UK-France: The tide of realpolitik rises as the sea of rhetoric fades on both sides of the Channel
08/07/2025
Why are French police struggling to curb migrant Channel crossings?
France
08/07/2025
'Restatement of that historic commitment: Renegotiate important Franco-British bilateral agreements'
UK
07/07/2025
People First mobilising globally to free Ukrainians, including children, held captive by Russia
Europe
06/07/2025
Oasis: What's the story? "A man with a fork in a world of soup"
UK
06/07/2025
San Fermin bull-running festival kicks off in Spain
Europe
06/07/2025
Heatwaves and wildfires break out in Europe
Europe
06/07/2025
The Seine closes for a day due to bad weather in Paris.
France
06/07/2025
Wildfires: Firefighters mobilized to tackle blazes all over Europe
Europe
05/07/2025
Tour de France gets under way on home soil for first time in five years
France
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France 24
12 hours ago
- France 24
Czech film takes 'conspiracy nuts' on Ukraine war tour
Before the shooting, Kvapil, 43, paid two visits to Ukraine to prepare the film and was shocked by the war. "That's an experience you won't get out of your head. It's for life. Seeing these places will simply change you," the bearded, bespectacled director told AFP in an interview. "As a filmmaker, I have no other weapon than film, and I wanted to stand up to the war in some way," he added. He chose Petra, Ivo and Nikola out of 60 Czechs who had answered his ad looking for people nursing doubts about the reality of the war after succumbing to disinformation. A survey by pollsters Ipsos indicated last year that most Czechs think Russia is using disinformation to skew public opinion. One in three respondents also told Ipsos they had believed disinformation on more than one occasion over their lifetime. The Czech intelligence service BIS said in a recent report that "in 2024, society continued to grapple with the spread of disinformation in the public space, originating both directly from Russia and from domestic actors". 'Contact with reality' The film's title, "The Great Patriotic Trip", is a parody of "The Great Patriotic War", the Russian name for the Soviet-German part of World War II. The premiere is scheduled for August 21, the anniversary of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of former communist Czechoslovakia which crushed the Prague Spring movement deemed too liberal by Moscow. The film begins by drawing a parallel between 1968 and the invasion of Ukraine and goes on to say that "Russia is leading a disinformation war against the whole of Europe", before introducing the three protagonists. Petra, whose parents were hardline communists, dismissed the war in Ukraine as "nonsense". Ivo said he believed information he finds on the internet "even if it's not true", admitting he is a "conspiracy nut". And Nikola said that Russian President Vladimir Putin "is the only man in the world who can stop the Western ideological madness". All three protagonists' surnames are not divulged. Kvapil, who has won several Czech awards for his documentaries, told AFP his goal was not to change the three but "to capture their contact with reality". He admitted that while he tried hard to stay out of the film, he was stunned on many occasions, like when Petra started to sing the Soviet anthem in a van en route to the war zone. "Everything that appears in the film is there because it's surprising in some way. I was trying to pass on the energy of my own astonishment," he said. 'All fake!' Petra got a surprise herself during a visit to mass graves in the eastern Ukrainian town of Izyum, which was occupied for several months at the beginning of the war before it was retaken by Ukrainian forces. Ukraine said in September 2022 it had found more than 440 graves in Izyum. Petra found the pleasant smell of pine trees and fine sand resembling a beach inappropriate for the dreary place. "I know why this place feels so weird! Because it's all fake!" she then exclaimed, calling the graveyard "outstanding material for Ukrainian propaganda and nurturing hatred towards Russia". "I took the shooting as an exercise in inner tolerance which I undergo all my life," Kvapil said. Despite witnessing many horrors of the war, Kvapil's protagonists do not seem to be convinced as they return home. "I still have the same opinion," Ivo said after the trip, while Petra insisted she has "not been reeducated".
France 24
3 days ago
- France 24
Antonio Banderas rules out retirement as he turns 65
"When I was 20, I thought that 65-year-olds walked with a cane," said Banderas, known for roles in films such as "The Mask of Zorro", "Desperado" and "Philadelphia", in an interview with the Spanish daily El País. "Back then, at 65 you retired. Not anymore -- now it's later." "Maybe I'm doing things I shouldn't be doing," added Banderas, who suffered a heart attack in 2017. "But the doctors don't say anything to me. They say I'm fine, that I should do whatever I want." The actor said he has recently started music theory classes and bought himself a piano. "I think I'd be one of those people who die if they stop. And I work at what I love; it's been the luck of my life," he said. Banderas, who began acting in the 1980s, said he remains busy running the theater he opened in 2019 in his hometown of Malaga, in southern Spain. He spent part of the summer in Boston filming a biopic of legendary chef Anthony Bourdain, titled "Tony", and then traveled to Spain's Canary Islands to work on a thriller "Above and Below".
France 24
7 days ago
- France 24
Rare 'Hobbit' first edition auctioned for £43,000
Purchased by a private collector in the United Kingdom, the book is one of 1,500 original copies of the British author's seminal fantasy novel that were published in 1937. Of those, only "a few hundred are believed to still remain", according to the auction house Auctioneum, which discovered the book on an bookcase at a home in Bristol. Bidders from around the world drove the price up by more than four times what the auction house expected for the manuscript. "It's a wonderful result, for a very special book," said Auctioneum rare books specialist Caitlin Riley. "The surviving books from the initial print run are now considered some of the most sought-after books in modern literature," Auctioneum said in a statement. Auctioneum unearthed the book during a routine house clearance after its owner passed away. "Nobody knew it was there," Riley said. "It was just a run-of-the-mill bookcase." "It was clearly an early Hobbit at first glance, so I just pulled it out and began to flick through it, never expecting it to be a true first edition," she said. "I couldn't believe my eyes," she added, calling it an "unimaginably rare find". The copy is bound in light green cloth and features rare black-and-white illustrations by Tolkien, who created his beloved Middle Earth universe while he was a professor at the University of Oxford. The book was passed down in the family library of Hubert Priestley, a botanist connected to the university. "It is likely that both men knew each other," according to Auctioneum, which said Priestley and Tolkien shared mutual correspondence with author C.S. Lewis, who was also at Oxford. "The Hobbit", which was followed by the epic series "The Lord of the Rings", has sold more than 100 million copies worldwide. The sagas were turned into a hit movie franchise in the 2000s. A first edition of "The Hobbit" with a handwritten note in Elvish by the author sold for £137,000 at Sotheby's in June 2015.
