MOSCOW: A film about the last Russian czar’s affair with a ballerina had its Moscow premiere Tuesday despite sparking outrage among some Russians that has been expressed through pickets, arson, and Molotov cocktails hurled at a movie studio.
“Matilda” has drawn fierce criticism from hard-line nationalists and some Orthodox believers who consider it blasphemous. The Russian Orthodox Church glorifies Emperor Nicholas II, who was executed with his family by Bolsheviks in 1918, as a saint.
Although most Russians accept that the affair happened, they maintain the movie’s depiction is distorted and vulgar. The film loosely follows the story of the czar’s infatuation with prima ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya.
What started out nearly a year ago as a campaign to collect signatures to protest the film’s release took on violent forms in recent months. Two cars were set on fire outside the office of the director’s lawyer. Signs reading “Burn for Matilda” were reportedly found nearby. Unidentified assailants threw Molotov cocktails at director Alexei Uchitel’s studio.
Uchitel said a few hours before the premiere that just getting the movie in front of a theater audience was an achievement.
“It is not just a victory for the film, but it is a victory for all reasonable people.”
Russian lawmaker Natalya Poklonskaya, who served as the chief regional prosecutor in Crimea following its 2014 annexation by Moscow, spearheaded the campaign to ban “Matilda.”
Poklonskaya sent numerous complaints about Uchitel and his film company to various law enforcement bodies, urging them to audit his taxes, review his finances and investigate him for incitement of religious hatred.
The controversy around the film reflects the increasing assertiveness of radical religious activists in Russia and a growing conservative streak in Russian society that worries many members of the nation’s artistic community.
The czar and his family were executed by a Bolshevik firing squad in July 1918. The Russian Orthodox Church made them saints in 2000.
Uchitel recalled during an interview with The Associated Press his shock at seeing a note at a Moscow church seeking signatures for a petition against the movie. What upsets him most is that the protests started after the first trailer’s release, a month before the film itself would be seen.
The filmmaker said he met with Poklonskaya earlier this year to defuse the tensions and asked her to at least see the movie first.
“As soon as I have offered it to her, I heard, ‘No, I am not going to watch it.’ I did not have anything else to tell her,” Uchitel said.
Poklonskaya says that because Nicholas II is a saint, his private life is off-limits.
“Does this film teach patriotism? Does it teach you to love your motherland? I do not think so,” she told the AP earlier this month. “You need to respect people. Freedom without bounds is lawlessness and chaos.”
The lawmaker also thinks Uchitel should be accountable to Russian taxpayers who might be offended by the film because the production received state funding. Uchitel said one-third of the budget for “Matilda” came from state coffers.
Poklonskaya said she has been such a devoted anti-“Matilda” campaigner because of 100,000 voters who signed petitions who felt their “rights were violated,” adding: “Religious feelings have been hurt.”
Uchitel, his team, and movie theaters have reported receiving anonymous threats vowing revenge on those who smear the czar’s memory. Russia’s largest cinema chain said it had contacted police and would not be showing the movie because of safety concerns.
The chain eventually decided to screen the film after all after receiving assurances from police.
Four people were arrested after several cars outside the office of Uchitel’s attorney were set on fire in September. The suspects included Alexander Kalinin, the leader of an obscure Christian Orthodox group who publicly condoned the vandalism.
Poklonskaya denied being connected to alleged arsonists and threat-makers.
“An Orthodox believer will never commit a crime. He will go and pray and file complaints about crimes,” she said.
Despite the recent arrests and the police’s willingness to provide extra security at movie theaters, the film’s Polish and German leading actors are not taking part in any promotional events in Russia.
“They are really scared of physical violence against them, that is why they are not going to come, and it is not just an excuse,” Uchitel said.
“Matilda” was shown to a selected audience on Monday at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater, where Kshesinskaya danced 100 years ago. Outside, several people read prayers and displayed placards opposing the movie.
“How will the director look God in the eyes? They spit in the czar’s face, and it is the same as spitting in the face of our people,” protester Natalya Radysh said.
Uchitel said he invited the critics inside to see the film so they would have a better basis on which to condemn it, but they declined.
“Maybe if they had watched, there would be no placards,” he said.
Film about Russian czar’s affair premieres despite public hostility
Film about Russian czar’s affair premieres despite public hostility
Palestinian prisoner in Israel wins top fiction prize
- The mask in the novel’s title refers to the blue identity card that Nur, an archaeologist living in a refugee camp in Ramallah, finds in the pocket of an old coat belonging to an Israeli
ABU DHABI: Palestinian writer Basim Khandaqji, jailed 20 years ago in Israel, won a prestigious prize for Arabic fiction on Sunday for his novel “A Mask, the Color of the Sky.”
The award of the 2024 International Prize for Arabic Fiction was announced at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi.
The prize was accepted on Khandaqji’s behalf by Rana Idriss, owner of Dar Al-Adab, the book’s Lebanon-based publisher.
Khandaqji was born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Nablus in 1983, and wrote short stories until his arrest in 2004 at the age of 21.
He was convicted and jailed on charges relating to a deadly bombing in Tel Aviv, and completed his university education from inside jail via the Internet.
The mask in the novel’s title refers to the blue identity card that Nur, an archaeologist living in a refugee camp in Ramallah, finds in the pocket of an old coat belonging to an Israeli.
Khandaqji’s book was chosen from 133 works submitted to the competition.
Nabil Suleiman, who chaired the jury, said the novel “dissects a complex, bitter reality of family fragmentation, displacement, genocide, and racism.”
Since being jailed Khandaqji has written poetry collections including “Rituals of the First Time” and “The Breath of a Nocturnal Poem.”
He has also written three earlier novels.
Mexican doctor claims victory in $28 Cartier earrings battle
MEXICO CITY: A Mexican man has claimed a victory over French luxury brand Cartier, saying an error allowed him to buy two pairs of earrings for $28 that were supposed to cost nearly $28,000.
After a four-month struggle, doctor Rogelio Villarreal said he had finally received the jewelry, which he accused the company of refusing to deliver after his online purchase in December.
According to Villarreal, he came across the low-priced earrings while browsing Instagram.
“I swear I broke out in a cold sweat,” he wrote on the social media platform X.
Cartier declined to recognize the purchase and offered Villarreal a refund, as well as a bottle of champagne and a passport holder as compensation, according to a company letter shared by the doctor.
But Villarreal refused and decided to take the case to Mexico’s consumer protection agency, which ruled in favor of the doctor.
Cartier accepted the decision, Villarreal announced.
“War is over. Cartier is complying,” he wrote.
French barber still trimming at 90
- “I love this job, it’s in my bones,” he said
- Even with arthritis, he is on his feet from Tuesday to Saturday, tending to his customers’ hair and beards in his shop in the small southern town of Saint-Girons
SAINT-GIRONS, France: French barber Roger Amilhastre, 90, could have hung up his clippers decades ago but he said his passion for hair gives him a reason to get up in the morning.
“I love this job, it’s in my bones,” he said, leaning on one of his cast-iron barber’s chairs from the 1940s.
“And despite my age, my hands still don’t shake.”
Even with arthritis, he is on his feet from Tuesday to Saturday, tending to his customers’ hair and beards in his shop in the small southern town of Saint-Girons in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
“I would have liked to retire at 60, but my wife was sick and I needed to pay for the care home,” he said, which cost more than 2,000 euros ($2,150) a month.
Even after his wife died in January, he kept going to work to stave off the sad thoughts.
“I’m not grumpy getting up” to go to work, he said.
France’s national hairdressers’ union believes Amilhastre may be France’s oldest active barber.
“We have a few who continue late in life, but 90 years old is exceptional,” union president Christophe Dore told AFP.
“I’m not sure if he is France’s oldest barber, but if not, he can’t be far off,” he added.
According to the national statistics institute INSEE, a little more than half a million people over 65 still work in France.
In the southern region of Occitanie, where Amilhastre lives, only 1.65 percent of people older than 70 years old still work, including 190 79-year-olds. But statistics do not go beyond that age.
Many of Amilhastre’s customers call him Achille, after his father who founded the barber’s shop in 1932, giving it his name and then teaching his son the profession.
The shop witnessed the German occupation of France during World War II.
“During the war, German police came to find my father to groom a captain who had broken his leg,” Amilhastre said.
German troops had taken over a large stately home in town called Beauregard.
“We were scared because they used to say that anyone who went up to Beauregard never came back,” he said.
“Luckily he did.”
The 90-year-old said he remembered a “tough period” for businesses when he first picked up the scissors in 1947 a few years after the war ended.
But then the town rebounded, he said, with its men following a flurry of new hair trends from greased back quiffs in the 1950s to 1970s bowl cuts.
The barber’s shop survived an economic downturn as local paper mills closed in the 1980s sparking mass layoffs, and supermarkets pushed small shops out of business.
“People started looking for work further afield, so we had to adapt and stay open later in the evening,” Amilhastre said.
That same decade, the AIDS epidemic sent customers into a worried frenzy.
“People were scared. They no longer asked to be shaved and when we did, we were petrified there’d be a cut, that someone would bleed and the virus would be passed on to the next customer,” he said.
Jean-Louis Surre, 67, runs the nearby cafe where Amilhastre once taught him to play billiards as a young boy.
Behind his bar, Surre said he still remembered his mother taking him across the road to see Amilhastre for a haircut every month as a child.
“He’d pump up the chair to reach the mirror, use his clippers and then at the end perfume you with some cologne — you know, squeezing those little pumps,” he said.
He is one of several old-timers to regularly drop by Achille’s — even just to read the newspaper or have a chat.
Inside the barber’s, Jean Laffitte, a balding 84-year-old, said he no longer really needed a haircut.
“With what little is left up there, these days I come out of friendship,” he said.
China’s Shenzhou-18 mission docks with space station
- The astronauts took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China’s northwest at 8:59 p.m. local time Thursday
- The astronauts will stay at the Tiangong space station for six months, carrying out experiments
JIUQUAN, China: A spaceship carrying three astronauts from China’s Shenzhou-18 mission safely docked at Tiangong space station Friday, state-run media reported, the latest step in Beijing’s space program that aims to send astronauts to the Moon by 2030.
The crew took off in a capsule atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China’s northwest at 8:59 p.m. local time 1259 GMT) Thursday.
By early Friday the spacecraft had “successfully docked” with the space station, state-run news agency Xinhua reported, citing the China Manned Space Agency.
The mission is led by Ye Guangfu, a fighter pilot and astronaut who was previously part of the Shenzhou-13 crew in 2021.
He is joined by astronauts Li Cong and Li Guangsu, who are heading into space for the first time.
Onlookers cheered as the rocket blasted off into the night sky, an AFP journalist at the scene said.
Xinhua said the launch had been declared a “complete success.”
The astronauts will stay at the Tiangong space station for six months.
There they plan to carry out experiments “in the fields of basic physics in microgravity, space material science, space life science, space medicine and space technology,” the China Manned Space Agency has said.
They will also try and create an aquarium onboard and seek to raise fish in zero gravity, according to Xinhua.
“Not only will the taikonauts find joy in the space ‘aquarium,’ but it may also pave the way for their future counterparts to enjoy nutritious fish from their own in-orbit harvests,” it added.
They will also conduct experiments on “fruit flies and mice,” a researcher quoted by the agency said.
The new crew will replace the Shenzhou-17 team, who were sent to the station in October.
Plans for China’s “space dream” have been put into overdrive under President Xi Jinping.
The world’s second-largest economy has pumped billions of dollars into its military-run space program in an effort to catch up with the United States and Russia.
Beijing also aims to send a crewed mission to the Moon by 2030, and plans to build a base on the lunar surface.
China has been effectively excluded from the International Space Station since 2011, when the United States banned NASA from engaging with the country — pushing Beijing to develop its own orbital outpost.
That station is the Tiangong, which means “heavenly palace” — the crown jewel of a space program that has landed robotic rovers on Mars and the Moon, and made China the third country to independently put humans in orbit.
It is constantly crewed by rotating teams of three astronauts, with construction completed in 2022.
The Tiangong is expected to remain in low Earth orbit at between 400 and 450 kilometers (250 and 280 miles) above the planet for at least 10 years.
Algeria’s first KFC restaurant reopens without logo following Gaza protests
- Protesters gathered outside outlet last week in solidarity with Palestinians
- KFC parent company Yum! Brands has faced backlash for its ties with Israel
LONDON: Algeria’s first Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet has resumed operations after a temporary closure prompted by a series of pro-Palestinian demonstrations last week.
However, the restaurant, situated in the Algiers suburb of Dely Ibrahim, reopened its doors without the familiar Col. Sanders logo on its exterior.
It remains unclear if the outlet has had a change of ownership or remains under the umbrella of Yum! Brands, the parent company of KFC.
Demonstrators gathered outside the eatery on April 16, calling for a boycott and expressing solidarity with Palestinians amid the Gaza conflict.
Protesters draped in Palestinian flags voiced support for “Palestinian martyrs” while obstructing access to the storefront.
The restaurant has faced a backlash due to its perceived ties to Israel, with Yum! Brands having made investments in Israeli startups, including TicTuk, a company that allows customers to order food on social networks and message apps, and Dragontail, a system software company specializing in food processing.
In response, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement designated KFC’s sister company, Pizza Hut, as an “organic boycott target,” due to the “brands’ complicity in Israel’s genocide and apartheid against Palestinians.”
بعد أيام من افتتاح فرعها الأول، KFC الجزائر تزيل شعار علامتها وتُغلق أبوابها!
— أحمد داود (@AhmadDaoud14) April 17, 2024
منذ افتتاحها تعالت أصوات مقاطعتها، ووقفات احتجاجية أمامها، واستنكارٌ لمنح الترخيص لوكيلها! #الجزائر
pic.twitter.com/rIaOG80xTi
While the temporary closure of the KFC outlet was hailed as a success by demonstrators, its reopening sparked disappointment among some Algerians.
The incident underscores challenges and employment ramifications stemming from boycotts related to the Gaza conflict.
Since the start of the war, regional franchises of McDonald’s, one of the key boycotted brands, have distanced themselves from the parent company, arguing that they are 100 percent local.
The opening of a KFC branch in Algeria was noteworthy given the nation’s historical aversion to Western food chains, as well as its stringent foreign investment regulations, which typically prohibit the establishment of foreign food or beverage franchises.
Previous efforts to establish outlets without official approval, such as the brief appearance of a counterfeit “Starbucks,” have been met with swift action and closure.
