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Mother of jailed Egyptian-UK activist returns to full hunger strike

The mother of jailed Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abdel Fattah announced on Tuesday that she was returning to a full hunger strike to protest against her son’s lengthy imprisonment in Egypt.Laila Soueif, 69, eased her strike in March after UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he had “pressed” for Fattah’s release in a call with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.She began consuming 300 calories a day through a liquid nutritional supplement but still went without food.With her son still languishing in jail two months later, Soueif said it was time to return to taking just rehydration salts, tea without sugar and vitamins.”I’m going to be on full hunger strike, which means I take zero calories,” she told AFP outside Downing Street, home to Starmer’s official residence.Soueif said she would also return to protesting outside Downing Street for an hour every day during the week, following a brief pause after Starmer’s intervention.The London-based mother began her protest on September 29, 2024, which she said marked the day Fattah was due to be released after completing a five-year sentence.Fattah, 43, a pro-democracy and rights campaigner, was arrested by Egyptian authorities in September 2019 and given a five-year sentence for “spreading false news”.He was a key figure in the 2011 revolt that toppled Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak and was given UK citizenship in 2022 through his British-born mother.Fattah launched his own hunger strike on March 1 after hearing about his mother’s admission to hospital, which he continues, according to the campaign group.Soueif, a mathematician and activist, was in February admitted to a London hospital with dangerously low blood sugar and blood pressure, and given a glucose drip.

Iran’s Panahi pokes fun at Iran’s jailers in Cannes comeback

Dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi makes his first appearance at an international film festival in 15 years at Cannes on Tuesday, with a story about political prisoners trying to get back at their jailers.Panahi was banned from making films and has been repeatedly detained since 2009 over his gritty, social dramas, considered subversive by the Islamic republic’s regime.His new film, “It Was Just An Accident” — which is in the running for Cannes’s top prize — uses humour to point out injustice.Critics clapped at the end — a rare occurrence in press screenings.The director said his own time in prison helped colour the wry tale.Panahi, 64, told Screen magazine: “One of the characteristics of the Iranian people is their humour. This regime has been trying for over four decades now to impose on Iranians tragedy, tears and suffering but the Iranians always come up with humour and jokes.”The acclaimed director has repeatedly skirted the ban on him by shooting in secret, including 2022’s “No Bears”, which screened at the Venice film festival and won a special jury prize there while he was in jail.”Although I am not banned any more, it didn’t really change my actual situation. I still had to work illegally,” he told Screen.A source close to the filmmaker, who asked not to be named, said Panahi’s latest film had been shot in secret and had no government funding. Cannes has a long history of supporting independent Iranian filmmakers, who often face legal problems and intimidation from Iranian authorities.- Assange appears -A second Iranian film is competing in the top Cannes competition this year — “Mother and Child” by Saeed Roustaee.Roustaee was sentenced to six months in prison for the screening of his film “Leila’s Brothers” in Cannes in 2022 but his latest production has drawn criticism from some exiled directors.The film’s screening in Cannes has been hailed by Iranian state media, including the state news agency IRNA. Fellow Iranian Cannes favourite Mohammad Rasoulof, who fled the country last year under the threat of an eight-year jail sentence, defended Roustaee, telling Variety there was a “clear distinction between the propaganda films of the Islamic republic and the films that are made under the constraints of censorship”.Wikileaks founder Julian Assange — who spent five years in prison over his leak of classified US files — is also in Cannes for the premiere on Wednesday of a documentary about him, “The Six Billion Dollar Man”. Its American director, Eugene Jarecki, was awarded the first ever Golden Globe for documentary at Cannes on Monday for his previous work, including his 2018 film about Elvis, “The King”. – Denzel’s up and down night -Panahi and Assange’s presence comes at one of the most political Cannes for many years, dominated by protest over the war in Gaza, sexual politics and US President Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on movies from “foreign lands”.Tensions have even spilled over onto the red carpet with a ban on too-revealing “naked dresses” and “voluminous” trains that take up too much space.And on Monday night a tense exchange with a photographer took some of the joy from Hollywood star Denzel Washington’s lifetime achievement award.The surprise honorary Palme d’Or was handed to Washington, 70, at the premiere of his latest film with New York director Spike Lee, “Highest 2 Lowest” — the first time the actor has appeared at the festival.”It’s a total surprise. I’m so emotional,” Washington said, according to a member of the audience.The photographer had earlier appeared to grab the actor by the arm as he posed in front of a bank of cameras. Washington shook him off and then pointed his finger at him and appeared to say “Stop it” a number of times, videos showed.But despite the awkward incident, Washington’s mood was no doubt lifted by the rave reviews of his and Lee’s film.Loosely adapted from a Japanese master Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic, “High and Low”, the Hollywood Reporter said the film had “wit, high style and kinetic energy to burn”.The Guardian praised Washington’s “magnificent form” in the movie, saying he played a music mogul with “grinning monarchical assurance”. The Cannes film festival runs until Saturday.

Gazan twins in Cannes warn ‘nothing left’ of homeland

Twin Gazan filmmakers Arab and Tarzan Nasser said they never thought the title of their new film “Once Upon A Time In Gaza” would have such heartbreaking resonance.”Right now there is nothing left of Gaza,” said Tarzan when it premiered on Monday at the Cannes film festival.Since militants from Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, more than 18 months of Israeli bombardment has ravaged large swathes of the Palestinian territory and killed tens of thousands of people.Israel has vowed to “take control of all” the besieged territory of more than two million inhabitants, where United Nations agencies have warned of famine following Israel’s two-month total blockade.Israel allowed in several aid trucks on Monday but the UN said it was only “a drop in the ocean” of needs.The Nasser brothers, who left Gaza in 2012, said their new film set in 2007, when Hamas Islamists seized control of the strip, explains the lead-up to today’s catastrophic war.”Once Upon A Time In Gaza”, which screened in the festival’s Un Certain Regard section, follows friends Yahia and Osama as they try to make a little extra cash by selling drugs stuffed into falafel sandwiches.Using a manual meat grinder that does not rely on rare electricity, student Yahia blends up fava beans and fresh herbs to make the patty-shaped fritters in the back of Osama’s small run-down eatery, while dreaming of being able to leave the Israeli-blockaded coastal strip.Charismatic hustler Osama meanwhile visits pharmacy after pharmacy to amass as many pills as he can with stolen prescriptions, pursued by a corrupt cop.-‘Human beings’-Israel first imposed a blockade on Gaza in June 2006 after militants there took one of its soldiers, and reinforced it in September 2007 several months after Hamas took power.”The blockade was gradually tightened, tightened until reaching the genocide we see today,” said Tarzan.”Until today they are counting the calories that enter,” he added.An Israeli NGO said in 2012 that documents showed Israeli authorities had calculated that 2,279 calories per person per day was deemed sufficient to prevent malnutrition in Gaza.The defence ministry however claimed it had “never counted calories” when allowing aid in.Despite all this, Gazans have always shown a love of life and been incredibly resilient, the directors said.”My father is until now in northern Gaza,” Tarzan said, explaining the family’s two homes had been destroyed.But before then, “every time a missile hit, damaging a wall or window, he’d fix it up the next day”, he said.In films, “the last thing I want to do is talk about Israel and what it’s doing”, he added.”Human beings are more important –- who they are, how they’re living and adapting to this really tough reality.”In their previous films, the Nasser twins followed an elderly fisherman enamoured with his neighbour in the market in “Gaza Mon Amour” and filmed women trapped at the hairdresser’s in their 2015’s “Degrade”.Like “Once Upon A Time in Gaza”, they were all shot in Jordan.- ‘Gaza was a riviera’ -As the siege takes its toll in “Once Upon A Time In Gaza”, a desolate Yahia is recruited to star in a Hamas propaganda film.In Gaza, “we don’t have special effects but we do have live bullets”, the producer says in one scene.Arab said, long before Gazan tap water became salty and US President Donald Trump sparked controversy by saying he wanted to turn their land into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, the coastal strip was a happy place.”I remember when I was little, Gaza actually was a riviera. It was the most beautiful place. I can still taste the fresh water on my tongue,” he said.”Now Trump comes up with this great invention that he wants to turn it into a riviera after Israel completely destroyed it?”Hamas’s October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza including 34 the military says are dead.Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed 53,486 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to Gaza health authorities, whose figures the United Nations deems reliable.Gaza health authorities said at least 44 people were killed there in the early hours of Tuesday. 

Cannes film shines light on secret life of migrant maids

Or Sinai didn’t have to go far to find the subject of her acclaimed debut film about the secret lives of the millions of women who support their families back home by being domestic workers abroad.She was chatting to the “wonderful Ukrainian woman” who looks after her mother, who has Parkinson’s Disease, when the housekeeper started telling her about the lover she had taken.”I realised that our view of migrant women is so wrong,” she told AFP at the Cannes film festival, where “Mama” is being shown in the official selection.”We think of them as poor women sacrificing themselves to do everything for their families.”But actually as I researched I realised they develop these temporary identities,” picking up a little comfort where they can.When the Ukrainian housekeeper “started working for my parents, they were embarrassed by her and tried to behave as if she wasn’t there. It was crazy,” Sinai said.”So I started talking to her and I immediately fell in love with her because she’s super funny.”She’s only three years older than me and she has such a dramatic life, which is an absurd contrast to how many people like her are in the shadows of our society” living their own hidden lives.- Israel govt ‘doing horrible stuff’ -It isn’t the first time Sinai has turned received ideas upside down. She won the Cannes Festival’s top prize for short films with “Anna” in 2016, where an overworked mother heads off looking for sex in a small town after getting an unexpected afternoon off from looking after her son.”Mama” is about a housekeeper who returns home from working for a rich couple in Israel to find her best laid plans for the family she has been bankrolling have been turned upside down in her absence.”In her attempt to give her daughter something meaningful, she actually lost all the years with her growing up and her ability to connect with her kids,” Sinai, 40, said.Instead she finds her passive, less-than-useless husband has supplanted her as her daughter’s confidant.Sinai’s own best laid plans were thrown up in the air by the outbreak of war in Ukraine, with the director forced to switch the story to neighbouring Poland.Belarus-born Evegenia Dodina, who plays the housekeeper — best known as Villanelle’s mother in “Killing Eve” — has been winning glowing reviews for her “carefully calibrated performance”.Screen magazine said: “It’s not merely that she conveys her joy and sadness, but how emotionally torn her character feels.”War closer to home in Gaza has cast a shadow over “Mama” and other Israeli films at Cannes.Hundreds of top film figures have signed an open letter condemning Israel for committing “genocide” in Gaza and the film industry for its “passivity”.With scores dying every day in Israeli strikes on Gaza since the festival began last week, Sinai said it was important to make “a clear separation between the government and the Israeli people”. “The government is doing horrible stuff” which many people were opposed to, she told AFP. “I wish the war would end immediately. I will always carry this on my back.”Between Ukraine and Gaza, “it’s really a miracle that we managed to make the film happen at this horrible time,” Sinai added.”The film is about wanting people to feel love for other people and that’s the only thing I can do, to spread love instead of war.”