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      Watching ‘Shoah’ in Berlin, 80 Years After Auschwitz

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      A commemorative screening of the monumental documentary came as some artists are questioning whether Germany’s Holocaust remembrance culture stifles free speech.On the first Sunday of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah” (1985) — a nine-and-a-half-hour documentary about the Holocaust — screened to a nearly full house in the auditorium of the city’s Academy of Arts.Tricia Tuttle, the festival’s new director, spoke before the film, along with a curator from Berlin’s Jewish Museum and Dominique Petithory-Lanzmann, the director’s widow. Tuttle called the screening a “triple remembrance”: This year is the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the 40th anniversary of “Shoah,” and the centenary birthday of Lanzmann himself, who died in 2018.The mood was reverential. “Shoah” — which consists of interviews with Holocaust survivors, bystanders and perpetrators, as well as footage of the sites referenced by the speakers, such as the Auschwitz and Treblinka death camps — is widely considered one of the greatest documentaries of all time. Its monumental length is key to its power; it suspends viewers in the act of witnessing humanity’s capacity for evil and its astonishing resilience, which we see washed across the subjects’ faces as they tell their stories.There’s no denying Lanzmann’s achievements or the significance of “Shoah,” yet the festival’s commemorative programming — which also includes the world premiere of “All I Had Was Nothingness,” a documentary by Guillaume Ribot that pays homage to “Shoah” — also plays out amid growing concerns that Germany’s culture of Holocaust remembrance is stifling the free speech of other artists.Lanzmann, the director of “Shoah,” joined the French resistance against Nazi Germany as a teenager. He appears in “Shoah” as a passionate, at times even aggressive, interlocutor.Les Films AlephLast year, the film festival, known here as the Berlinale, came under fire after filmmakers participating in the event (including the directors of “No Other Land,” a documentary currently nominated for an Oscar) were denounced by German officials and festival executives for making statements in solidarity with Palestinians.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Everyone Is Still Talking About ‘Paddington 2’

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      With the third movie now in theaters, let’s look at how the 2018 film became a sleeper hit, thanks to Hugh Grant’s villain and its showstopping end credits.“Paddington 2 is the greatest film ever made,” one user posted on X in 2022.This tweet was not ironic.In the seven years since its release in January 2018, the film about a marmalade-loving bear’s quest to find the perfect gift for his beloved aunt has become an internet phenomenon, spawning memes, think pieces and an endorsement from Nicolas Cage. For a time, it was the best-reviewed film ever on the aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.“A very eclectic group of people respond to it in the way that they do,” David Heyman, a producer on “Paddington 2” and its 2015 predecessor, “Paddington,” said in a recent phone conversation from his home in London. The Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, for example, confessed to Heyman he was a fan.Now with the third feature-length installment in the franchise, “Paddington in Peru,” in theaters — and already having passed the $100 million milestone at the international box office — it is hard to imagine that when “Paddington 2” first arrived in theaters stateside, it was only a modest box office success. Since its DVD and streaming releases, a devoted community of online fans has sprung up around it, evangelizing about the outsider bear who brought joy to their lives.“There’s humor in it for adults; there’s humor for children,” said Heyman, who grew up reading the Paddington books, written by the British author Michael Bond. “It never feels patronizing or like it’s talking down to its audience. It has a big, beating heart.”All three films are based on the children’s books about the duffle-coated, hard-staring bear, first published in 1958. In the first movie, Paddington emigrates from Peru to London in a story inspired by the World War II rescue operation that brought nearly 10,000 children from Nazi-occupied Europe to England. The second film, directed by Paul King, who wrote the script with Simon Farnaby, is an action adventure with stunning set sequences, following Paddington through a court trial, a prison escape and a daring pursuit by train.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      South Korean Actress Kim Sae-ron Is Found Dead

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      The 24-year-old star, once a prolific child actor, appeared at the Cannes Film Festival and on Netflix, until a drunk-driving incident in 2022 derailed her career.South Korean actress Kim Sae-ron, a former child star whose promising career suffered a setback in recent years after a drunk-driving incident, was found dead in her home on Sunday afternoon, police said.Ms. Kim, who was 24, was discovered by a friend who had visited her house, according to the Seongdong Police Station in Seoul. The police on Monday said Ms. Kim’s death was a suicide. One of South Korea’s most lauded young actors, Ms. Kim had not appeared in any shows since she faced public criticism after being convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol in 2022.Her death marks the latest tragedy to strike South Korea’s booming but high-pressure entertainment industry, which has faced criticism for the toll it places on the mental health of its burgeoning stars. A celebrity’s popularity is often contingent on a spotless reputation, experts say.Over the past few years, several young stars were ruled to have died by suicide, one after receiving hate messages for being outspoken and opinionated, and another after a legal battle put her romantic and sex life in the public domain.Ms. Kim started her acting career by starring in “A Brand New Life,” a film about a girl abandoned in an orphanage, in 2009. She was 9 years old when the movie premiered and was invited to the Cannes Film Festival.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      BAFTA Awards Winners: ‘Conclave,’ ‘Anora’ and ‘The Brutalist’ Take Home Top Prizes

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      “Anora” and “The Brutalist” also took home major prizes at the British equivalent of the Oscars, tipping the scales again.“Conclave” won the best movie title at the EE British Academy Film Awards at the Royal Festival Hall in London on Sunday — adding the latest twist to a chaotic awards season in which no one movie has dominated the major ceremonies.The film, which stars Ralph Fiennes and was directed by Edward Berger, is a thriller about the selection of a new pope. It took home four awards on Sunday at Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars, commonly known as the BAFTAs. The other three prizes were in minor categories: best editing, best adapted screenplay and outstanding British film.In securing the best film award, “Conclave” beat Sean Baker’s “Anora,” a dramedy in which an exotic dancer marries the son of a Russian oligarch, and Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist,” about a Jewish architect (Adrien Brody) rebuilding his life in the United States after the Holocaust.It also triumphed over the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” and “Emilia Pérez.”“Conclave” hadn’t previously featured among the major winners this awards season. It only secured one Golden Globe, for best screenplay, at a ceremony in which “Emilia Pérez” and “The Brutalist” were the big winners. More recently, the momentum for the best picture Oscar had swung to “Anora,” after that movie picked up major honors at this year’s Critic’s Choice ceremony and the Directors Guild of America and Producers Guild of America awards.Yet the prominence of “Conclave” at the BAFTAs will give the movie momentum going into this year’s Academy Awards, scheduled for March 2. There is significant overlap between the voting bodies for both awards, and the BAFTAs and Oscars regularly have the same winners.The cast and crew of “Conclave” looked stunned when the best film prize was announced. Isabella Rossellini, who plays a nun in the movie, stood onstage smiling gleefully throughout Berger’s acceptance speech, in which he said he was “deeply humbled” to see his film receive the honor.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Marvel’s New ‘Captain America’ Is No. 1, Despite a Backlash and Poor Reviews

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      “Captain America: Brave New World” was expected to take in $100 million from Thursday through Monday in North America.At the height of the superhero boom a few years ago, Disney pushed its Marvel assembly lines to run faster and faster. After awhile, quality suffered and ticket sales declined.So Disney slowed the pace. Last year, Marvel released one movie (the megasuccessful “Deadpool & Wolverine”) and two Disney+ series. To compare, in 2021 Marvel churned out four movies (with mixed results) and five Disney+ series.Factory problem fixed?Maybe: Marvel’s “Captain America: Brave New World” was a runaway No. 1 at the global box office over the weekend. The movie, which cost at least $300 million to make and market worldwide, was on pace to sell roughly $100 million in tickets from Thursday through Monday in the United States and Canada, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Moviegoers overseas were poised to chip in another $92 million or so.Maybe not: “Brave New World” received the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s lowest-ever grade (B-minus) from ticket buyers in CinemaScore exit polls. Reviews were only 50 percent positive, according to Rotten Tomatoes, which resulted in a “rotten” rating from the site. Just two Marvel movies rank lower on the Rotten Tomatoes meter, and both quickly ran out of box office steam after No. 1 starts that were driven by die-hard fans and marketing bombast.“Brave New World” outperformed analyst expectations amid a racist backlash from some internet users and right-wing pundits, who criticized Marvel’s decision to refresh the “Captain America” franchise by giving the title role to a Black actor. (A “D.E.I. hire,” they maintained in numerous X posts, a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.) Anthony Mackie, who took over the character from Chris Evans, also came under attack as “anti-American” for a comment he made while promoting the film overseas.“Captain America represents a lot of different things and I don’t think the term, you know, ‘America’ should be one of those representations,” Mr. Mackie said. “It’s about a man who keeps his word, who has honor, dignity and integrity. Someone who is trustworthy and dependable.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Oscars Rewind: How ‘American Beauty’ Lost Its Luster

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      At the 2000 Academy Awards, the film won five Oscars, including best picture. Then came 9/11, a tanking economy and Kevin Spacey.It was March 2000, and everything was coming up roses for “American Beauty.”There were the box office receipts (more than $350 million worldwide, not adjusted for inflation, against a budget of roughly $15 million, according to the data site Box Office Mojo). The rave reviews (“a hell of a picture,” Kenneth Turan wrote in The Los Angeles Times). The three Golden Globes.“It was bizarre, because I expected it to be a little art house movie,” Alan Ball, who won an Academy Award for writing the screenplay, said in a recent phone conversation from his home in Los Angeles. “I think that’s all that any of us expected it to be.”“I had no idea it was going to become what it became,” said Annette Bening, who played a materialistic wife in Ball’s satire about a suburban family whose father, Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), quits his office job and becomes obsessed with his teenage daughter’s best friend.Then, even more laurels: Five Oscars, including best picture, director (Sam Mendes), original screenplay (Ball), cinematography (Conrad L. Hall) and actor (Spacey).“I’m a little bit overwhelmed,” a wide-eyed Mendes said in his acceptance speech, as he joined the ranks of Delbert Mann, Jerome Robbins, Robert Redford, James L. Brooks and Kevin Costner as the only filmmakers to win the academy’s top directing honor for their feature directorial debut.“I had a flask in my pocket,” Ball said, recalling the moment. “That was the only way I could kind of deal with it.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chiwetel Ejiofor on the Shakespeare Play That ‘Revolutionized’ Him

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      The “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” actor talks about the ways John Coltrane, Paul Cézanne and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie influence him.Chiwetel Ejiofor went to see “Bridget Jones’s Diary” back in 2001, fully expecting to be bombarded by female energy.Instead, he left the theater stunned by how much he related to her, he said: “feeling all of that chaos and a little bit out of step with the world but somehow with optimism and hopefulness and a sort of fake-it-till-you-make-it spirit.”So when the director Michael Morris asked him to discuss “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy,” the franchise’s latest installment, over tea in London, Ejiofor didn’t have to fake anything.“I loved the whole world of it,” he said.This time around, Renée Zellweger’s Bridget is a widowed mother of two, and Ejiofor is Mr. Wallaker, her son’s science teacher and a potential love interest.Not that he would dare attempt to replace Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) and Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). “They’re iconic,” he said.But portraying a distinct character at a different, perhaps more challenging time in Bridget’s life “made it incredibly fun to play,” he said — if occasionally poignant. “You can’t hold onto your 30-something self obviously, but if you still maintain a bit of that quality, it assists you in navigating these waters.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Isabella Rossellini: “Conclave” Scene Stealer and First-Time Oscar Nominee

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      “Her name is Georgia O’Keeffe,” Isabella Rossellini said, as she dove her hands into the outrageously fluffy and dense coat of a Lincoln Longwool sheep, a rare English breed. Next up, weaving around the patio furniture, was Toto, a fleecy Finn. “Toto always wags his tail,” she said, giving him a pat. Rossellini’s flock of heritage animals had eagerly come trotting over as soon as they spotted her: The matriarch and founder of Mama Farm was home.Rossellini, the model turned actress turned animal behaviorist (“ethologist” is the term she uses), was giving a tour of her operation, nestled on 30 acres in a village in the middle of Long Island, one bright afternoon last week. There were goats and ducks and 150 chickens, now kept safely in their coops to protect them from bird flu. Before she picked me up at the train station, she had checked on the bees personally — “because everyone’s afraid of them,” she said — making sure they had food and were warm enough. “They have to keep themselves at 97 degrees, even if it is 20 outside,” Rossellini said. “They do like the penguins — they create a ball, and vibrate to create heat.”Rossellini’s mother, Ingrid Bergman, was nominated for seven Oscars and won three. If Rossellini wins on March 2, they would become the first mother-daughter pair to win.Thea Traff for The New York TimesBesides being a caretaker and trove of animal facts, Rossellini is also, at 72, a first-time Oscar nominee, as a supporting actress, for her small but pivotal role in “Conclave.” As Sister Agnes, an alert Mother Superior who holds her tongue until her morals lead her otherwise, Rossellini has some of the best lines in the movie. The Vatican-set dramatic thriller, about choosing a new pope, is also up for seven other awards, including best picture.For Rossellini, who imagined that notable acting jobs were in her rearview, it was an unexpected, and overwhelming, recognition. She is now in the record books, as one of the few mother-daughter pairs to be nominated: Her mother, Ingrid Bergman, was up for seven Oscars and won three, starting in 1944. If Rossellini goes home with the prize, it would make them the first winning mother-daughter twosome in history. Rossellini’s father, the neorealist filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, also landed one nomination, in 1950.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More