6 h. ago If you were shocked by my film on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, you haven’t been paying attention | Louis Theroux

The response to The Settlers has been humbling. But the ongoing displacement and intimidation of Palestinians is more severe than we could captureIt wasn’t something I saw coming. A film about the situation in the West Bank – an evergreen story if ever there was one – going viral. Appreciation, dismay, gratitude, outrage at what the film showed Through the week it kept going. More retweets, more feedback, a little bit of pushback. Shock was the theme of many messages – the idea that this was going on. And a feeling of: “At last.” “At last, mainstream British TV is saying something about what is happening.”The film was a follow-up of sorts. In 2010, I’d made a documentary called Ultra Zionists. It was a look at the Israeli religious nationalist community that exists in the West Bank – the area across the eastern edge of Israel that has been under military occupation since the six-day war of 1967. Now, a decade and a half on, with the world’s attention on Gaza, it was being reported t...

Politics

11 h. ago Battle of the war films: Brits vote on their favourite WW2 movies of all time

The Second World War still looms large in the imagination of Brits - but the winner of a poll to find the nation's most cherished WW2 film might surprise you.

Events

19 h. ago The Guardian view on the impact of Trump’s film tariffs: a disaster movie waiting to happen | Editorial

The US president’s proposed levies will badly hit the UK industry just as it is recovering from a series of blowsBarbieland, the Emerald City and a galaxy far, far away were all built – at least in part – at film studios just outside London. Now the UK film industry has come crashing down to earth with Donald Trump’s threat to impose 100% tariffs on all movies “produced in foreign lands”. “Hollywood is being destroyed,” Mr Trump announced, like an action hero on a mission. “Other nations have stolen our movie industry.” In the UK the news was met with warnings that the British film sector would be “wiped out” by such a “knock-out blow”. Brian Cox, the Succession star, called the proposed tariffs “an absolute disaster”. Roll the opening credits.Mr Trump has a point. New instalments of Marvel’s Avengers and Spider-Man are filming around London this summer. No wonder the president wants “MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!” The UK’s generous tax incentives, skills base and state-of-the-art ...

Politics

47 h. ago Sam Mendes’ four Beatles films to be written by Jez Butterworth, Peter Straughan and Jack Thorne

The director has appointed the acclaimed Olivier, Tony, Bafta and Oscar winning talents to be the screenwriters for The Beatles: A Four-Film Cinematic EventThe award-winning British writers Jez Butterworth, Peter Straughan and Jack Thorne will pen Sam Mendes’ four Beatles films, it has been reported.The four biopics, focusing on each member of the fab four, will be released in cinemas in April 2028 – with Paul Mescal playing Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson playing John Lennon, Barry Keoghan playing Ringo Star, and Joseph Quinn playing George Harrison. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago Donald Trump’s latest tariffs will be devastating for the British film industry and beyond

Editorial: It will – if it can ever be made workable – do grievous damage to the economies of America’s allies and to the US entertainment sector. It will not ‘make Hollywood great again’ but lay waste to the thriving and symbiotic film sectors in other nations

Politics

3 d. ago The covert war waged against Iran on British streets: How MI5 are battling threat from rogue state in UK... and why Tehran is asserting more of its influence abroad

The arrests of seven Iranians in two major anti-terror operations over the weekend coincides with growing concern about the rogue state's activities on British soil.

Events

4 d. ago Netflix viewers left ‘deeply moved’ by ‘immersive’ documentary depicting WWII like never before

Britain and the Blitz is now available to stream on Netflix, and it features vividly restored archival footage and firsthand accounts of WWII

Events

4 d. ago French village where British woman Karen Carter was fatally stabbed is scene of cult murder film

Karen Carter, 65, died in the Dordogne village of Trémolat

Events

5 d. ago Donald Trump hits movies made in the UK with 100% tariffs: Blow to Britain's film industry as President turns up trade war to save 'dying' Hollywood

Incentive programmes for years have influenced where movies are shot, increasingly driving film production out of California and to other states and countries with favourable tax incentives.

Events

8 d. ago Listen closely to the Kneecap furore. You’ll hear hypocrisy from all sides | Dorian Lynskey

The band’s rightwing critics are now cancel culture advocates, while defenders demand limitless free speechDorian Lynskey is the author of 33 Revolutions Per MinuteEarlier this year, the Northern Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap appeared to be entering their respectable phase. Their self-titled film, a raucous semi-fictionalised biopic directed by Rich Peppiatt, won a Bafta for outstanding British debut, while Kemi Badenoch’s attempt to block a grant awarded by the British Phonographic Industry was overturned in court. As the film illustrates, Kneecap were accustomed to being denounced by unionist MPs but both sides reaped useful publicity. “We have a very dysfunctional, symbiotic relationship,” admitted rapper Naoise Ó Cairealláin.This process was dramatically derailed last week when Kneecap touched the third rail of Gaza and accused Israel of genocide on stage at Coachella festival in California. Cue fury from Fox News, calls for their visas to be revoked and, according to their manager...

Politics

8 d. ago I witnessed US cruelty as a Guantánamo lawyer. Trump’s deportations are disturbingly familiar | Mark Denbeaux

The government’s claims against detainees were paper-thin and the process riddled with errors. Now history is repeatingGuantánamo is a horror Americans have tried to forget. But the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) deportation regime resembles so many of Guantánamo’s evils that it compels comparison. That comparison reveals significant differences but frightening similarities.On 11 January 2002, the detention facility opened. The first detainees, in orange jumpsuits, hobbled along in a parade to show the press the success of the government in this battle of the “war on terror”.The detainee admits he was a cook’s assistant for Taliban forces in Narim, Afghanistan under the command of Haji Mullah Baki.Mark Denbeaux is professor emeritus at Seton Hall Law School and for 18 years represented four detainees held in Guantánamo who had endured torture by the CIA Continue reading...

Politics

9 d. ago Minecraft Movie is biggest film of 2025 so far in UK and Ireland

The film pushed Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy into second place.

Culture

1 week ago ‘As a film lover, I want more’: the Black female directors taking centre stage

The curator of the BFI’s Black Debutantes season on piracy, truncated careers and the frustrations of dealing with big studiosHello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week I spoke to Rógan Graham, a curator of the British Film Institute’s latest season, Black Debutantes: A Collection of Early Works by Black Women Directors. The programme runs throughout May at the BFI Southbank in London, and is a celebration of the feature-length work of Black female film-makers, both the familiar and the seldom screened. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago The Alienation Effect by Owen Hatherley review – meet the brutalists

The remarkable story of how British culture was transformed by émigré architects, filmmakers and writersThe Englishness of English Art sounds like something a parish-pump little Englander might like to bang on about, but it is in fact the title of an arresting study by the German Jewish émigré Nikolaus Pevsner. “Neither English-born nor English-bred,” as he put it in his foreword, he nevertheless pinned down with startling precision the qualities that characterised English art and architecture: a rather twee preference for cuteness and compromise, for frills and fripperies.This shouldn’t surprise us. Newcomers are typically better placed than natives when it comes to deciphering unwritten social codes. Unencumbered by textbook propaganda and excessive knowledge, the stranger’s-eye view very often has the merit of freshness, even originality. Bertolt Brecht dubbed this the Verfremdungseffekt, or alienation effect, from which Owen Hath...

Politics

1 week ago Where Dragons Live review – reflections on family life in an extraordinary setting

In this warm documentary, three siblings clear out their enormously grand childhood home in Oxfordshire where among the happy memories are those of crueltyThis warm, gentle documentary from Suzanne Raes is about a family – and a family home – that might have interested Nancy Mitford or Wes Anderson. Maybe it takes a non-British film-maker to appreciate such intense and unfashionable Englishness; not eccentric exactly, but wayward and romantic. It is about a trio of middle-aged siblings’ from the Impey family who take on the overpoweringly sad duty of clearing out their enormously grand childhood home in Oxfordshire. The huge medieval manor house Cumnor Place, with its dozens of chimneys, mysterious rooms and staircases was bought by their late mother, the neuroscientist Jane Impey (née Mellanby), with the proceeds of the sale in 1966 of a postcard-sized but hugely valuable painting, Rogier van der Weyden’s Saint George and the Dragon.Impey died in 2021 and her husband, author and an...

Society

1 week ago Eurovision 2025: The entrants, favourites, where to watch and how to vote

Here’s what you need to know about this year’s contest

Politics

1 week ago Greta Garbo documentary reveals star as ‘a relaxed, silly, funny person’

Exclusive: Previously unseen footage of actor larking about with friends at home upends Garbo’s aloof imageShe is remembered as the ultimate reclusive film star, following her shock retirement at the height of her success. But the enduring image of Greta Garbo is being challenged by a new documentary, which will show that, far from withdrawing from life – as in her most famous line, “I want to be alone” – she lived it to the full, partying with close friends.The British film-maker Lorna Tucker has been given access to previously unseen behind the scenes footage in which the star, once described as “the most alluring, vibrant and yet aloof character ever to grace the motion picture screen”, can be seen larking about and laughing. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago The Vietnam War ended 50 years ago, but the battle with Agent Orange continues

The Vietnam War ended 50 years ago but the disaster unleashed by American use of Agent Orange continues unabated

Events

1 week ago Comment: Dear filmmakers, stop waiting for permission (a polite British reminder)

Ben Charles Edwards, co-founder of DREAMTOWN and Cine International Film Festival, delivers a call to arms for British indie cinema

Events

1 week ago Martin Freeman calls out ‘annoying’ fans for following him for long periods

He said he tries ‘to reason with people’ and explain he is ‘not a prop’.

Politics