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Pro-euthanasia film The Room Next Door wins top prize in Venice
Pro-euthanasia film The Room Next Door has won the Venice Film Festival’s best film award.
The feature film starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore took the prestigious Golden Lion award on Saturday.
Earlier in the week, the Pedro Almodovar-directed film received an 18-minute standing ovation after it premiered at the festival – one of the longest in recent memory.
The film sees Swinton play a war correspondent suffering from terminal cancer. She asks her old friend, played by Moore, to be at her side as she takes her own life.
Almodovar said he made the film to communicate his belief euthanasia should be available around the world. “It is not a political issue, but a human issue,” the Oscar-winner Almodovar said. The film is his first feature film in English.
Almodovar also thanked Moore and Swinton for their performances.
“This award really belongs to them, it’s a film about two women and the two women are Julianne and Tilda.”
President of the jury, French actor Isabelle Huppert, said the film tackled important issues thoughtfully and without melodrama.
The Room Next Door is poised to be one of the most talked-about films of awards season.
The 81st edition of the world’s oldest film festival wrapped up on Saturday night, with international celebrities flocking to Venice’s red carpet.
Among the other award winners was Nicole Kidman who won the best actress award for her role in Babygirl, in which she plays a high-powered CEO putting her career and family on the line to begin an affair with her much younger intern.
Although Kidman was in Venice for the film’s premiere last week, the Australian actress did not attend the awards ceremony after learning her mother had died. “My heart is broken,” Kidman said in a statement read out onstage on her behalf. “I’m in shock, and I have to go to my family. But this award is for her. She shaped me, she guided me, and she made me,” she said.
France’s Vincent Lindon received the best actor award for French language film The Quiet Son, about a family torn apart by extreme-right radicalism.
The best director award went to American Brady Corbet for The Brutalist, recounting the tale about a Hungarian architect and Holocaust survivor played by Adrien Brody, who seeks to rebuild his life in the US.
Queer with Daniel Craig playing a gay drug addict, and the Maria Callas biopic Maria, starring Angelina Jolie as the celebrated Greek soprano did not get any awards.
The festival marks the start of the awards season.
[BBC]
The annual rugby encounter between Dharmaraja College and Kingswood College, played for the William Weerasinghe Memorial Trophy, is set to take place tomorrow (July 11, 2026), at 4:00 PM at the Bogambara Stadium, Kandy.
The official unveiling of the trophy took place this week at the Dharmaraja College premises with the participation of the Principals of the two schools, teachers-in-charge of sports, coaches, the Rugby teams, and several distinguished guests, including Dharmaraja College Old Boys’ Association President Mahesh Wijetunga, Kingswood College Old Boys’ Association President Muditha Abeykoon,
by S K SAMARANAYAKE
It has been reported quoting family sources that veteran singer Mariazelle Goonetilleke has passed away this morning (10) at the age of 68
She had been receiving treatment at the Kalubowila Teaching Hospital.
The US and Iran again traded strikes in exchanges that continued into Thursday, as observers reported a “dramatic” drop in the number of ships travelling through the Strait of Hormuz.
The US says it hit 90 military targets, some near the Strait. Iran says 14 people have been killed in the past two days.
State media also reported that targets near the Bushehr nuclear power plant were hit, citing the deputy governor of the province. The US has not commented on the latest strikes.
Iran said it targeted US assets in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar in response. Later on Thursday, Tehran launched more strikes on sites in Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, state-linked media reported.
Separately, huge crowds gathered as Iran’s late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was buried after six days of funeral events.
Crowds massed on the streets of Mashhad in north-eastern Iran waving Iranian flags, while some were pictured holding signs carrying death threats directed at US President Donald Trump.
Khamenei was killed on 28 February during the first hours of US and Israeli strikes against Iran.
Iran’s foreign ministry denounced the latest US strikes as a “grave war crime”, describing the US administration as “evil and psychopathic”
Bridges and a railway route connecting Tehran to the city of Mashhad, where the late supreme leader’s funeral is being held, were also damaged, the foreign ministry said.
Iran’s health ministry said 14 people had been killed and 78 people injured across five provinces.
Gulf nations reported Iranian attacks following the US strikes, with explosions in Bahrain’s capital Manama, Kuwait intercepting missiles and drones, and Qatar issuing a security alert.
Later on Thursday, explosions were heard in Iran’s southern port of Konarak, with a local official telling Iran’s official news agency a navy site was attacked by an “enemy”.
However a US defence official told the BBC it had not carried out any strikes in Iran in recent hours.
The funeral of Iran’s late supreme leader Ali Khamenei is being held in the city of Mashhad [BBC]
Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is also the country’s chief negotiator with the US, said on X that America “still hasn’t learned that bullying and breaking promises are no longer cost-free”.
“Let me put it plainly: if you strike, you’ll get hit,” he wrote, adding that the Strait of Hormuz will only open under Iranian arrangements – not “American threats”.
US Central Command (Centcom) said the most recent round of strikes was carried out to “further degrade Iran’s ability to attack commercial shipping and innocent civilian mariners” in the vital waterway.
In a statement, it said it had struck 90 Iranian military targets, which included air defense systems and military logistics infrastructure along Iran’s coastline.
“The latest strikes follow successful execution of offensive strikes in Iran the night before,” Centcom added.
Phil Belcher, marine director at Intertanko, an international organisation for independent tanker owners, said the number of ships travelling through the Strait via the southern route closer to Oman was now in “single figures” following the step up in hostilities.
Belcher added that the overall daily figure of about 30 ships was down from about 70 a week ago and well below the normal number of 130 ships that was seen before the Iran war began earlier this year.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that there had been an “exuberance of optimism” around shipping in the region following the signing of the SMemorandum Of Understanding between Iran and the US last month, but now the mood has changed.
“This cycle of violence, this cycle of up-and-down, positive-negative news, it’s having an enormous impact both on business and on the seafarers themselves,” he said.
On Wednesday night Iranian state TV reported eight explosions in Bandar Abbas, and said two missiles had hit the ports of both Sirik and Jask – also in southern Iran.
It added that two projectiles had hit the island of Abu Musa, which has been the subject of a longstanding ownership dispute between Iran and the United Arab Emirates.
The extent of damage from the US strikes is not yet known, but Iranian media have reported power cuts in Chabahar and a fire at an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) barracks in Bushehr. Images on social media showed damage to a marine control tower in Chabahar.
Earlier on Wednesday, Centcom wrote in a statement that it held Iran accountable for “recent unjustified aggression against commercial shipping and civilian crews freely navigating a vital international waterway.”
President Trump said late on Wednesday that Iran had “called a little while ago” and wanted to make a deal “so badly”.
Trump added: “I just don’t know if they’re worthy of making a deal – I don’t know that they’re going to honour the deal, that’s the problem.”
The current flare up has been the worst exchange of strikes between the US and Iran since the deal – known as a memorandum of understanding (MoU) – was signed on 17 June.
Trump said the ceasefire agreement signed last month with Iran was now “over”. He told reporters: “I don’t want to deal with them anymore, they’re scum. You know what scum is? They’re scum. They’re sick people.”
In response, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a post on X: “We do not answer vulgarity with vulgarity, but with action: fearlessly and with great valour.”
The deal between the US and Iran included 14 points, among them a 60-day period for a ceasefire during which negotiations should continue, the safe passage of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz and the US lifting sanctions on Iran.
The 60-day period for negotiations is not yet up, but Trump said he saw further talks as “a waste of time”.
[BBC]
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