Latest news with #Jean-Pierre
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Former White House Press Secretary Shares Powerful Message Regarding Joe Biden's Cancer Diagnosis (Exclusive)
Former White House Press Secretary Shares Powerful Message Regarding Joe Biden's Cancer Diagnosis (Exclusive) originally appeared on Parade. Karine Jean-Pierre is sending her love to former President Joe Biden. The political advisor, 50, who served as White House press secretary from May 2022 to January 2025 and as a senior advisor to Biden from October 2024 to January 2025, exclusively told Parade she has reached out to the 82-year-old after he was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer. 'I have been in contact with the family,' she said on the red carpet at American Ballet Theatre's 85th anniversary Spring Gala, honoring Susan and Leonard Feinstein, at Cipriani South Street in New York City. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 'I think they know how I feel,' she continued. 'I've been very clear about the news and how heartbreaking it was to hear, but one thing that I know about Joe Biden is that he's a fighter. I wouldn't bet against him, and this is obviously an issue that's incredibly personal to them when it comes to cancer.' Biden's son Beau died in 2015 at age 46 from brain cancer. Jean-Pierre then went on to praise the former POTUS for how much he cared for his staff at the White House. 'I have to tell you this personal story,' she began. 'When my mom — during my tenure as White House press secretary — had cancer and only a few people knew, he was one of the people who knew because I wanted to keep that really private and because it was such a personal matter to go through.' Biden 'reached out' to Jean-Pierre personally to check up on her and her mother, who was diagnosed with stage 2 colon cancer. (Jean-Pierre said in a January Vanity Fair piece that her mother finished treatment a year ago.) 'He reached out, and he asked me all the questions,' Jean-Pierre told Parade of Biden. ''How is she doing? What can I do? Where is she? What kind of treatment is she getting?' He was so tuned in because he understands how personal something like this is and how hard it can hit a family, and so my heart goes out to him and obviously his family.' Related: At the ABT gala on Wednesday night, Jean-Pierre also encouraged people struggling in the current political climate to remain 'hopeful' and look to 'your community and see how you can be helpful to your neighbors.' She added, 'Joy is resistance. Joy is important right now. We can't let them take that away, but understanding that there are people who are living next door to us who are indeed suffering and having a difficult time in this moment, I think it's important to show up and be very, very present.' Former White House Press Secretary Shares Powerful Message Regarding Joe Biden's Cancer Diagnosis (Exclusive) first appeared on Parade on May 29, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on May 29, 2025, where it first appeared.
eNCA
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- eNCA
'Outstanding' Dardenne brothers teenage mothers movie has Cannes in tears
CANNES - Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, whose inspiring new film "Young Mothers" won the best screenplay prize at Cannes on Saturday, said they wanted to show young women defying the fate that was forced on them. Set at a shelter for underage mothers, it follows five teenagers as they learn to look after their babies with the help of kind nurses and social workers. The film shows how each of them frees "themselves from a destiny... that has been imposed on them, and the journey they have to go on to free themselves of this fate that has been chasing them since childhood," Jean-Pierre Dardenne told AFP. The brothers, already two-time Palme d'Or winners, visited a similar shelter as part of research for another film. "It's really the place that made us decide to make this film," Jean-Pierre Dardenne said before its premiere in Cannes on Friday. AFP | Miguel MEDINA "When I say place, it's also the young women, the educators, the psychologist, the director who drew us in, what was happening there, what we felt," he added. "It's as if the place, these people, said: 'Tell our stories.'" The film has received rave reviews, and on Friday also won the unofficial Positive Cinema Prize for the most upbeat film in the main competition. The Guardian newspaper called it "quietly outstanding" and gave it a rare five-star review, while Variety called it "the duo's most convincing film yet". In the movie, Naima leaves the shelter to start life as a single mother. But Julie, a former addict, is still struggling to find her feet, while heavily pregnant Jessica is desperately trying to renew ties with the woman who gave her up as a teenager. Perla and Ariane are striving to become better examples to their babies than their own alcoholic mothers. - 'Babies just do their thing' - "They are individual destinies," said Luc Dardenne. "What we were interested in was to tell the stories of five people going through five different things, even if of course it's always linked to a relationship with a child." The film "looks at how social history, poverty, the fact that your own mother abandoned you, weighs down on each character... and how to fight this," he said. AFP | Antonin THUILLIER The brothers said filming most scenes with real babies had forced them to work differently. "Babies don't know that they're being filmed. So babies just do their thing," said Luc Dardenne. "So we said to ourselves that we would try to have one take, just one take, and be happy with it. Sometimes we had to do two takes," he said. "I must admit that the takes weren't the same thanks to the babies, which gave a different pace to the film." Asked how they felt about reducing even the most hardened critics to tears at the screening, Jean-Pierre said, "Perhaps it's because one day we were all babies." - A 'voice to the voiceless' - The brothers have created their own brand of cinema, telling stories of the poorest and most disadvantaged without pity or pathos. The Belgians won the first of their Palme d'Ors in 1999 with "Rosetta", starring Emilie Dequenne, one of many extraordinary non-professional actors they discovered. She died in March, tragically young at 43, after carving out a career as one of the most distinctive faces of French-language film. AFP | Julie SEBADELHA The brothers, who began making documentaries in the late 1970s, rarely stray far from their hometown of Liege for their films. The region has long been plagued with poverty and joblessness, and both say they try to give a "voice to the voiceless". The authenticity of their stories has long been their trademark, with the latest tender babies-having-babies tale feeling so realistic that many critics said it felt like a documentary. The Dardennes won their second Palme d'Or in 2005 with "The Child", taking the second prize Grand Prix in 2011 with "The Kid with a Bike", which was nominated for a Golden Globe. by Raphaelle Peltier and Alice Hackman
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Young Mothers' Review: Belgium's Dardenne Brothers Adopt a Wider Focus for Their Most Humane Drama in More Than a Decade
Before turning their attention to ripped-from-reality social justice stories, Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne got their start making short documentaries set in working-class housing projects. They brought that same immersive, observational approach with them to their fiction features, reflected in the long-take handheld camerawork, gritty street-level locations and casting of nonprofessional actors that have become their signature. And yet, it's doubtful that anyone would have mistaken a Dardenne film for a documentary … until now. 'Young Mothers' is the duo's most convincing film yet, owing largely to the way they have widened the focus from one or two characters in crisis — the sort of urgency that drove everything from 'Rosetta' to 'Tori and Lokita' — to a loose choral form. Instead of presenting a single, nail-biting dramatic situation, the Dardennes' no-less-engaging ensemble drama dedicates quality time to a quartet of young women — girls, really — under the care of a maternal assistance home in Liège. Deeply moving but never manipulative, 'Young Mothers' is the brothers' best film in more than a decades, since they tried incorporating movie stars Cécile de France and Marion Cotillard into their world. More from Variety Rai Cinema Celebrates 'Heads or Tails?' at Cannes and Readies for More Hits: 'Cinema Without Audience Doesn't Exist' 'Romería' Director Carla Simón on the Importance of Gender Equity in Filmmaking: Women Are 'Half of the World, We Should Tell Half of the Stories' Cannes Awards Predictions: Who Could Take the Palme d'Or - and Everything Else? Nearly all the faces here are unfamiliar — and every one is entirely persuasive. Reteaming with DP Benoit Dervaux and longtime editor Marie-Hélène Dozo, the siblings structure this latest, slightly unwieldy narrative as a series of more or less equally weighted dramas, interweaving the four cases as best they can (with a fifth example, played by Samia Hilmi, whose farewell party offers a ray of hope toward which the others can strive). The outcome requires a certain amount of multitasking from the audience, as with Michael Apted's 'Up' series or one of Frederick Wiseman's epic institutional portraits, in which every moment matters, but it's hard to say where things are headed exactly: toward tragedy, success or the status quo. Pregnancy is the common thread between these four teens, who otherwise represent very different instances of children bringing children into the world. Jessica (Babette Verbeek) anxiously waits beside a bus stop, hoping to recognize the birth mother who put her up for adoption as an infant. It's not until the steps away from the camera that we see this immature young girl is pregnant herself. She's already picked out the name for her baby, Alba, and swears she'd never abandon her — a commitment to breaking the cycle by someone who desperately craves her own mother's embrace. Ariane (Janaina Halloy Fokan) has practically the opposite problem: Her welfare-dependent single parent Nathalie (Christelle Cornil) pressured her to deliver, promising to help raise the child, but Ariane wants a better life for her baby. Ironically, this girl's maternal instincts are better than her mom's, who dates abusive men and drinks to extreme, and that sense of responsibility is what drives her to seek out a well-to-do foster couple who swear to teach the child music, offering a potential she never had. In most cases, the babies' fathers are completely out of the picture, although two of the home's residents are still negotiating how committed their boyfriends are willing to be. It's implied that Perla (Lucie Laruelle) hoped that having a kid would strengthen her relationship with Robin (Gunter Duret), only to have the peach-fuzz delinquent blow her off as soon as he gets out of juvie, leaving Perla with only a half-sister (Joely Mbundu) to rely on. By contrast, runaways Julie (Elsa Houben) and Dylan (Jef Jacobs) seem relatively stable, but both are former drug users, which poses its own challenges. Spelling out all these challenges surely makes the film sound far more miserable than it is. In fact, compared to the Dardennes' previous few features — and their Palme d'Or-winning masterpiece, 'The Child' — 'Young Mothers' is positively upbeat. The script is full of setbacks, but it's even better stocked with a sense of community, as characters step in to uplift one another. At the group home, the teens take turns preparing meals, and when one of them is overwhelmed or incapable, someone else invariably steps in to help. That's just one small example of the countless ways 'Young Mothers' celebrates an institution where supportive yet firm social workers (played by Adrienne D'Anna, Mathilde Legrand and Hélène Cattelain) are available around the clock to serve as exactly the kind of role models its residents lacked in their own lives. Obviously, Belgium is fortunate to have such a place; most countries don't. A comparable assistance program would surely make a difference in the United States, where pregnant teens no longer have the choice these characters did over whether to abort. Any movie on the subject of teenage pregnancy carries a polemical dimension of some kind, with a number of impactful recent examples — most notably, 'Never Rarely Sometimes Always' and 'Happening' — adopting a distinctly Dardennian style to drive their messages home. It's interesting then to see the Dardennes themselves taking a far more neutral tack, keeping things as open-ended as possible for the maximum range of reactions. The subject of abortion is frequently discussed, but the focus is exclusively fixed on characters who have brought their pregnancies to term. If there's a political statement to be extrapolated here, it's that instead of thinking of young mothers as being responsible for their children, we should start thinking of society as being responsible for its young mothers. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Outstanding' Dardenne brothers teenage mothers movie has Cannes in tears
Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, whose inspiring new film "Young Mothers" is vying for the top prize in Cannes, said they wanted to show young women defying the fate that was forced on them. Set at a shelter for underage mothers, it follows five teenagers as they learn to look after their babies with the help of kind nurses and social workers. The film shows how each of them frees "themselves from a destiny... that has been imposed on them, and the journey they have to go on to free themselves of this fate that has been chasing them since childhood," Jean-Pierre Dardenne told AFP before its premiere in Cannes on Friday. The brothers, already two-time Palme d'Or winners, visited a similar shelter as part of research for another film. "It's really the place that made us decide to make this film," Jean-Pierre Dardenne said. "When I say place, it's also the young women, the educators, the psychologist, the director who drew us in, what was happening there, what we felt," he added. "It's as if the place, these people, said: 'Tell our stories.'" The film has received rave reviews, and on Friday won the unofficial Positive Cinema Prize for the most upbeat film in the main competition. The Guardian newspaper called it "quietly outstanding" and gave it a rare five-star review, while Variety said it could be mistaken for a documentary and called it "the duo's most convincing film yet". In the movie, Naima leaves the shelter to start life as a single mother. But Julie, a former addict, is still struggling to find her feet, while heavily pregnant Jessica is desperately trying to renew ties with the woman who gave her up as a teenager. Perla and Ariane are striving to become better examples to their babies than their own alcoholic mothers. - 'Babies just do their thing' - "They are individual destinies," said Luc Dardenne. "What we were interested in was to tell the stories of five people going through five different things, even if of course it's always linked to a relationship with a child." The film "looks at how social history, poverty, the fact that your own mother abandoned you, weighs down on each character... and how to fight this," he said. The brothers said filming most scenes with real babies had forced them to work differently. "Babies don't know that they're being filmed. So babies just do their thing," said Luc Dardenne. "So we said to ourselves that we would try to have one take, just one take, and be happy with it. Sometimes we had to do two takes," he said. "I must admit that the takes weren't the same thanks to the babies, which gave a different pace to the film." Asked how they felt about reducing even the most hardened critics to tears at the screening, Jean-Pierre said, "Perhaps it's because one day we were all babies." pel-ah/fg/jj
France 24
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- France 24
Cannes 2025: Dardenne brothers' bid for third Palme d'Or wraps up wide-open race
In what has become a fixture of the world's most prestigious film festival, Cannes habitués Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne walked the red carpet on Friday for their 10th shot at the top prize, 26 years after they won their first of two Palme d'Or awards for 'Rosetta'. Set in a shelter for teen mothers, their latest feature, 'The Young Mother's Home' follows five young women as they navigate the challenges of early motherhood, amid drug addiction, depression and tense encounters with prospective adoptive parents. It was an instant favourite for festival veteran Alongkot Maiduang, pen name Kalapapruek from Thailand, a frequent contributor to the grids that track the preferences of a handful among the hundreds of film critics who descend on Cannes each year. 'It's a timely and deeply moving film with a documentary quality that makes it a perfect fit for a jury led by French film actress Juliette Binoche,' said the film critic from Bangkok. He predicted the Dardenne brothers would make history by becoming the first to win a record third Palme d'Or. Earlier on Friday, Chilean director Diego Cespedes won the top prize in the festival's second-tier Un Certain Regard for his debut feature film, 'The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo', about a transgender commune living in the Chilean desert around the onset of the AIDS epidemic. It was one of several movies this year to touch on diseases, real or imagined, in what may be a legacy of the Covid pandemic that brought much of the world to a standstill – and left the film industry on its knees. The Best Director award went to Palestinian twin filmmakers Arab and Tarzan Nasser for their black comedy 'Once Upon a Time in Gaza', which the Gaza-born twin filmmakers described as a homage to a homeland that 'no longer exists'. Political thrillers The ongoing Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip was a frequent talking point during the festival, which opened with a tribute to Fatma Hassona. The 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist is the subject of 'Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk', a documentary recording her efforts to capture the destruction in Gaza before she was killed in an Israeli strike last month. There was no shortage of off-screen politics throughout the festival as film stars took turns in rubbishing US President Donald Trump and his threats to slap crippling tariffs on foreign films, which threw a wet blanket over the all-important Cannes Film Market. Screen legend Robert De Niro set the tone on the opening night with a blistering attack on America's 'philistine' president, urging the industry to join the 'fight for democracy' as he picked up a career Palme d'Or. Given the politically charged context, film critic Boryana Mateeva said she expected the main competition jury to lean towards movies with weighty topics. Her pick for the top prize was Kleber Mendonça Filho's 'The Secret Agent', a stylish thriller about an academic on the run in the cruel days of Brazil's 1970s military dictatorship. 'It's got everything you want from a Brazilian movie: politics, carnival, fantasy, gore, you name it. And a powerful musical score, too,' she said, describing the Cannes veteran's film as his most accomplished yet. In the same vein, the Bulgarian critic said Tarik Saleh's Cairo-set 'Eagles of the Republic', about a film star forced to make a propaganda film in Abdel Fattah al-Sisi 's Egypt, was another strong contender, cementing the Swedish director's standing as a 'master of political thrillers'. Techno road movie a critics' darling Attending her first Cannes as film critic, Hanna Hromovetska from Ukraine sat through a whopping 35 films over 10 days, though she wished she could have fitted more into her crammed schedule. Overall, she found the Palme d'Or contest underwhelming, preferring the 'raw energy' of the Directors' Fortnight event that runs parallel to the main festival, with more first-time filmmakers and fewer old-timers. Louise Hémon's first feature 'The Girl in the Snow', about a 19th century teacher aiming to enlighten the inhabitants of a tiny Alpine hamlet, and Hasan Hadi's debut 'The President's Cake', set in Saddam Hussein 's Iraq, were her two standout movies of the festival. Cinema publication Deadline said the latter film was 'head and shoulders above' some of the films in the running for the festival's Palme d'Or top prize, and 'could turn out to be Iraq's first nominee for an Oscar'. In the main competition, Hromovetska had a soft spot for Oliver Laxe's techno-infused road movie 'Sirat', a critics' darling about a father and son joining a group of itinerant ravers in the deserts of Morocco. But she did not think 'Sirat' made for Palme d'Or material. 'For the top prize I would look for more of a balance between story and visuals,' she said. 'Like Iranian director Saeed Roustaee's 'Woman and Child', which has a very intricate screenplay while also being cinematically beautiful.' A reward for Panahi's 'devotion to cinema'? Roustaee's film, about a widowed mother trapped in the Iranian marriage market, was one of two competition entries by directors who have faced jail and filming bans in Iran due to their work. The other was 'A Simple Accident' by Jafar Panahi, on his first trip to the French Riviera gathering since 2003 due to repeated prison terms and travel bans. 10:45 Panahi's latest thriller, 'It Was Just an Accident', an indictment of the corruption and tyranny in his homeland, was a perfect fit for the Palme, according to film critic Arash Azizi, a fellow Iranian who is based in the US. 'We know that jury president Juliette Binoche is a fan of Panahi's cinema. And Panahi is a symbol of devotion to cinema,' Azizi explained. 'For years, in prison, under house arrest, in terrible conditions, he never stopped making films. His love for cinema is obvious, and I think all this will have an effect.' The jury could otherwise opt for an even darker tale of bureaucratic oppression with 'Two Prosecutors' by Ukraine's Sergei Loznitsa, a Kafkaesque nightmare set in the Stalin era. By Saturday morning, just hours ahead of the closing ceremony, Loznitsa's movie was tied with Panahi's at the top of Screen Daily's film critic grid. Bearing in mind, however, that Cannes juries and critics seldom think alike.
