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Saudi Film Wins Jury Prize at Marrakech International Film Festival

A Saudi film wins the jury award at Marrakech International Film Festival. (Marrakech International Film Festival on Twitter)
A Saudi film wins the jury award at Marrakech International Film Festival. (Marrakech International Film Festival on Twitter)
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Saudi Film Wins Jury Prize at Marrakech International Film Festival

A Saudi film wins the jury award at Marrakech International Film Festival. (Marrakech International Film Festival on Twitter)
A Saudi film wins the jury award at Marrakech International Film Festival. (Marrakech International Film Festival on Twitter)

Saudi film, "Last Visit", won the jury award at Marrakech International Film Festival.

Directed by Abdulmohsen Al-Dhabaan, it tells the story of an inter-generational conflict between a grandfather, father and son about establishing a life between the capital, Riyadh, and a distant village, and the differences in traditions between the two regions.

Upon receiving news that his ailing father is nearing death, Nasser, who left his native village decades ago to establish himself in Riyadh, decides to drive home for one last visit, accompanied by his 16-year old son Waleed. Imbued with unspoken disavowal and disapproval, this inter-generational relationship incarnates the deep rift that alienates Saudi men – the fathers upholding stern, antiquated patriarchal customs, the sons aspiring for emancipation – as well as the rural-urban divide of contemporary Saudi society.

The movie stars Osama Alqess, Abdullah Alfahad, Fahad Alghariri, Mousaed Khaled and Ghazi Hamad.

Some 98 films from 34 countries were selected for the 18th edition of the Marrakech International Film Festival, which ran from November 29 to December 7.

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Varieties

China Says its Astronauts Complete Record-breaking Spacewalk

File Photo: Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China's space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China December 4, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS
File Photo: Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China's space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China December 4, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS
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China Says its Astronauts Complete Record-breaking Spacewalk

File Photo: Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China's space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China December 4, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS
File Photo: Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China's space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China December 4, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS

Two Chinese astronauts this week completed a world-record spacewalk of more than nine hours, according to a statement from China's Manned Space Agency, marking another milestone for Beijing's rapidly expanding space program.

The spacewalk, carried out by Cai Xuzhe and Song Lingdong outside the Tiangong space station in low-Earth orbit on Tuesday, was at least four minutes longer than the last record set by NASA astronauts James Voss and Susan Helms in 2001, according to Reuters.

The two astronauts of China's Shenzhou-19 mission donned their Feitian spacesuits to carry out an array of tasks on the station's exterior, including the installation of space-debris protection devices, China's space agency said.

"They successfully completed all the planned tasks and felt very excited about it," Wu Hao, a staffer from the China Astronaut Research and Training Center, told China Central Television, a state broadcaster.

The former Soviet Union in 1965 became the first nation to carry out a spacewalk. Since then, Russia and the United States have conducted hundreds of such missions, primarily outside the International Space Station for tasks ranging from solar panel installations to materials research.

The first spacewalk by a Chinese astronaut occurred in 2008.

China's spacewalking milestone this week comes amid a flurry of other recent cosmic achievements that have boosted Beijing's competitive footing with the United States.

China landed its first rover on Mars in 2021 and earlier this year became the first country to retrieve rock samples from the moon's treacherous far side in its Chang'e-6 mission.

Beijing is targeting 2030 to land its first astronauts on the moon to become the second country after the US to put humans there. Beijing has courted roughly a dozen countries for its International Lunar Research Station program, an effort to build a moon base on the moon's south pole.

That program rivals NASA's Artemis program, which aims to return US astronauts to the moon for the first time since the final Apollo mission of 1972.