Nieuws wereld

Toronto film festival: the two-time Oscar-winner is an unusual killer in a compelling mix of pulpy action and family drama

Latif, the solemn hitman played soulfully by Mahershala Ali, carries diapers in his kill kit. I can’t tell if that’s because they come in handy when soaking up pools of blood on the fly; or because at a moment’s notice the hitman has to switch over from his brutal occupation to daddy duties. Or perhaps it’s both for this contract killer who comes armed with a blade and baby wipes, who takes lives and nurtures them, whose life is composed of jarring and poetic contradictions, much like the movie he’s in.

Those contradictions are on full striking display in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’s opening moments, an explosive close-quarters brawl in a restroom, after which Latif uses the baby wipes to clean up the mess he made with that blade. It’s a lovely image, in a film filled with so many, cutting right through the tension within this character. It also feels like a wink to the audience from Ali and writer/director Bassam Tariq, a way for them to acknowledge right off the top the distracting mess made by that other Blade.

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is premiering at the Toronto film festival and opens in select theaters in New York City and Los Angeles on 25 September, following a wider release on 2 October and 9 October

Once central to rural life, cafe-bistros are closing in the face of depopulation and falling alcohol consumption, but campaigners are seeking new ways forward

It is just past noon on a midweek day, and already every table at Au Bon Acceuil cafe-bistro in the northern Burgundy village of Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne is taken.

The three-course lunch menu today – including a choice of a hefty chunk of steak with chips or a meaty lasagne – is just €18, but villagers are not only here for the food.

Government insiders say the new PM is unleashing an ‘earthquake’ to clean up the system. But Iraqis have heard it all before

The gates of the Green Zone in Baghdad are made of five-metre-high armoured steel, reinforced with horizontal girders, and strung between concrete pillars and anti-blast walls. Police water cannon trucks are stationed nearby, along with armoured personnel carriers and squads of heavily armed soldiers.

At the first sign of street protests – over failing electricity, unemployment or, more recently, the US-Israeli attacks on Iran – the gates are shut. X-shaped vehicle barriers, made from welded iron beams and mounted on wheels, sit ready at the roadside alongside coils of razor wire; both are slid across the street, sealing off the sprawling neighbourhood, home to the presidential palace, parliament, the prime minister’s office, the massive fortress-like US embassy, and other institutions, including the homes of scores of politicians and members of parliament.

Prime minister’s office tells families of those missing ‘the nation stands with you’ as search and rescue efforts continue

One person has died and more than 30 are missing after a ferry sank off the coast of Vanuatu, the country’s government says.

The vessel, MV Matui, had set sail with more than 40 passengers and crew on Friday from the island of Santo to Ambae island in very rough seas, but did not arrive.

Plenitude Arena, Paris
Dion wiped away tears and belted out the notes, giving an astounding performance despite her diagnosis of stiff person syndrome

In 2022, when Céline Dion shared that she had been diagnosed with a rare incurable neurological disorder called stiff person syndrome (SPS), there was no guarantee that the 58-year-old would ever tour again. Her condition, which resulted in muscle spasms so strong that it left her with broken ribs, had made it impossible to perform, and in a 2024 documentary, I Am: Céline Dion, fans saw how the disease had constricted her once seemingly infallible voice. Through it all, though, Dion was resolute that she would one day return to the stage. “If I can’t run, I’ll walk. If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl,” she said in the film. “But I won’t stop.”

Thankfully at the opening night of her sold out five-week residency in Paris, her first full-length concerts in six years, no crawling is needed: Céline Dion is back. She glides on to the stage in a black dress, an enormous diamond necklace clasped around her throat, and launches into On ne change pas. There are tears almost immediately: she struggles through the second verse, her voice cracking as she begins to cry. By the time the strum of Destin has kicked in, though, that emotion is replaced with sheer elation. “I made a promise to be back on stage. Singing for you. Singing for me,” she says. “Singing for life.”

The International Monetary Fund’s guidelines for program design are more salient than ever, given widespread debt distress in developing countries. As the Fund undertakes its first major evaluation since 2019, it should focus on three features of its lending, all of which need to be reformed.

Governments are increasingly turning to AI tools to process vast amounts of information and make public services more efficient. But because human attention is finite, making machines more capable could simply create new bottlenecks wherever oversight is necessary.

India’s female labor force participation rate has long lagged behind that of peer economies like Bangladesh, not because of social norms, but because of weak demand for labor. That is ultimately good news, because it is a problem that can be solved with common-sense regulatory reforms and public investment.

Facing a democracy deficit worldwide, millions of vulnerable people lack avenues through which they can collectively negotiate their interests. Faith-based institutions committed to human dignity and pluralism can play an instrumental role in building the infrastructure required for grassroots organizing at scale.

As with the Plaza Accord in 1985, when the United States and its major trading partners agreed to coordinate policies to weaken the US dollar, an agreement to address global imbalances emanating from China has become increasingly necessary. Given China’s undervalued currency, the situation simply cannot be sustained indefinitely.