Syria: Last News

Tom Tykwer opens the Berlinale for a third time on Thursday with his dazzling snapshot of life in contemporary Berlin, taking stock of German society as the first quarter of the 21st century draws to a close.

Ellise Shafer The night the third “Bridget Jones” novel, “Mad About the Boy,” came out in October 2013, author Helen Fielding was taking a walk in London when she passed her local pub and was accosted by a tipsy patron. “You’ve killed Colin Firth!” they shouted dramatically. “Well the truth is, I didn’t ever intend to actually kill Colin,” Fielding tells Variety over Zoom, remembering the details of that day with a mischievous smile.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Tom Tykwer will soon be opening the 75th Berlin Film Festival with “The Light,” a timely tale in which a deeply dysfunctional German family is saved by its Syrian housekeeper. The German-language film, which Tykwer describes as a “hardcore political” statement, will kick off the Berlinale on Feb. 13 in the turbulent lead-up to the country’s Feb.

Actress-producer Cate Blanchett spoke about how the newly-announced Displacement Film Fund will support displaced filmmakers and those working on stories about displaced people at a panel held at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) on Saturday.

Tulsi Gabbard has been under scrutiny ever since President Donald Trump first nominated her to be the next Director of National Intelligence.Senators, including many Republicans, have expressed concerns about the then-congresswoman’s 2017 meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and her past adulation for Edward Snowden, a former NSA intelligence contractor who leaked classified information.Democrats have also expressed concerns about past comments the Democrat-turned-Republican made appearing to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Senators raised questions about those issues during hearings on January 30.Meanwhile, the Daily Beast published a story that seems to contradict past comments from Gabbard regarding her spiritual “guru,” Chris Butler, founder of the Science of Identity Foundation, an offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement, which describes itself as Hindu.The 43-year-old Gabbard has been a devout follower of Butler (who has taken the name Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa, or “Jagad Guru”) since childhood, when her family joined his religious movement.Gabbard, the first Hindu elected to Congress, described Butler as her “guru dev” in a 2015 video.

Katcy Stephan The Elevate Prize Foundation, the global non-profit committed to Making Good Famous, has announced the launch of Elevate Studios, a groundbreaking production initiative aimed at leveraging the power of storytelling to inspire cultural and social change. Elevate Studios will serve as a strategic arm to amplify the work of social entrepreneurs and global changemakers through the production of powerful, entertaining content, ranging from compelling documentaries to high-quality social videos, in addition to strategic media investments aligned with Elevate’s mission.

Guy Lodge Film Critic Bad decisions — the kind that can be, if not reversed, at least remedied — are an essential part of adolescence: lapses that teach us about our desires, our impulses, our weaknesses, our essential character, and leave us with no greater damage than a throbbing hangover or a small, smudgy tattoo. Doe and Muna, the British 15-year-olds at the center of “Brides,” either haven’t been given much slack to make the right kind of wrong choices, or haven’t permitted themselves that liberty — so when they do err, it’s in seismically reckless, potentially ruinous fashion.

America under Trump’s second presidency is fearful for its borders and the potential terrorists that might be coming in through them. Britain, under the comparatively liberal Keir Starmer, has a rather more niche anxiety: that its citizens will leave and then return as insurgents. This seemingly unlikely scenario played out in real life in 2015, when 15-year-old London schoolgirl Shamima Begum and two friends flew to Turkey and crossed the border into Syria, where they became jihadi brides and lived in misery. When she was found four years later, in a Northern Syrian refugee camp, Begum made news a second time, this time for being rendered stateless by the Conservative government.

EXCLUSIVE: Nadia Fall, a noted artistic theatre director — she’s just moved from the Theatre Royal, Stratford East to run the mighty Young Vic — has directed her first feature film. It’s called Brides and is about two Muslim schoolgirls who leave their disruptive homes to travel via Turkey to Syria, where they join the Islamic state and offer themselves for marriage to men waging war.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent U.S. director Matty Brown’s allegorical drama “The Sand Castle,” which sees Lebanese multi-hyphenate Nadine Labaki reunite on screen with young “Capernaum” siblings Zain and Reman Al Rafeea – who are both Syrian refugees – will be released globally on Jan.

Schoolgirl turned ISIS bride Shamima Begum has sparked public debate once again as foreign secretary David Lammy refused her entry back to the UK.

Scientists are now suggesting that there may be truth to the biblical story of Adam and Eve.

ITV star Kevin Whately was recently honoured with an OBE in the New Year Honours list. The popular actor, who identifies as a "leftie", made a surprising discovery about his lineage during an appearance on the BBC hit show Who Do You Think You Are back in 2009.

Jamie Lang Two-time Oscar-nominated French-American actor and director Julie Delpy has been unveiled as the recipient of the 2025 Honorary Dragon Award at Sweden’s upcoming Göteborg Film Festival, the biggest film-TV event in Scandinavia. Delpy, known for her distinctive voice in international cinema, will attend the festival for the screening and to accept the prestigious award, participate in a talk and present her latest film, “Meet the Barbarians,” in which she follows the journey of a Syrian family who find refuge in a village in Northern France.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Five years after its launch, Saudi Arabia’s recently-concluded Mdlbeast Soundstorm music festival has put the kingdom’s capital of Riyadh on the map in terms of live events in the Middle East. This year’s Dec. 12-14 edition of Soundstorm – which started out in 2019 as an electronic dance music festival – featured over 200 international artists spanning rap, rock, pop, and house music.

A tumultuous year for Syria ended on a sour note with protests after images and videos circulated of the burning of a Christmas tree in a Christian-majority town near Damascus.

UPDATED: CNN‘s Clarissa Ward said that a man identified in her report as a prisoner under the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad, the deposed dictator, was in fact an intelligence officer.

Producing an independent film is a challenge at the best of times:  Beirut-based producer Georges Schoucair has shot two tightly financed indie features and helped launch a new arthouse cinema this year against the backdrop of war.

Lebanese Canadian director Katia Jarjoura’s drama Robbing Beirut has won the top $75,000 in-development prize in the Red Sea Souk project market, presenting 31 feature films and seven series projects within Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea International Film Festival.

MAD Solutions — who left his native Syria for Cairo before the civil war — struck a more cautious note. “For me, the basic question in these matters is always: ‘Who owns the weapons?’ Because the weapons are not free. So someone is behind it [Assad’s ouster],” he noted, citing the changing geopolitical scenario which saw Assad flee to Russia when he was no longer able to rely on political support from Iran, Russia and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia.

Tommy Robinson has been ordered to pay £50,000 in costs after he was jailed for contempt of court, with the final amount still to be decided.