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Lebanese Film Director: You Just Gotta Keep Working

A view shows Lebanese film maker Jimmy Keyrouz on the set of the movie "Broken Keys" in Biakout, Lebanon in this undated handout. Ezekiel Film Production/Handout via Reuters
A view shows Lebanese film maker Jimmy Keyrouz on the set of the movie "Broken Keys" in Biakout, Lebanon in this undated handout. Ezekiel Film Production/Handout via Reuters
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Lebanese Film Director: You Just Gotta Keep Working

A view shows Lebanese film maker Jimmy Keyrouz on the set of the movie "Broken Keys" in Biakout, Lebanon in this undated handout. Ezekiel Film Production/Handout via Reuters
A view shows Lebanese film maker Jimmy Keyrouz on the set of the movie "Broken Keys" in Biakout, Lebanon in this undated handout. Ezekiel Film Production/Handout via Reuters

Many directors would have been devastated when their plans to show their first feature at the Cannes Film Festival were wrecked by the spread of COVID-19.

But Lebanon's Jimmy Keyrouz said he took heart from the themes of his movie "Broken Keys", which tells its own story of finding hope in the midst of disaster.

The film follows a young man called Karim living somewhere in Iraqi and Syrian territory occupied by ISIS militants and dreaming of escaping to Europe to become a musician.

At the start of the film, the militants smash up his piano. He then tries to rebuild the instrument to sell it to fund his journey.

"If I was to summarize the spirit of the film in one sentence or saying I would say: 'Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass - it's about learning to dance in the rain'," Keyrouz told Reuters TV, quoting artist and author Vivian Greene.

"I guess it sums up the film pretty well and sums up our situation. You just gotta keep working, keep moving forward."

Keyrouz said he filmed part of "Broken Keys" in the Iraqi city of Mosul. "We filmed at the last area that ISIS fought, and even there in some places we smelled ... dead bodies under the rubble."

Cannes chose the film for its 2020 lineup, alongside works by Wes Anderson and other star directors.

But the world's biggest cinema showcase, usually held in May on the French Riviera, called off its events during the lockdown.

Organizers this month published the list of their 56-film line-up, saying they still wanted to use the festival's cachet to help promote the movies.

"I can only be very happy and grateful for Cannes to have supported and selected the film, despite not having the festival," Keyrouz said, adding that he was still hoping to start releasing the film later this year.

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Newborn White Rhino Takes 1st Giant Steps in Chile Zoo

Silverio, a twelve-day-old white rhino, runs next to his mother Hannah during his presentation at the Buin Zoo in Santiago, Chile, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)
Silverio, a twelve-day-old white rhino, runs next to his mother Hannah during his presentation at the Buin Zoo in Santiago, Chile, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)
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Newborn White Rhino Takes 1st Giant Steps in Chile Zoo

Silverio, a twelve-day-old white rhino, runs next to his mother Hannah during his presentation at the Buin Zoo in Santiago, Chile, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)
Silverio, a twelve-day-old white rhino, runs next to his mother Hannah during his presentation at the Buin Zoo in Santiago, Chile, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

Hannah, a 13-year-old white rhinoceros, has delivered a newborn calf in a rare zoo birth for the almost endangered species.
The arrival of the male calf, named Silverio, two weeks ago marked the third time that a white rhino had ever been born in South America. The Buin Zoo in Chile's capital of Santiago unveiled Silverio to the public on Tuesday as he took his first giant-footed steps after 12 days of medical care in confinement.
The zoo hailed his birth as a “big achievement” for conservationists worldwide. Over the past year, only eight other southern white rhinos have been born, The Associated Press reported.
The director of Buin Zoo explained that a recent string of failed rhino romances had dashed the hopes of conservationists attempting to breed the species across the continent. But Hannah and Oliver — a pair of southern white rhinos shipped to Santiago all the way from sub-Saharan Africa just over a decade ago — have hit it off, producing three calves in this one zoo.
“There are several zoos in Latin America that have a rhino pair and did not manage to reproduce,” said zoo director Ignacio Idalsoaga. “We are contributing with a ninth calf to a species that has only a few left in the wild.”
A team of veterinarians closely monitoring Silverio declared him healthy on Tuesday.
The success story comes as fewer and fewer white rhinos roam the African plains. Northern white rhinos have effectively gone extinct, although the international scientific community has started to revive the species through assisted reproduction and stem cell research.
Southern white rhinos, the northern's close cousin and a more common species, have been classified as “nearly endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the world’s main scientific authority on the status of species. There are just over 10,000 individual southern white rhinos left in the world, the vast majority of them in zoos.
That's still a major improvement from the turn of the 19th century, when the species was hunted to near oblivion. Intensive conservation efforts in the last few decades pulled southern white rhinos away from the brink of extinction, a rare example of robust recovery in the face of peril.
But that could change, conservationists say, as hunters continue to kill rhinos for their horns and the mammals can struggle to reproduce in captivity, with a gestation period of 18 months and often more than one male needed to stimulate reproduction.
Humans are the only predators to rhinos, reports the international conservation union, with hunters killing an estimated 1,000 rhinos a year. It says that roughly 17 rhinos are born each year.