Latest news with #Liège
The Sun
08-07-2025
- The Sun
Horror moment German Shepherd is dragged behind car to her death – before vigilantes wreak revenge on owner's house
THIS is the harrowing moment a German Shepherd is dragged to its death by its lead from a fast-moving car in Belgium. The owner's house was burned down by furious vigilantes seeking "revenge" - but he claims the whole thing was a tragic accident. 3 Footage captured by another motorist - too graphic to publish in full - shows the lifeless dog pinned against the right side of a car driving through Dalhem, eastern Belgium. It appears to be held fast by the neck, with its head up by the rear passenger window. The rest of its body hangs down and drags along the road - with damage to its lower limbs evident. The dog was dragged like this for several miles at around 50mph. The footage was posted to Facebook in a now-deleted post - and sparked a storm of anger. An online manhunt ensued and, despite the car's number plate being blurred out, sleuths were able to track down the owner. At first he was subjected only to online threats - but this escalated severely when somebody set fire to his home, with the man inside. He was able to leave the house, which was also vandalised with messages including "dog killer" and "revenge for your dog". The owner went to the police station to give his version of events. He claimed his dog's death was a complete accident, according to the Liège prosecutor's office. Tourist who kicked sniffer dog 'so hard it flew into the air' at US airport is deported after being slapped with fine He said he had left the dog in the car boot while he went to a cafe but, unbeknown to him, it had jumped through the window, which had apparently been broken. The man said he got in the car and drove off believing his pet was asleep in the back. Prosecutors reported: "He said he was alerted to the situation by a female driver flashing her headlights. "It was at that moment that he realized his dog was hanging outside the right rear window of his vehicle. "The man untied it, put it in the trunk, and drove off." The local's friends flocked to his defence, insisting that the pooch was like his son. One said: "He would never hurt his dog." Another said: "He never leaves Ares's side, whether it's to go to work or to come to the cafe." And a third vowed they had never seen the pet owner be violent towards an animal. One of his supporters said that the man was deeply upset by the death of his dog. They speculated that a passerby had broken the window out of misplaced concern for the creature left in the car. The mayor of Oupeye said he was "shocked by the dramatic turn of events in the case". Mayor Serge Fillot said: "Personally, it is the first time that I have witnessed this type of event, namely a shocking, dramatic event, which is publicized, followed by a manhunt organized on Facebook with an identification of the person, whom I know, and which leads during the night to revenge, an attempt at revenge which could also have resulted in the death of the person." Prosecutors are running two concurrent investigations: one into possible animal abuse and the other into the threats and arson against the owner. 3
Irish Times
07-07-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Never employ a cat. They are ‘unreliable, capricious and liable to absenteeism'
Do you ever wonder if something you are doing now will be remembered in 100 years? When humorist William L Alden sat down to write a jokey article in 1876, he hardly thought it would still be cited today. And yet here we are. His article in the New York Times wondered why no effort had been made to develop the intellectual powers of the domestic cat. He then spun a yarn about the Belgian Society for the Elevation of the Domestic Cat investigating the possibility of using cats to deliver the post. A sort of Postman Cat, if you like. He claimed 37 cats were called into service in Liège as part of the great experiment. They were released a long way from home and tracked to see how long it would take them to arrive back. They all returned within 24 hours. This was proof, he declared, that their homing instinct could be harvested to deliver messages from nearby villages. The letters would be fastened around their necks in waterproof bags. No doubt the article provoked a chortle from a few readers and was then promptly forgotten about. Until 2018. This was when the Twitter account of the New York Times's archive posted a screenshot of the article. And from then on, it was reposted regularly as fact by people you think might know better. READ MORE As expected, some people were outraged at the harnessing of cats to do the work of humans, while others used it to promote their anti-cats agenda or to disparage the population of Belgium. And to this day, the article is still being reposted as fact on the platform, now known as X. But cats have found gainful employment with at least one post office network – the institution that is the British Post Office. According to the Postal Museum in London, the Post Office employed cats from 1868 to keep the mice at bay. They started with an allowance of one shilling a week and got a 6d per week pay rise five years later. The matter arose in the House of Commons in the 1950s when it was noted with some outrage that the cats had not had a pay rise in decades. Defending the pay scheme the Assistant Postmaster-General told the MPs that the cats were 'frequently unreliable, capricious in their duties and liable to prolonged absenteeism' and he also noted that there had been no complaints about the wage freeze from the cats. Tibs, who was stationed at Post Office headquarters, was the most famous feline employee of them all and received an obituary in the Post Office magazine when he died in 1964. Our own An Post could find no evidence of similar arrangements when I inquired if the GPO ever had any cats on the payroll. Perhaps the Irish cats were too busy being muses for the literary establishment? From WB Yeats to James Joyce to Maeve Binchy, there is scarcely an Irish writer who has not written about cats or been photographed with a feline friend. Brendan Behan owned a cat called Beamish, according to his biography by Michael O'Sullivan. Apparently Behan taught him to stand on his hind paws and 'give the IRA salute'. He was so proud of the cat that he entered it in the Mansion House cat show. As he didn't own a cat basket, he brought the cat to the show in a meat safe. Records do not show if Beamish won a prize, or if arriving in a meat safe took away some of his prestige. But the most outrageous story about writers' cats belongs to Oscar Wilde – if it actually happened at all. It was reported that Wilde once found a cat happily dozing on his favourite fur coat. He needed the coat but did not want to disturb this peaceful tableau and so he cut the sleeve from his fur coat and left with the rest of his coat. He must have looked a bit lopsided when he arrived at the soirée but no doubt he charmed everyone present with another sparkling anecdote. There is more than one hole in this story – and that's not counting the armhole of the fur coat. Surely a flamboyant clothes horse like Oscar Wilde would have had more than one coat to choose from? The man had more capes and cloaks than a Harry Potter convention. And surely such a style icon wouldn't be caught dead wearing a coat with one sleeve hacked off? I fear Oscar Wilde's one-armed fur coat belongs with the 37 post cats of Liege. At least the non-existent cats will be kept warm by the imaginary fur coat.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Young Mothers' Review: The Dardenne Brothers Bring Clear-Sighted Observation and Empathy to a Tender Snapshot of Women at a Crossroads
The stripped-down aesthetic principles, compassionate humanism and naturalistic purity in the films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne make their body of work uncommonly cohesive. It's easy to be glib about the influential Belgian brothers and say you know exactly what you're getting with a new Dardenne film — much like their social realist counterpart across the North Sea, Ken Loach, whose films they began helping to produce in 2009. But anticipating the form, the political leanings or broad thematic concerns of a movie is not the same as knowing in advance where it will take you, what kind of marginalized lives it will illuminate. Ever since their international breakthrough in the 1990s with La Promesse and Rosetta, there's always been the capacity to surprise in a Dardenne movie. Their latest, Young Mothers (Jeunes Mères), is the filmmakers' most surprising work in years. It provides unfiltered emotional access to the anxieties and hopes of five vulnerable working-class teenage women and the babies requiring their love and care, often when they can barely care for themselves. More from The Hollywood Reporter Cannes Power Outage Disrupts City, Festival Continues Inside IMG's Huge Sports Production Weekend: From English, U.S., Saudi Soccer to Basketball and F1 'Honey Don't!' Review: Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza and Chris Evans Get Stranded in Ethan Coen's Wayward Whodunit The project was hatched out of a visit by the Dardennes to a maternal support home near Liège, with the initial aim of developing a story about one young mother struggling to connect with her baby. But they were so struck by what they witnessed there — among the mothers as well as the nursing, counseling and administrative staff — that they expanded their plans to build a multicharacter ensemble piece. That alone marks a shift for the writer-directors, whose work tends predominantly to lock in on one or two main characters. It also allows them to draw even more than usual on their background in documentary. Young Mothers is closer to docu-fiction than any of their recent work. It follows the struggles of four women, three of them with newborns and one who's pregnant with a looming due date, plus a fifth whose stay at the shelter is nearing its end. Just two weeks away from giving birth, Jessica (Babette Verbeek) waits in an agitated state at a bus stop where she has organized to meet her biological mother Morgane (India Hair), who gave her up for adoption when she was younger than her daughter is now. Both before and after the arrival of her baby, Jessica longs to understand the reasoning behind her mother's decision, and to know if she ever felt remorse. Perla (Lucie Laruelle) has given birth to a son while the boy's father, Robin (Gunter Duret), was in juvenile detention. She brings him a spliff to celebrate his release, but Robin shows little affection for her and barely even looks at their child. While Perla has signed out of the shelter for several hours, expecting to spend the day with him, Robin can't get away fast enough. Perla faints when she gets back, and another young mother, Julie (Elsa Houben), massages her to knead the numbness out of her body. Fifteen-year-old Ariane (Janaina Halloy Fokan) wants to put her infant daughter in foster care and finish school. Her mother Nathalie (Christelle Cornil), who talked her out of having an abortion, is against that plan, insisting she can help raise the child. But Nathalie is a drunk who has been in an abusive relationship with a violent man. At first, she coaxes Ariane to visit by assuring her that she has quit drinking and dumped the guy, but there are signs that indicate otherwise. Growing impatient with her daughter's rebukes, Nathalie snaps, 'He hit me worse than he hit you.' Julie and her baby's sweet-natured father, Dylan (Jef Jacobs), are both recovering addicts. They leave their young daughter at a childcare facility while they go across town to see a subsidized apartment where they hope to live as a family. Dylan, a baker's apprentice, wants to marry her; their journey on his moped is one of the film's loveliest sequences, an image of freedom and happiness that suggests such a life might be within reach. But there are hiccups. Setbacks are as much a part of these women's realities as their tentative steps forward, yearning to carve out better lives for themselves and their children. One incentive to keep trying is the success of Naïma (Samia Hilmi), who is preparing to move with her child into their own flat and is on track to secure a job as a railway ticket inspector. Her sendoff from the shelter, with cake served outside in the garden, is one of many affecting displays of solidarity. Others have a bumpier path: Julie relapses into drug use and anxiety attacks; Perla refuses to read the obvious signs that Robin has no interest in settling down with her or becoming a hands-on father; Jessica keeps hitting a wall with her mother and has a hostile encounter with the unsympathetic parents of her baby's father, who run what appears to be a successful gym. They demand to know what she wants from their son, insisting that she's to blame for her situation since she declined to have the abortion they offered to pay for. The filmmakers thread these stories seamlessly into a larger picture that balances despair with moments that point cautiously toward a more stable future. There's never a false note from the young actors, all of whom have deeply moving scenes. But Young Mothers is also captivating when it's simply taking in the quotidian responsibilities of new parenthood — feeding, diaper changing, bathtime — or when it catches an expression of wonder or joy as a mother gazes into the tiny face of the child she has created. DP Benoît Dervaux's camera is always attentive, never intrusive or fussy, and the use of only available light adds to the documentary-like authenticity of the stories. Possibly the single most gorgeous moment in the movie happens when one of the mothers, bracing for the wrenching separation of putting her baby into foster care, straps the infant into a car seat. If you don't melt when you see the blissful smile that spreads across the baby's adorable face and lights up her eyes, I suspect you're a terrible person. As attuned as they are to the harsh experiences of characters living bare-bones existences on the fringes of society, the Dardennes have never been doom-peddling fatalists. That aspect is clear in a number of beautiful forward-facing scenes — Ariane writing a letter for her daughter to read when she turns 18; Jessica breaking through and being able to communicate with Morgane when her dogged determination pays off; Perla having a blowup fight with her older half-sister, Angèle (Joely Mbundu), but then reconciling with genuine warmth and an offer of support; and especially, Julie and Dylan taking their baby to visit a former music teacher who helped them both. The Dardennes are not in the business of offering easy fixes for their characters' difficulties. But when the teacher sits at the piano to begin the child's introduction to music, Mozart's 'Rondo a la Turca' sounds like a hymn of triumphant resilience and elation. Best of The Hollywood Reporter Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Young Mothers' Review: Taut and Tender Drama About a Home for Teenage Moms Shows What the Dardennes Do Best
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes have settled into a comfortable niche over the course of 13 feature films. Well-researched social-realist depictions of marginalized people butting up against intransigent institutions is the way the record goes. To be fair to les frères Dardennes, there is a reliable level of unshowy competence as well as an integrity to their insistence on embedding with unglamorous, recognizable people. All the while, they facilitate other filmmakers in bringing related French and Belgian slice-of-life visions to fruition. They helped to produce one of the best debuts of last year, 'Julie Keeps Quiet' by Leonardo Van Dijl. At this edition of Cannes alone there are two films to bear their names as producers: 'Enzo' by Laurent Cantet and Robin Campillo opened Directors Fortnight and, neatly enough, 'Adam's Sake' by Laura Wandel opened Critics' Week. More from IndieWire These Cannes 2025 Prize Winners Will Inspire Oscar Campaigns Cowboys vs. Accountants: The Real World of International Production Financing | Future of Filmmaking Summit at Cannes Earnest force-for-cinema credentials established, how does 'Young Mothers' fit into their body of work? Pivoting around a shelter for teenage mothers in the Belgian city of Liège, this modest offering does not deliver the immense emotional returns of 'Two Days, One Night' (2014) — arguably their last heavy-hitter. Nonetheless, there is a satisfying, compact completeness to their handling of the storylines of four different young mothers and sufficient grace notes are enabled in each case to stave off the cliches that occasionally threaten to engulf events. Jessica and Alba. Perla and Noa. Ariane and Lili. Julie and Mia. Each of the titular young mothers is a frightened child ill-equipped to handle the beloved bundle that now depends on them. The film's most immediate power stems from the casting of age-appropriate, largely unknown actresses, so that we have frequent cause to double-take at the sight of babies with babies. The shelter is depicted as a port in a storm where the girls participate in communal chores like cooking and cleaning and try to help each other out with childcare when they can. The grownup authorities are encouraging yet firm. Although the futures of Jessica, Perla, Ariane, Julie, are uncertain, this is a rare example of a positive institution showing up in a Dardennes flick. Each mother is dealing with non-existent or complex relationships with their families of origin. Bar Julie, who drew the long straw with her devoted Dylan, each mother is also dealing with an absent or checked-out baby daddy. Addiction, either personal or from their own caregivers, is a motif. Any sense of preparedness for the baby's arrival is notable by its absence as the characters spin out in spurts of productive energy, desperate to lay out the next track in the road in front of them. They want to bag a home or employment or a relationship to stop their new responsibility from feeling so totalizing and lonely. The curtain opens on a heavily pregnant Jessica (Babette Verbeek) as she rolls up to meet the mother who gave her up as a baby. It's a no show so caseworker Yasmine drives Jessica back home. Then we're with Noa (Lucie LaRuelle) as she picks up Perla's dad post release from a juvenile detention center. She's delighted to finally present as a family, whereas he is more animated by his first spliff in two months. The stress of it all causes Noa to collapse and Julie (Elsa Houben) helps to bring her back to her body with a massage. It won't be until later that we discover the demons that Julie is fighting. The most fully inhabited inter-generational microcosm comes courtesy of Ariane (Janaina Halloy Foken). Her pressures are packaged in a brilliant, ragged performance by Christelle Cornill as the mother that forced her not to have an abortion. Their scenes reveal that Ariane is sturdier than the precarious adult who has only recently shed a violent ex and is so obsessed with baby Lili that we fear for the vacuum she is contending with alone. Cornill is a volatile presence capable of delivering a backhander before falling to her knees in remorse. Halloy Foken (whose credits include 'Inexorable' by Fabrice Du Welz) holds her own as a focused teenager determined not to let her life be derailed by emotional blackmail close to home. The brothers do rigorous work in cutting between these four stories while letting them intersect as the girls warmly co-exist in the shelter. Essential character details emerge amidst the pace that drives their daily goals, and the fears bubbling underneath occasionally erupt, without anyone having to pay the price for this natural human upset. If there is an archetypal quality to each girl and if this is amplified by the stereotypical nature of their problems, there is enough tenderness in the atmosphere of the shelter to allow each actor to take their foot of the gas and relax into the small and soothing tasks that make up domesticity. A great deal of mastery is present in the balancing of disparate storylines and the blending of contrasting emotional landscapes. Individual insecurity is offset by release-valve relationships in a film that – like its young protagonist – is stronger than it looks. 'Young Mothers' premiered in Competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution. 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The Guardian
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Young Mother's Home review – outstanding return to form for the Dardenne brothers
Gentleness, compassion and love are the keynotes of this quietly outstanding new movie from the Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, for whom I think it is a return to form after some strained melodrama in their recent work. There is such simplicity and clarity here, an honest apportioning of dignity and intelligence to everyone on screen: every scene and every character portrait is unforced and unembellished. The straightforward assertion of hope through giving help and asking for help is very powerful. The Dardennes have again established their gold standard for social realist cinema at Cannes, and for regular attenders there is another poignant dimension – the memory of their Palme-winning film Rosetta presented at Cannes a quarter of a century ago, starring the then 17-year-old Émilie Dequenne in a very similar role to the characters here; her recent death from cancer was a great sadness. The location here is Liège in Belgium, at a state home for teen mothers or mothers-to-be, who are being helped and counselled in how to have their babies, how to bathe and feed them, how to make contact with prospective adoptive parents (if that is what they want), how to deal with existing issues of addiction and depression and how to find housing. The young mothers live together as a community, with a cooking rota. Perla (Lucie Laruelle) is a young woman of colour who has had her baby, Noé, but finds that the baby's father, who has just been released from a young offenders' institution and got a job in a garage, is testy and distant with Perla and his baby son. Jessica (Babette Verbeek) is pregnant, and – after her baby Alba is born – desperately seeking something like closure by trying to make contact with her own mother, Morgane (India Hair) who gave her up for fostering when she was Jessica's age. Julia (Elsa Houben) has been a homeless drug addict but with baby Mia is turning her life around in the home, with a traineeship at a hairdresser, and a caring boyfriend with whom she has some classic Dardenne scenes on a motor scooter, zooming down the street, that time-honoured movie realist trope for the freedom and vulnerability of the young. But perhaps the most complex figure is Ariane (Janaïna Halloy Fokan), a 15-year-old who wishes to give up baby Lili, to the rage of her own mum Nathalie (Christelle Cornil); in her anguish Nathalie wishes to be a grandma or even replacement mum, if Ariane doesn't want the baby – supposedly determined to quit her drinking and the abusive situations which made Ariane so determined not to go the same route. The babies-having-babies imagery is of course what makes this film so poignant – and also the realisation that the careworn older generation, still conflicted about the question of their own responsibility for all this and encumbered by their mistakes and the consequences of their choices, were in their teen daughters' situation so recently. Then there is the heart-wrenching sweetness of the babies themselves: baby Lili smiles tenderly at Ariane at a terribly ironic moment. What lies ahead for these children? The same thing, or something different? The film boils down to a fundamental question: having decided against abortion, is it more responsible, more loving, more heroically sacrificial in fact, to give up your baby for adoption? Or is it an existential failure of will, of courage, perpetuating a middle-class buyers' market in adoptive parenthood? There is of course no answer to be had, but there is faith in a better future here, and the final scene, involving the poem The Farewell by Apollinaire, is very moving. The Young Mother's Home screened at the Cannes film festival.
