All posts tagged: festival

Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2026 Sets Jafar Panahi, Nader Saeivar Movie

Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2026 Sets Jafar Panahi, Nader Saeivar Movie

Fifty-year-old Murad’s life is shaken to the core when he learns that his younger brother is gay. Murad would like to support his brother, but their traditional Muslim family is against it. As a result, he finds himself subjected to pressures from all sides – from his father, who has close ties to the local imam, and from his brother’s circle of friends as well. He would like to help everyone, but as he slowly falls into a spiral of conflicts and mounting difficulties, he finds that he, too, is in need of help. Another integral part of this family drama is the theme of migration and dialogue – not just between different religions, but within communities themselves. For his fourth feature film, director Nader Saeivar collaborated with Jafar Panahí, who contributed as producer and editor.  The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) on Tuesday unveiled the lineup of its main Crystal Globes competition, the Proxima competition section and the Special Screenings program for its 60th edition and 80th anniversary edition, including Hijamat, a competition movie from Iranian director Nader Saeivar (The Witness), …

How to do a summer music festival on a budget

How to do a summer music festival on a budget

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Many of us spend the whole year looking forward to soaking up the atmosphere at a music festival, but it’s easy to forget just how quickly the costs of tickets, travel and on-site spending can add up. With festival season now underway, it can be tempting to get carried away, so we spoke to Vix Leyton, consumer finance expert at thinkmoney, who shared her top tips on managing your money wisely at a festival so you can enjoy the experience without the guilt of overspending. Book a combined ticket and coach travel bundle “Many people underestimate how expensive travelling to and from a festival will be, so it’s really important to check exactly where the festival campsite is in relation to the nearest public …

Shanghai Film Festival Unveils 2026 Competition Section

Shanghai Film Festival Unveils 2026 Competition Section

The Shanghai International Film Festival unveiled the main competition lineup for its Golden Goblet Awards over the weekend, with all 12 titles bowing as world premieres — a first in the section’s history, according to the festival. The 28th edition runs June 12-21. Three of the main competition entries are Chinese-language productions, all from emerging directors. In total, 49 titles across five competitive sections are vying for prizes, drawn from a record submission pool of roughly 4,100 films from 125 countries and regions. The main competition spans 15 countries and territories. The Chinese-language entries are Zhong Kaifeng’s Atlantic Rhapsody and Liu Xiaoyang’s The Great Skull, both from the mainland, and Frankie Tam Gong-Yuen’s Secret in the Box, a mainland–Hong Kong co-production. Atlantic Rhapsody is said to blend drama, comedy and fantasy in a story about a supermarket stock clerk left sleepless and hearing voices after he accidentally cooks a shark. The Great Skull, a dark comedy starring Wen Qi, Ni Hongjie and Yu Entai, follows a soon-to-graduate young woman and her mother as they contend …

Mighty Hoopla 2026 review: Lily Allen shines as our West End Girl at a festival packed with surprises

Mighty Hoopla 2026 review: Lily Allen shines as our West End Girl at a festival packed with surprises

Get the inside track from Roisin O’Connor with our free weekly music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This Fortune favours the fabulous, which is perhaps why the sun is out once again for another year of Mighty Hoopla: the UK’s campest, most colourful celebration of all things pop. The festival has got even bigger this time around and, somehow, better, with a legion of stellar performances and a jaw-dropping array of attractions vying for your attention. MEEK by name but certainly not by nature, one of the UK’s most endearing new pop prospects kicks off the afternoon in a flurry of neon tulle. Her defiant anthem “Fabulous” is the perfect start as her sizeable audience chants along with her: “I just got my heart broken but I look f***in’ fabulous/ Yeah I’m back in therapy but I look f***in’ fabulous…” Members of the crowd snap their fans – bearing the legends “C***”, “S**G” or “GAY” – in approval. Strolling around the …

Shanghai Film Festival to Open With Hong Kong Drama ‘Afterpiece’

Shanghai Film Festival to Open With Hong Kong Drama ‘Afterpiece’

Hong Kong drama Afterpiece, produced by industry veteran Derek Yee and helmed by first-time feature filmmaker Keane T.K. Wong, will world-premiere as the opening film of the 28th Shanghai International Film Festival, the festival announced this week. The event’s full lineup will be unveiled on June 3, and the festival runs June 12-21 this year. Written and directed by Wong, Afterpiece follows Owen, a celebrated stage director who has spent more than a decade in creative paralysis. When his former lover resurfaces and his wife begins to drift toward betrayal, Owen commits to writing, directing and starring in a new theatrical production — only to become dangerously entangled with an untrained young actress he encounters during casting, steadily dissolving the boundary between stage and life. Stephen Fung stars as Owen, with Chrissie Chau, Myolie Wu and Angela Yuen rounding out the cast. The project grew out of the Directors’ Succession Scheme of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, which pairs established filmmakers with emerging directors as producer-mentors. Yee is best known for a string …

Paranormal investigator who ‘married a ghost’ says she’s now being haunted by ‘headbanging’ bobblehead toy from festival

Paranormal investigator who ‘married a ghost’ says she’s now being haunted by ‘headbanging’ bobblehead toy from festival

A paranormal investigator who “married a ghost” claims she is being haunted by a suspected demonic “headbanging” bobblehead toy from Download Festival that moves on its own when heavy metal plays. Brocarde, 43, a singer from Oxford who uses only her performance name, said her “life changed” in 2021 when she encountered Edwardo, the spirit of a Victorian soldier who professed his love for her. They “married” on Halloween 2022 but divorced the following year after she claimed Edwardo got too drunk on their honeymoon to Barry Island in Wales, became possessive and even became infatuated with the ghost of Marilyn Monroe. Following the split, she has travelled the world documenting the paranormal, claiming to have seen an alien-like figure in Area 51 and Georgian-era spirits at Download Festival, with one moshing to the band Busted. She said she recently discovered a mysterious plastic toy of Download Festival’s mascot – a dog with large, pointed teeth – in her basement, which she believes may be haunted by one of the festival ghosts. Brocarde said marks …

AI-Generated Film About Iranian Protest Violence Heads to Tribeca Film Festival

AI-Generated Film About Iranian Protest Violence Heads to Tribeca Film Festival

Lights, camera … artificial intelligence?  Dreams of Violets, a feature-length movie inspired by the protest violence and massacres that unfolded in Iran in early 2026, is coming to the Tribeca Film Festival on June 10. The movie was directed and produced by brothers Ash and Pooya Koosha under their AI-focused production company, Fountain 0, and every visual featured in the 75-minute docudrama was generated by AI. The inclusion of Dreams of Violets at Tribeca comes amid the US-Israel war on Iran and ongoing tensions in the Middle East. At a time when relatively few filmmakers from the region can tell stories like this on a global stage, the subject matter feels especially timely and likely to spark debate. The questions surrounding films like this shaped nearly every panel and discussion at an AI filmmaking conference I attended this week in Culver City, California, called AI on the Lot. Throughout the event, speakers expressed sustained optimism that AI video tools will expand access to filmmaking for underrepresented creators who have historically faced financial barriers to bringing their projects …

Robert De Niro on Building the Tribeca Festival With Jane Rosenthal, Wrangling a Cut of ‘Gangs of New York’ From Harvey Weinstein, and Making ‘at Least Another One’ With Martin Scorsese

Robert De Niro on Building the Tribeca Festival With Jane Rosenthal, Wrangling a Cut of ‘Gangs of New York’ From Harvey Weinstein, and Making ‘at Least Another One’ With Martin Scorsese

As partnerships go, Robert De Niro has been pretty lucky. For starters, there’s his legendary 50-year run with Martin Scorsese, a collaboration that began in the ‘70s with classics like Mean Streets and Taxi Driver and has continued on all the way to 2023’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Then there are co-stars like Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel—both Scorsese company men who’ve shared the screen with him several times—and of course, Al Pacino, arguably De Niro’s only true peer, who burned through the screen with De Niro in Michael Mann’s Heat and Scorsese’s The Irishman. But sometimes lost in all that testosterone is one of De Niro’s longest-running collaborations—his 37-year partnership with the powerhouse producer Jane Rosenthal, who he founded Tribeca Productions with in 1989. With Rosenthal, De Niro entered a fruitful, often financially lucrative next chapter in his career in the ‘90s, starring in films like Wag the Dog, Analyze This, and the Meet the Parents movies. (Focker-in-Law, the hotly-anticipated fourth installment of the Meet the Parents franchise, co-starring Ben Stiller and Ariana …

Lights, camera, algorithm: First fully AI-generated film set to premiere at Tribeca Festival

Lights, camera, algorithm: First fully AI-generated film set to premiere at Tribeca Festival

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter A movie made entirely with artificial intelligence has become the first of its kind to be accepted into a film festival. Dreams of Violets — the 75-minute docudrama movie generated by AI — has been programmed to make its world premiere June 10 at Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, making it the first AI-generated live-action feature-length film to make a festival’s official lineup, according to its production studio Fountain 0. The movie, inspired by real events from 47 years of Iranian civilian resistance, was made on a $2,000 budget across three months by directors and producers Ash and Pooya Koosha. The Koosha brothers, who were born in Iran and left the country in 2009, said that making a movie with no actors, sets or cameras was not what they initially had in mind. “I want to be honest about …

Muslims worldwide celebrate Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice | Religion News

Muslims worldwide celebrate Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice | Religion News

Published On 27 May 202627 May 2026 Muslims around the world have begun celebrating Eid al-Adha, the “Festival of Sacrifice”, which falls on the 10th day of Dhul Hijjah, the 12th and final month of the Muslim lunar calendar. One of the biggest holidays in the Muslim calendar, it coincides with the last day of the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. In Gaza, where Israel’s months-long offensive has devastated neighbourhoods and displaced most of the population, many families are marking Eid in tents and crowded shelters, with little meat or festive clothing. More than 1.7 million people are taking part in the Hajj this year, slightly up from 2025, even as a war pitting the United States and Israel against Iran casts a long shadow across the Middle East. On Tuesday, pilgrims prayed on Mount Arafat, where Prophet Muhammad is believed to have delivered his final sermon. They then spent the night out in the open at Muzdalifah, halfway between Arafat and Mina, where they collected pebbles for the symbolic stoning of the devil. …