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Cairo Film Festival to Screen Internationally Acclaimed Films

A screenshot from Gaza Mon Amour
A screenshot from Gaza Mon Amour
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Cairo Film Festival to Screen Internationally Acclaimed Films

A screenshot from Gaza Mon Amour
A screenshot from Gaza Mon Amour

The Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) has announced the films that will feature in its 42nd edition, scheduled to run from December 2 to10.

In a press release obtained by Asharq Al-Awasat, the festival’s president Mohamed Hefzy said that this year’s edition would screen the premiers of some of the biggest films alongside award-winning and critically acclaimed movies from other major festivals.

Nomadland, an American drama awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and The Toronto International Film Festival Grolsch People’s Choice Award, will feature as part of the festival’s formal screenings and will not be part of the competition for any awards.

Directed by Cloe Zhao, the film stars Oscar-award winning actress Frances McDormand and is set during the great recession; it tells the story of a woman in her sixties who decides to take a journey through the American West and live as a modern-day nomad.

The Disciple will also be screened without being part of the competition for awards. It won this year’s International Film Critics Awards (FIPRESCI Prize) in Venice. Directed by Chaitanya Tamhane and produced by Oscar-award winning director Alfonso Cuaron, the film tells the tale of a young Indian man who dedicates his life to singing classical Indian music and the challenges he faces along the way.

Two other films that will be screened in the formal section are the German-French film Undine, directed by Christian Pitzold, which won the FIPRESCI Prize, while the lead actress Paula Beer Silver Bear for Best Actress in Berlin, and Mogul Mowgli, a British-American production that follows the journey of a British rapper of Pakistani origins who falls ill as he is preparing for his first world tour.

Two years after his previous film, Jumpan, was screened during the festival’s 40th edition in 2018, Ivan I. Tverdovsky will participate with his latest film, The Conference, which is part of the international competition.

Gaza Mon Amour, among this year’s most prominent Arabic films, is also going to be screened. A Palestinian French, German and Portuguese production directed by two twins, Arab and Tarzan Nasser, the film premiered as part of the Venice International Film Festival’s Horizons section before it winning the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema Award (NEPTAC) at the Toronto Festival.

Set in Gaza, it follows a lonely older man who is secretly in love with a dressmaker, and as he tries to find a way to confess his love for her, he discovers an ancient statue that changes his life forever.
CIFF had previously announced that it will honor the Egyptian screenwriter Wahid Hamed with the Golden Pyramid Award for Lifetime Achievement during the opening ceremony and that its Cairo Days of Film Industry will support for 15 fictional and documentary projects from 12 Arab countries.

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Varieties

Dead Humpback Whale Brought to Shore in Denmark with Autopsy Set Next Week

30 May 2026, Denmark, Anholt: The dead whale is being pulled ashore on the Danish island of Anholt. (dpa)
30 May 2026, Denmark, Anholt: The dead whale is being pulled ashore on the Danish island of Anholt. (dpa)
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Dead Humpback Whale Brought to Shore in Denmark with Autopsy Set Next Week

30 May 2026, Denmark, Anholt: The dead whale is being pulled ashore on the Danish island of Anholt. (dpa)
30 May 2026, Denmark, Anholt: The dead whale is being pulled ashore on the Danish island of Anholt. (dpa)

The carcass of a humpback whale, whose life and death captivated Germans for months as the mammal became repeatedly stranded in the Baltic Sea, was dragged Saturday onto a Danish beach after two weeks of the body languishing in shallow waters.

The whale had gained the nicknames “Timmy” and “Hope” as German media outlets sent push alerts and updated live blogs with the status of its health since it was first spotted off the German coast on March 3.

The whale was found dead on May 14, stranded just off the small island of Anholt in the Kattegat, the broad strait between Denmark and Sweden that connects the Baltic Sea to the North Sea.

The whale's death ended months of a spectacular and contentious rescue effort that culminated May 2, when the mammal was transported toward the North Sea in a barge in a final effort to guide it back to its natural habitat in the Atlantic Ocean.

The carcass will be examined next week to determine the cause of death, according to the Danish Environmental Protection Agency.

Danish news outlet “News5” on Saturday published a livestream of the carcass being dragged onto the shoreline by a cable attached to a truck on the beach.

It’s not clear why it swam into the Baltic Sea, which is far from its habitat and it wasn’t suited to, although some experts said it may have lost its way while swimming after a shoal of herring or during migration.

Varieties

Austrian Protesters Shut Vital Motorway Connecting Germany to Italy

People demonstrate against transit traffic near the A13 Brenner Highway in the direction of Italy during the blockade of the Brenner Base Tunnel on May 30, 2026, on the Tyrolean Brenner Highway. (AFP)
People demonstrate against transit traffic near the A13 Brenner Highway in the direction of Italy during the blockade of the Brenner Base Tunnel on May 30, 2026, on the Tyrolean Brenner Highway. (AFP)
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Austrian Protesters Shut Vital Motorway Connecting Germany to Italy

People demonstrate against transit traffic near the A13 Brenner Highway in the direction of Italy during the blockade of the Brenner Base Tunnel on May 30, 2026, on the Tyrolean Brenner Highway. (AFP)
People demonstrate against transit traffic near the A13 Brenner Highway in the direction of Italy during the blockade of the Brenner Base Tunnel on May 30, 2026, on the Tyrolean Brenner Highway. (AFP)

Thousands of local residents shut down Austria's Brenner motorway on Saturday, a vital north-south corridor through the Alps between Germany and Italy, in protest at trucks and tourists perennially clogging up their roads.

The protest was led by Karl Muehlsteiger, mayor of Gries am Brenner, one of the towns in the shadow of the artery that snakes through the narrow, steep-sided Wipp Valley on giant concrete stilts.

The issue of ‌excess traffic and ‌pollution in the valley, which leads ‌to ⁠the Brenner Pass, ⁠has for decades been a source of tension between Austria and Germany. Local authorities in the Austrian state of Tyrol have introduced various measures to stem the flow, often prompting howls of protest across the border.

"You are making history!" Austrian news ⁠agency APA quoted Muehlsteiger as telling a ‌crowd of around 3,000 ‌protesters who gathered on the motorway at 1 p.m. to ‌block it symbolically, hours after police cordoned off ‌both ends of the corridor. Cars arriving there turned around and drove away.

The eight-hour shutdown from 11 a.m. did not cause the chaos many had feared as drivers ‌largely heeded warnings to stay away, even during what in some German states, ⁠including ⁠neighboring Bavaria, was a school holiday.

Trains passing along the same route were crowded, local media reported.

The provincial road that runs from town to town alongside the motorway was also closed to all but locals and local traffic.

In Italy, a suspected arson attack on electrical control units overnight disrupted rail traffic between Peri and Dolce, near Verona, on the Verona Porta Nuova–Brenner line.

Investigators were looking into possible links to radical environmentalist or anarcho-insurrectionist groups.

Varieties

Blue Origin Rocket Explosion is Bad News for Both Bezos and NASA

Video of the Blue Origin New Glenn rocket explosion showed the spacecraft combusting into a massive fireball. JohnCn (@JConcilus) on X / UGC/AFP
Video of the Blue Origin New Glenn rocket explosion showed the spacecraft combusting into a massive fireball. JohnCn (@JConcilus) on X / UGC/AFP
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Blue Origin Rocket Explosion is Bad News for Both Bezos and NASA

Video of the Blue Origin New Glenn rocket explosion showed the spacecraft combusting into a massive fireball. JohnCn (@JConcilus) on X / UGC/AFP
Video of the Blue Origin New Glenn rocket explosion showed the spacecraft combusting into a massive fireball. JohnCn (@JConcilus) on X / UGC/AFP

Space exploration is filled with setbacks, but the spectacular explosion of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket on Thursday night marked a significant blow to not only the company, which was founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, but also NASA, with the two collaborating for the upcoming US Moon missions.

"Spaceflight is unforgiving," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a post on X soon after the explosion, promising to "support a thorough investigation of this anomaly," which happened during a ground test and resulted in no injuries.

The rocket -- which stands 98 meters (321 feet) tall and is the most powerful in Blue Origin's fleet -- exploded around 9:00 pm local time Thursday (0100 GMT Friday).

It was undergoing a ground test in Cape Canaveral, Florida in preparation of an upcoming flight when it blew up in a massive fireball, sending shockwaves throughout the space industry.

While anomalies during ground tests are relatively frequent, such explosions are rare, and the magnitude of the blast caused significant damage not only to the spacecraft but the launch pad itself, according to photos of the aftermath released Friday.

"It will take some time to rebuild their pad," Florida congressman Mike Haridopolos, whose district includes Cape Canaveral, told broadcaster Fox News on Friday.

Blue Origin declined an AFP request for additional details on the incident, extent of damage or the ongoing investigation, which is conducted alongside NASA and the US Space Force.

The New Glenn rocket will remain grounded while the investigation is conducted.

- Moon Mission -

The vessel is at the heart of Blue Origin's ambition and NASA's Artemis lunar program, and could have implications for the company's role going forward.

"I have no doubt they will recover but I'm wondering how does this affect Artemis," Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told AFP.

NASA has also tasked rival space exploration company SpaceX to develop lunar landers for transporting astronauts and equipment to the surface of the Moon to establish a base.

SpaceX has seen its own challenges in recent months, and Blue Origin had emerged as a promising alternative for NASA, with the US space agency awarding a new contract to it for the lunar mission earlier this week.

- Major setback -

But these projects depend on the New Glenn rocket, and with its explosion coming shortly after a malfunction causing a satellite mission failure last month, the anomalies could disrupt NASA's tight mission schedule.

NASA is aiming to test an in-orbit rendezvous between a spacecraft and one or two lunar landers in 2027 as part of Artemis III, and carry out a crewed lunar landing before the end of 2028, before the end of US President Donald Trump's time in office.

Thursday's explosion also deals a major setback to another Bezos project, the Amazon Leo satellite internet constellation, which seeks to compete with SpaceX's Starlink but relies on the New Glenn rocket, among others, to launch its satellites, according to Swope.

The Blue Origin rocket blowing up is not the only time an explosion has rocked Cape Canaveral.

Ten years ago, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blew up during a ground test before launching, destroying a $200 million satellite it was supposed to carry.