49 h. ago Hollywood star 'quits British film amid claims production has run out of money leaving crew owed £600k in unpaid wages'

The Hollywood actress, 55, was set to star in upcoming drama Angels in the Asylum alongside an all-star cast, with the film being the directorial debut of British director Rob Sorrenti.

Economics

5 d. ago ‘At 60, the bulk of your life is lived. What’s left now?’ Ralph Fiennes and Uberto Pasolini on their ripped and radical take on The Odyssey

The actor and director on why The Return took 30 years to make, their joy at persuading Juliette Binoche to join them – and the punishing regime that earned Fiennes his battle-scarred physiqueUberto Pasolini likes to say he has been thinking about adapting The Odyssey for 30 years – 10 years longer than it took Odysseus to win the Trojan war. A nephew of the director Luchino Visconti, the 67-year-old Italian film-maker has lived in London for 50 years. Pasolini, who won a Bafta for producing The Full Monty, first approached Ralph Fiennes to play Odysseus in 2011, after the actor had made his directorial debut with Coriolanus, believing Fiennes might also be able to direct the film.They got as far as a location scout in Turkey, where Fiennes, then about to play Prospero in a Trevor Nunn production of The Tempest, practised his “Such stuff as dreams are made on” speech in an abandoned outdoor amphitheatre at dusk. “It was me and two goats,” recalls Pasolini over a video chat. “I get t...

Politics

7 d. ago Rita review – sensitive portrait of domestic abuse seen through the eyes of a child

Set in 1980s Spain, actor Paz Vega’s subtly affecting directing debut shows a family suffering under an abusive father, but is warmed by optimism and compassionSpanish actor Paz Vega makes her directing debut with this sensitive portrait of domestic abuse and patriarchy in 1980s Spain. It’s told through the eyes of seven-year-old Rita (Sofía Allepuz), whose mum, Mari (played by Vega) is trapped in a violent marriage. We see the world how Rita sees it: filled with of moments of joy and discovery; her sense of wonder adds tenderness and hope to the story. It’s never voyeuristic (the violence happens almost entirely off screen), but Rita is effective at evoking how each member of the family is brutalised by abuse, living in a constant state of hypervigilance.Rita works hard. Her little seven-year-old hands scrub, carry heavy plates and wash dishes to make her mother’s life a little easier. Rita’s five-year-old brother Lolo (Alejandro Escamilla), is anxious and timid, much to the irrita...

Events

2 w. ago Brief History of a Family review – mysterious interloper at centre of exquisitely constructed drama

Lin Jianjie’s remarkable debut feature keeps you guessing to the final scene – a thrilling film directed and performed immaculatelyThis knockout debut feature from Chinese writer-director Lin Jianjie is like some kind of cinematic kinetic mobile, such as the ones artist Alexander Calder designed in the last century; it’s so exquisitely balanced that it’s able to keep reconfiguring itself with the merest breeze into a whole new arrangement of shapes that’s just as pleasing and abstract as the last. Precision and random chance, freestyle inspiration and formal craft are all in constant play here. That perfectly complements the story itself, a parable about a tricky space – the family unit – where talent, ambition and the lottery of genetics and luck all dance around one another, held in place by gravity and desire. It really is that good, and well-worth seeing in a cinema, not just on a small screen at home, so as to appreciate Zhang Jiahao’s sculptural cinematography and the sparse p...

Society

2 w. ago That's a titanic change of direction, Kate! Winslet goes behind the camera to film Netflix drama written by son she had with Sam Mendes (but she still gets in on the acting, of course)

The Titanic star, 49, was seen filming her directorial debut, Goodbye June, on the streets of London alongside an all-star cast

Events

3 w. ago Lisa Knapp and Gerry Diver: Hinterland review – folk at its most exalted

(Ear to the Ground)Sealing years of collaboration with their first official duo album, the singer and producer fuse folklore and the everyday with dazzling directnessSince her 2007 debut, Wild and Undaunted, Londoner Lisa Knapp has blazed an impressive trail at the avant edge of British folk, her bravura vocals lighting up self-penned songs and well-loved standards, while the inventive arrangements of partner and producer Gerry Diver – now credited as co-creator – have helped capture the wyrdness, wonder and darkness of folklore.On Hinterland, the pair repeat the trick to thrilling effect. Opener Hawk & Crow has Knapp at her larkish best, giving voice to a cast of birds over a stumbling, broken rhythm – a kind of elfin Tom Waits. The spoken-word Train Song relocates us to today’s mundane realities – “poplars tall, village hall, stately home, sewage works” – before Star Carr whisks us back to the Mesolithic Yorkshire site where ritual headdresses of red deer antler hint at ancien...

Politics

3 w. ago On Falling – heartbreaking study of a warehouse worker’s yearning loneliness

Director Laura Carreira’s superb debut feature is reminiscent of Ken Loach in its humane portrayal of soul-destroying workA Portuguese stock picker toiling in a vast Scottish warehouse, Aurora (lovely, empathetic work from Joana Santos), in the eyes of her employers, is not an individual. She is the sum of the data that her handheld scanner feeds back into the system. If the algorithm decrees it, she is rewarded for efficiency (a bar of chocolate from her callow, barely post-adolescent manager). If she falls behind, she’s scolded by someone oblivious of (and indifferent to) the fact that Aurora is struggling on several levels: the unexpected cost of repairing her phone has wiped out her food budget for the month; the work is soul-destroying and repetitive. But most of all, she’s isolated, disconnected and painfully lonely.This terrific English-language feature debut from Portuguese-born, Scotland-based director Laura Carreira makes a satisfying companion piece to Ken Loach’s Sorry W...

Events

3 w. ago Succession creator to make directing debut with film about billionaires

Jesse Armstrong says he is ‘intrigued to discover whether being around so many brilliant actors and directors on Succession’ has rubbed off on him.

Politics