything comes together and we have that special Oldenburg atmosphere, then it’s something truly incredible. Like this music project, with [Belgian electronic pop duo] Pornographie Exclusive. The band is Jérôme Vandewattyne and Séverine Cayron. Jérôme is also a filmmaker and last year, his feature The Belgium Wave won Oldenburg’s Audacity award. He was so inspired by the vibe of the festival that we decided to collaborate on a film together, where 10 Oldenburg alumni directed 10 short films, each one inspired by one of the tracks of the new Pornographie Exclusive album. Each song is the soundtrack for the film and at the world premiere in Oldenburg, Pornographie Exclusive will perform the whole thing live during the screening. It’s an example of the kind of energy that can ignite in Oldenburg. We never have enough money, we’re always struggling with our budget and the resources we have but when the festival starts, the energy returns and I remember why I keep doing this to myself, year after year.
Tim Blake Nelson in Bang Bang
Courtesy of the Oldenburg Film Festival
In all this time, you’ve kept true to your principles and have championed a certain kind of indie film, genre cinema with an arthouse touch. The new Tim Blake Nelson film, Bang Bang, where he plays an aging boxer, seems to exemplify this kind of ‘Oldenburg movie.’
Definitely. Tim Blake Nelson isn’t just an actor who does a job for money. He has the same passion that we have for independent cinema. He was our jury president in 2004 and people like him, the way he makes films, gives us the energy to carry on. The same goes for the director of Bang Bang, Vincent Grashaw. There are a few others that we have as world premieres, that have this same kind of Oldenburg spirit. There’s James, a Canadian movie [from director Max Train] which I think is the discovery of the year. I don’t know why Toronto didn’t jump on it. It’s a black-and-white movie but a real crowd pleaser. It feels like an early Coen Brothers movie. There’s Flieg Steil, a German film from Martina Schöne-Radunski and Lana Cooper. Martina is an actress who won the Seymour Cassel acting award in Oldenburg in 2013 for Kaptn Oskar from Tom Lass. She was a real Berlin brat back then and I think is still so today. This is her directorial debut, with Lana, and its pure Berlin underground. It’s a story of a female musician in a neo-Nazi rock band who begins to get into feminism and wants to introduce that to the band. Then there’s a left-wing boy who just wants to beat up Nazis and they meat and it becomes a sort of Romeo and Juliet story. But what I liked is it doesn’t serve up everything to the audience in easy good/bad, black/white categories. It’ll have its world premiere here and Martina said she wanted it Oldenburg to have it first.
$$$
Courtesy of the Oldenburg Film Festival
And we have a lot of small indies, so-called “no budget” movies that are excellent. Like $$$ from it’s a super gritty New York film from director Jake Remington that tells a story about people who are addicted to horse racing. It was shot with amateurs using verité footage and is the best example of how to make a virtue out of necessity, to find a narrative form that would never happen in a big budget movie. Or the Italian film Tineret [from director Nicoló Ballante] which started out as a documentary about this Modolvian family living outside Rome and the son, who has dreams of becoming a star rapper. At one point, the film took another direction and became more like a narrative feature. It’s another example of how independent cinema can open up new areas, new ways of telling stories, not being explored in the mainstream.
Do you see Oldenburg’s role as giving these movies a platform, especially now when indie films are finding it harder and harder to get into theaters?
What I’m noticing now is that the gap is getting bigger. Productions that fit into certain structures, largely streaming platforms, have their place, and anything else in indie cinema has become ultra-low-budget. We have some films this year that I think are amazing but, budget-wise, they are way below that of a normal indie film. Back in the ’90s, indie cinema still had some contact with mainstream cinema, the budgets were bigger, and the indie films were screened in cinemas, but I don’t think that exists anymore. Where are the distribution channels for small films like this? I don’t know. There are also people who say that independent cinema moves in waves and all it needs is some spark to jump back into the mainstream. Maybe James is one of these cases. It’s black and white and super low budget but a real crowd pleaser. The hope is that there are places like Oldenburg where these films can be seen and maybe help them find a way. I always swing between hopelessness and the renewed energy I get when I see an amazing indie movie.
It does! It was made without state support, which is very rare in Germany, a real shining example or true independent cinema. Produced with Studio Babelsberg, [director] Florian Frerichs has made a movie that, from its look and style, its locations and acting, can stand alongside a big mainstream movie. It’s in English and has the great hook that it was adapted from the same book [Arthur Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle] that was the basis of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, so can be pitched as “the remake” to Kubrik. I can’t imagine it won’t find a place in the international market somewhere.
Traumnovelle
Courtesy of Oldenburg Film Festival
Your also honoring German director Dominik Graf with a retrospective. Another figure that seems to embody German indie cinema.
Dominik Graf is someone who movies between genre and arthouse cinema. He’s a John Carpenter of Germany. His films The Cat (1988) and The Invincibles (1994) are masterpieces. He loves marginalized cinema, he loves marginalized characters. He’s a big fan of Oldenburg. Over the years, he’s sent us messages, letters and postcards, complementing us on our program. We just thought it was about time that he was recognized. He’s probably Germany’s best director that is barely known outside Germany.
In some ways, Oldenburg itself is like an indie movie. Every year you seem to have the same struggles, but every year you manage to make it work.
We keep going. It is the same every year, the same budgetary problems, the same battles. But one thing we do have is our independence. Maybe because we are outside the big cities, people don’t pay as much attention to us, they don’t try to tell us what to do.
With the start of the 2024Toronto Film Festival, the first shot has been fired in a battle for supremacy in the fall film markets. Toronto will officially launch its new market in 2026, with the help of an eight-figure sum from the Canadian government, and the ground is being laid to make TIFF a contender, perhaps even a replacement, for the current reigning fall champ, the American Film Market.
The AFM has looked wobbly and vulnerable since the closure of the Loews hotel in Santa Monica last year. The iconic Pacific-facing location had been home to the AFM since 1991, and AFM’s move up the hill to the Le Méridien Delfina for the 2023 market proved a disaster. Members of the hospitality workers union Unite Here Local 11 staged a noisy and disruptive protest outside the building, decrying what they said were unfair working conditions at the hotel. Inside, market attendees were frustrated by facilities not designed to accommodate hundreds of buyers and sellers moving in and out and through the building every day. AFM organizers, The Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA), quickly dropped the idea of returning there this year. Instead, the AFM has pulled up stakes and moved to the Palm Casino Resort in Las Vegas for its 45th edition, set to take place Nov. 5-10.
“With the move to Vegas, AFM is in limbo a little bit, no one knows if it will work,” notes one international film sales exec, a 20-year film market veteran. “TIFF sees an opportunity to take AFM’s spot as the main film market for the fall.”
Toronto has long been a place to do business, with buyers and sellers setting up shop in the city’s downtown hotels and negotiating deals. Sony Pictures Classics kicked off the deal-making on the eve of TIFF 2024, with SPC nabbing key world rights to Laura Piani’s debut feature Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. Lionsgate’s Grindstone Entertainment Group and Roadside Attractions took U.S. rights to Dito Montiel-directed Riff Raff, and Amazon Prime Video snatched up all international rights, excluding Germany, for the sci-fi feature The Assessment, starring Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Olsen, and Himesh Patel, all ahead of their respective festival premieres.
In 2022, TIFF tested the waters for a formal market with its Industry Selects program, a series of screenings for films outside the festival’s official lineup where worldwide rights were available. While TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey insists the new Toronto market will not be in competition with the AFM — “I think the AFM leans toward a more purely commercial product; we have the sort of festival grade,” he told THR, adding there’s enough time “between Cannes and Toronto and between Toronto and the AFM” to allow companies to attend all three markets with new projects.
Sales companies are not so sure the expense of attending yet another film market is worth it. Domestic summer theatrical revenue, at $3.67 billion according to Comscore estimates, was off 10 percent from last year, and independent hits have been few and far between, Neon’s Longlegs ($74 million domestic) and A24’s Civil War ($68 million) notwithstanding.
“The market for indie films is tough,” notes a London-based seller attending TIFF this year. “The streamers are pulling back, there are only a handful of independent distributors who can put up a real MG [minimum guarantee], so there’s not much wiggle room when it comes to costs.”
As TIFF moves toward a formal market, cost-conscious indie buyers and sellers are finding more casual ways to do business. The Venice Film Festival, which does not have a film market, saw several high-profile U.S. deals, with A24 picking up rights to Luca Guadagnino’s new film Queer, starring Daniel Craig, from CAA Media Finance, Netflix nabbing Angelina Jolie-starring Maria Callas biopicMaria from FilmNation and Metrograph Pictures acquiring Neo Sora’s narrative feature debut Happyend from Magnify.
“For us, Venice has become more like Toronto used to be,” says one European seller. “We’re taking meetings in our hotel, talking informally with our buyers and doing deals. All without spending money on a booth or a trans-Atlantic flight.”
On May 26, 2023, nearly a year after winning the 2022 national election to become Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni addressed a political rally in Catania, Sicily. The first woman to govern Italy, and the most far-right politician to do so since fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, Meloni told her cheering supporters that despite her electoral success, victory was not yet complete. There was one last left-wing holdout in Italian society, she said: the cultural sector.
“I want to liberate Italian culture from a system that you can only work in if you are from a certain political camp,” she said. It was a clear signal of intent, a threatening shot in the country’s culture wars, and the promise of a right-wing counteroffensive to the supposed left-wing hegemony over Italy’s film, television and arts scenes.
Meloni has appeared to be true to her word. One of her first acts as prime minister was to appoint Giampaolo Rossi, a journalist known for defending Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Hungarian far-right leader Viktor Orbán, as head of Italian public broadcaster Rai. Rossi said he wanted to “rebalance media narratives” and reclaim media spaces “usurped by the left.” Other appointments followed. Gennaro Sangiuliano, another right-wing journalist, was named culture minister and spoke of countering “Anglo-Saxon cancel culture and a dictatorship of wokeness.”
Conservative critic Alessandro Giuli took over at Maxxi, Rome’s most important contemporary art museum. Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, arguably Italy’s most acclaimed right-wing intellectual, was named president of the Venice Biennale, the institution that oversees a vast series of cultural events, including the Venice Film Festival. “This season the fences will come down,” Buttafuoco declared before his appointment. “A home will be given to those who have not had one until now.”
As the film world descends on the Lido for the 91st Venice Film Festival and the unofficial start of awards season, what’s the state of Italy’s culture wars? What impact could Italy’s far right have on the industry?
Italian filmmakers are worried.
Last summer, virtually all of the country’s top directors, including Luca Guadagnino (Challengers), Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty), Matteo Garrone (Gomorrah) and Alice Rohrwacher (La Chimera), signed a petition protesting a move by Meloni’s government to take over the management of Rome’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the world’s oldest — and still one of the best — film schools, interpreting the move as a “violent and crude” attempt to impose a new political orthodoxy.
In May of this year, several journalists at state-run broadcaster Rai staged a 24-hour strike to protest what they said were threats to freedom of speech and cases of suspected censorship since the Meloni government took power. The strike came just days after media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders downgraded Italy in its annual index of press freedom, moving the country into the “problematic” category alongside Hungary, which has seen sharp restrictions on political speech under Prime Minister Orbán.
“There is an obvious loss of the plurality of voices and offering [on Rai],” says Giuseppe Candela, a journalist working for online publications Dagospia and Il Fatto Quotidiano who specialises in the television industry. “Those who don’t align [with the government] are antagonised.”
“But Italy isn’t Hungary, at least not yet,” says Tommaso Pedicini, an Italian cultural journalist based in Germany. “There are definitely fewer government-critical voices on Rai, but they have not disappeared entirely. And the left-wing protests have gotten louder.”
Andrea Minuz, a professor of cinema history at Rome’s Università La Sapienza and a member of the Centro Sperimentale board, notes that political appointments in Italy are the rule, not the exception. When in power, left-wing governments have put their people in the top jobs. Under Meloni and new culture minister Sangiuliano, “there’s been talk of the right wanting to take revenge, to settle scores [with the left],” says Minuz, but so far he thinks the impact has been minimal because the majority of Italy’s cultural “bureaucracy” remains solidly left-wing. “If what lies underneath the surface doesn’t change, nothing will change,” he says.
Beyond this, the Italian right, which is a combination of traditional nationalists, free-market capitalists and anti-government states’ rights proponents, lacks a unified cultural vision. Meloni’s primary cultural indulgence appears to be fantasy novels. She’s a self-professed Lord of the Rings superfan who once posed next to a statue of Gandalf for a magazine photo shoot. Last December, Meloni hosted a four-day fantasy-themed Christmas celebration with a guest list including Elon Musk and Santiago Abascal, the leader of Spanish right-wing party Vox. J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories were, somewhat bizarrely, appropriated by a section of the Italian right in the 1970s, who interpreted him as a voice for tradition against progress, representing the struggle to defend Western, Christian identity against modernization, globalization and foreign invasion.
“The right wing has a point when they say cultural institutions are dominated by the left,” notes Pedicini, “but even if the right wanted to take over [the cultural industries], they don’t have the personnel. Italian cultural institutions have been dominated by the left for decades and there just aren’t enough right-wing intellectuals, qualified people, to replace them.”
Students participate in an anti-fascist protest against Giorgia Meloni on June 20 in Rome.
Imona Granati – Corbis Via/Getty Images
Biennale president Buttafuoco is one of the few “qualified” cultural right-wingers, according to Pedicini: “He’s a bona fide intellectual and an excellent writer and thinker.”
A Meloni ideologue, however, he is not. Buttafuoco has defended the idea of a deep “right-wing tradition” in Italy but is also a recent convert to Islam and now a practicing Muslim.
“If you look at his politics, he’s less of a Meloni-style Italian nationalist and more of a right-wing anarchist,” notes Pedicini. “Many of his opinions are counter to that of the Meloni government.”
“He’s doing very well,” adds Minuz. “Look at the decision of naming Willem Dafoe as the new artistic director of the theatre section of La Biennale: That’s a great choice.”
Fears that Buttafuoco’s appointment as Biennale president signaled the start of a new far-right agenda at the Venice Film Festival have so far not been realized.
In May, Alberto Barbera, the long-running artistic director of the film festival, and a left-wing appointee, renewed his contract for another two years, through 2026. Barbera is widely credited for reviving Venice and making the festival a must-attend awards-season springboard.
“I felt an immediate understanding with Alberto Barbera and I have great respect for the expertise, professionalism and passion he has demonstrated in the years that he has directed the Venice Film Festival,” said Buttafuoco in a statement at the time. “I am extremely pleased that La Biennale will continue down this path with him.”
Ahead of this year’s festival, Barbera nailed his political colors to the mast, announcing on X that he was quitting the social media platform after a series of posts by Musk in which he railed against Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and claimed the U.K. was on the verge of civil war following anti-immigrant riots sparked by far-right agitators.
“After the latest statements by the owner of Twitter (or rather, sorry, of X), I have definitely lost the desire (already weakened) to remain on a platform, the objectives and purposes of which I no longer share,” Barbera wrote.
In his festival selections, Barbera has continued to show his political independence from the Meloni government. Last year, he picked several titles, including Garrone’s Io Capitano and Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border, which look at the suffering of migrants trying to enter Europe and can be read as a direct rebuke to Rome’s anti-immigrant policies. The 2024 selection includes Joe Wright’s M. Son of the Century, a scathing TV series about the life of Mussolini, based on the novel by prominent Meloni critic Antonio Scurati.
“There’s been no censorship, no crackdown, no obvious right-wing agenda,” notes one prominent Italian film critic and Biennale regular. “But Meloni’s government is just two years old. I fear they might just be getting started.”
This story first appeared in the Aug. 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
American rapper Macklemore said he canceled an upcoming October concert in Dubai over the United Arab Emirates’ role “in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis” in Sudan through its reported support of the paramilitary force that’s been fighting government troops there.
What You Need To Know
American rapper Macklemore says he canceled an upcoming October concert in Dubai over the United Arab Emirates’ role “in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis” in Sudan
The UAE has denied arming Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which have battled Sudan’s military since 2023 in a conflict that has left over 18,800 people dead
Macklemore’s comments reignited the debate over the UAE’s role in the war
In a post Saturday on Instagram, the Grammy winner said he had a series of people “asking me to cancel the show in solidarity with the people of Sudan and to boycott doing business in the UAE for the role they are playing in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis”
The announcement by Macklemore reignited attention to the UAE’s role in the war gripping the African nation. While the UAE repeatedly has denied arming the Rapid Support Forces and supporting its leader Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, United Nations experts reported “credible” evidence in January that the Emirates sent weapons to the RSF several times a week from northern Chad.
Sudan plunged into chaos in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions including Darfur. Estimates suggest over 18,800 people have been killed in the fighting, while over 10 million have fled their homes. Hundreds of thousands are on the brink of famine.
At a contentious U.N. Security Council meeting in June, Sudan’s embattled government directly accused the UAE of arming the RSF, and an Emirati diplomat angrily told his counterpart to stop “grandstanding.” The UAE has been a part in ongoing peace talks to end the fighting.
The Emirati Foreign Ministry offered no immediate comment on Macklemore’s public statement Sunday, nor did the city-state’s Dubai Media Office. Organizers last week announced the show had been canceled and refunds would be issued, without offering an explanation for the cancellation.
In a post Saturday on Instagram, Grammy winner Macklemore said he had a series of people “asking me to cancel the show in solidarity with the people of Sudan and to boycott doing business in the UAE for the role they are playing in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis.”
Macklemore said he reconsidered the show in part over his recent, public support of Palestinians amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war raging in the Gaza Strip. He recently has begun performing a song called “Hind’s Hall,” in honor of a young girl named Hind Rajab killed in Gaza in a shooting Palestinians have blamed on Israeli forces opening fire on a civilian car.
“I know that this will probably jeopardize my future shows in the area, and I truly hate letting any of my fans down,” he wrote. “I was really excited too. But until the UAE stops arming and funding the RSF I will not perform there.”
He added: “I have no judgment against other artists performing in the UAE. But I do ask the question to my peers scheduled to play in Dubai: If we used our platforms to mobilize collective liberation, what could we accomplish?”
The RSF formed out of the Janjaweed fighters under then-Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who ruled the country for three decades before being overthrown during a popular uprising in 2019. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and other crimes during the conflict in Darfur in the 2000s.
Dubai, home to the long-haul carrier Emirates, the world’s tallest building the Burj Khalifa and other tourist destinations, long has tried to draw A-list performers in the city-state at a brand-new arena and other venues. However, performers in the past have acknowledged the difficulties in performing in the UAE, a hereditarily ruled federation of seven sheikhdoms in which speech is tightly controlled.
That includes American comedian Dave Chappelle, who drew attention in May in Abu Dhabi when he referred to the Israel-Hamas war as a “genocide” while also joking about the UAE’s vast surveillance apparatus.
Macklemore, a 41-year-old rapper born Benjamin Hammond Haggerty in Kent, Washington, won Grammy awards in 2014 for his breakout song, “Thrift Shop.”
