Latest news with #HannaRantala
Mint
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Julian Assange open to political action as Cannes hosts documentary
By Hanna Rantala and Miranda Murray CANNES, France (Reuters) -WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is at the Cannes Film Festival this week for the documentary "The Six Billion Dollar Man," is thinking about how to become politically active again once he has fully recovered from prison, said his wife, Stella. Assange, 53, returned to his native Australia after pleading guilty last June under an agreement with U.S. officials to one count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security materials. The plea ended Assange's five-year stay in a British prison, which followed seven years at the Ecuador embassy as he sought to avoid extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations. Assange denied those allegations and called them a pretext to extradite him to the United States over WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks in 2010 released hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. military documents on Washington's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - the largest security breaches of their kind in U.S. military history - along with swaths of diplomatic cables. "He was in a very grave situation in the prison. He's recovering from that," Stella Assange told Reuters in Cannes. "But now he's coming to understand how grave the situation outside (prison) is and thinking, making plans to find the means of what to do about it," she added. "He's very, very concerned about the state of the world and the state that we're all in right now," said Stella, who met Assange in London in 2011 while working as part of his legal team. Julian and Stella Assange, wearing a brooch with a picture of British designer Vivienne Westwood holding a sign saying "Stop Killing," walked the red carpet on Wednesday evening. Julian has so far not spoken at any of his appearances. The documentary from Emmy-winning director Eugene Jarecki takes on the tone of a high-tech international thriller to recount Assange's fight against extradition, using WikiLeaks footage and archives, and previously unpublished evidence. Jarecki, who began filming before Assange was released, said he never expected to see him walk around Cannes as a free man. By inviting Assange, the festival was sending a message about the need for freedom of information and a free press, Jarecki told Reuters, as those values are in decline in many parts of the world according to an index from Reporters without Borders. The director called Assange "a canary in the coal mine" in foretelling the U.S. government's current moves to exert more control over media access to U.S. President Donald Trump. "If we had taken that bit more seriously, we might have seen a bunch of this coming," said the U.S. director. Assange's lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, told Reuters that the film portrayed the WikiLeaks founder as he should be shown. "This film is absolutely necessary in terms of telling the story of free speech and what Julian Assange, his case means for the world, not just for him, but for the world," she said. (Reporting by Hanna Rantala and Miranda Murray; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Mint
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Nicole Kidman champions gender equality at star-studded Cannes party
Kidman made 2017 pledge to work with more female directors Brazilian filmmaker Brennand wins emerging talent award 'The Substance' auteur: Need big changes, not cosmetic ones By Hanna Rantala and Miranda Murray CANNES, France, May 18 (Reuters) - Australian actor Nicole Kidman vowed to keep pushing for gender equality in cinema at an exclusive party attended by celebrities like popstar Charli XCX and Irish actor Paul Mescal on the sidelines of the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday. "I'm just an advocate and want to continue to keep moving forward with that, with my pledge from 2017, so it ain't over," said the Oscar-winning actor at the Women in Motion dinner at Cannes, part of a program set up by luxury group Kering in 2015. Kidman, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in "The Hours" in 2002, has worked with many of the leading male directors of her generation, but she pledged in 2017 to shoot with a female director every 18 months. She told journalists in the French Riviera resort town earlier on Sunday that in the eight years since, she's worked with 27 female directors, including projects in development. "Part of it is protecting and surrounding the women with almost like a force field of protection and support," she said. Other stars at the dinner included Dakota Johnson and Julianne Moore as well as Patrick Schwarzenegger of "The White Lotus." Director Guillermo del Toro was also in attendance. Brazilian director Marianna Brennand received the initiative's emerging talent award, which includes a grant of 50,000 euros ($55,920.00) to work on a second feature project. "If you look at the numbers, unfortunately, the numbers, they don't change," said French director Coralie Fargeat, whose Demi Moore-led body horror hit "The Substance" found widespread success after premiering at Cannes last year. "We really need to keep making huge changes and not cosmetic changes," she said. According to Women in Motion organisers, the share of women directors increased to only 13.6% from 7.5% among the top 100 box office films in the United States between 2015 and 2024. Seven out of the 22 films in competition this year were made by women, including an entry from Julia Ducournau, one of only three women to have ever won the Palme d'Or top prize. ($1 = 0.8941 euros) (Reporting by Hanna Rantala and Miranda Murray; editing by Diane Craft)
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Kristen Stewart's directorial debut at Cannes leaves her feeling like a proud parent
By Hanna Rantala and Miranda Murray CANNES, France (Reuters) - Kristen Stewart said on Saturday that making her directorial debut with "The Chronology of Water" at the Cannes Film Festival felt like sending a child off to school for the first time. "I'm so proud of it. It's like watching your kid go to school," Stewart told Reuters the day after her film's premiere. "It feels like all of a sudden the things that I've wanted to do for just so long happened all at the same time," said the actor who rose to fame with the "Twilight" series and received an Oscar nomination for her performance as Britain's Princess Diana in the film "Spencer." "My head is spinning, but in the best way," she added. Her film is adapted from Lidia Yuknavitch's 2011 memoir of the same name that chronicles the author's attempt to escape an abusive household through competitive swimming in the 1980s and eventual path to becoming a respected author. British actor Imogen Poots, known for "Green Room" and "28 Weeks Later," stars as Yuknavitch in what The Rolling Stone lauded as an "all-or-nothing type of performance." "There's a line in the book that made me want to make it a movie, which is like, 'Can you hold life and death in the same sentence?' And that's what cinema can do," said Stewart. "With this movie, we can just speak to the fact that the things that happen don't matter as much as how you process those things and define them within your own body," she added. Stewart's film is competing in the second-tier Un Certain Regard section, where actors Scarlett Johansson and Harris Dickinson are also marking their first time as directors. "The Chronology of Water" was met with positive reviews, with Deadline calling it a "raw and intricately constructed take on a biopic" and The Guardian giving it three out of five stars.
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Film 'September 5' offers new perspective on Olympic tragedy
By Hanna Rantala LONDON (Reuters) - Drama thriller "September 5" takes a new approach to tell the true story of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre. Directed by Swiss filmmaker Tim Fehlbaum and boasting an accomplished ensemble cast including Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin and Leonie Benesch, the film follows the ABC Sports broadcasting team as they pivot from Olympics programming to covering the developing news story. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. On Sept. 5, 1972, members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage at the poorly secured athletes' village by Palestinian gunmen from the Black September group. Within 24 hours, 11 Israelis, five Palestinians and a German policeman were dead after a stand-off and subsequent rescue effort erupted into gunfire. For the first time ever, the coverage of the attack, and the Games which continued as the events unfolded, played out live on television, watched by millions of people. One rescue attempt had to be called off when police officers realised it was being shown live and watched by the attackers. "We're living in this hyper-sensationalised media atmosphere and this was kind of the beginning of it. These were people who were just doing their job, not realising that they were changing the way we consume news forever," said Magaro, who plays Geoffrey Mason, the real-life head of the ABC Munich control room, at the film's London premiere on Tuesday. "September 5" is almost entirely set in the ABC control room, with outside events playing on its multiple monitors. The film team wove in real footage and assembled still functioning studio equipment of the day to ensure an authentic look. "Some of these scenes in the Olympic Village we recreated, also out of respect, because we didn't want to show anyone who lost their life on that day, and then we mixed all of this together," said Fehlbaum. "Tim was absolutely passionate about it being as accurate as possible because it was a true story. Everything worked. They built the studio on ABC's original blueprints," said Chaplin. The movie also depicts the moral dilemmas the team faced as the crisis deepened. "All the questions like, what do we show, is there such a thing as a neutral standpoint, is it helpful to watch potential violence live, the film raises all of these questions," Benesch said. "The questions they had to ask themselves are still very relevant for any journalist and also for all of us," said screenwriter Mortiz Binder. "Most of us have a smartphone, have social media, so all these ethical questions are questions for everybody." "September 5" is produced by Hollywood star Sean Penn and its writers Binder, Fehlbaum and Alex David are up for a best original screenplay Oscar at next month's Academy Awards.
