Nyweide began her career aged just six in Bella and went on to work on films including And Then Came Love, Margot at the Wedding and Noah

The actor Sophie Nyweide has died at the age of 24, her family has announced.

An online obituary gives no cause of death, but says Nyweide died on 14 April.

Continue reading...

Ralph Fiennes was Oscar-nominated for his role in the thriller which follows cardinals wrangling to replace a fictional pontiff after his death

The death of Pope Francis on 21 April led to an abrupt uptick in viewership of Conclave, Edward Berger’s thriller which depicts the events following the death of a fictional pope, and the cardinals wrangling to replace him.

The film, which won best picture at the Baftas earlier this year and was nominated for eight Oscars, is available on assorted streaming platforms worldwide. According to Luminate, which tracks streaming viewership, Conclave was viewed for about 1.8m minutes on 20 April, and 6.9m minutes the next day – an increase of 283%.

Continue reading...

London’s underground dance scene is increasingly funded by inherited wealth. From Mike Ashley’s son to a Tetra Pak heir, monied promoters explain their motivations

Nestled between Millwall FC stadium and an intersection of south London railway lines, the 350-capacity Venue MOT – once an actual MOT garage – is a cornerstone of the city’s underground music scene. But every Tuesday, owner Jan Mohammed gathers his staff at the bar and tells them how much money it has lost since the weekend.

Mohammed, a sculptor, started renting a nearby space to use as a studio more than a decade ago. With no residential neighbours and relatively low costs, he opened Venue MOT in 2018 based on simple intuition: “I thought music could thrive here,” he says. Despite the losses and Mohammed calling his operation a “comedy of errors”, it does. Time Out recently labelled Venue MOT the best nightclub in London and Jamie xx called it “one of the last places in London that feels genuinely free and DIY” after his 10-night residency last year with guests including Charli xcx and Daphni. Mohammed describes the club’s atmosphere as “DDS” – deep, dark and sweaty. Indomitable characters like him are the lifeblood of a financially unstable scene that must constantly adapt to licensing rules and urban redevelopment.

Continue reading...

Nnena Kalu, Mohammed Sami, Rene Matić and Zadie Xa have been nominated for £25,000 prize

An artist who creates swirling sculptures out of fabric and old videocassette tape, and another who installed huge paintings evoking wartime trauma in the genteel rooms of Blenheim Palace, have been shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize.

Nnena Kalu , a Scottish-born, London-based artist, and Mohammed Sami , who fled his native Iraq as a refugee, have been chosen alongside Rene Matić and Zadie Xa to compete for the contemporary art prize.

Continue reading...

Julie Keeps Quiet casts real-life tennis ace Tessa Van den Broeck as a teenage player facing peril ignored by adults. The director explains how telling the story well required a care the sport itself neglects

Leonardo Van Dijl smiles: “If you told me a year ago that I’d be speaking to the Guardian, I’d have asked: ‘What about?’” Last May, the 34-year-old from Belgium took his debut film Julie Keeps Quiet to Cannes. (Where, he says, everyone was much friendlier after a four-star review in the Guardian.) Ever since, he has been living out of a suitcase, grabbing five or six hours’ sleep. It’s not just media interviews and Q&As keeping him busy: “We are a small movie. I’m the in-house graphic designer. I do the social media …” He stops, looks down at my phone, recording. “But I don’t really want to talk about that. I’m grateful, and it’s not that interesting.”

What Van Dijl really does want to talk about is the urgent issue his film raises about safe spaces for children. Julie Keeps Quiet is a tense psychological drama about a talented 15-year-old tennis player called Julie, played by real-life tennis ace Tessa Van den Broeck in her first acting role. When Julie’s male coach at her tennis academy is suspended after the suicide of a teenage girl he trained, pressure falls on Julie to speak up. After all, she’s his new favourite.

Continue reading...

A bracingly hopeful call for high-flyers to ditch corporate drudgery in favour of something far more ambitious

This is not a self-help book,” the author tells us, firmly. Appearances might suggest otherwise: it is written and presented almost entirely in the familiar style of that genre, with largish print, short sentences, snappy maxims in italics and lots of lists and charts (“six signs you may be on the wrong side of history”). Its proposals are delivered with all the annoyingly hectic bounciness of the genre.

But it is worth taking Bregman (a thirtysomething historian and author labelled “one of Europe’s most prominent young thinkers” by the Ted network) at his word. He begins from the deep and corrosive anomie experienced by so many gifted young professionals who find themselves making substantial sums of money in exhausting and (at best) morally compromising jobs. The “moral ambition” of the title is about recognising that serious financial, organisational, technological and analytical skills – the kind that in the US will get you through, say, law school with a secure ticket to prosperity – can be used to make tangible improvements in the lives of human and nonhuman neighbours.

Continue reading...

Sex Education star calls on women to send in their anonymous submissions for a second volume of her 2024 title Want

Gillian Anderson has announced a follow-up to her bestselling anthology of female sexual fantasies, Want , with the hope that it will be “more international, and even more daring”.

The original book “gave thousands of women the freedom to talk about sex without shame or judgment; to see themselves in the words of strangers, and reflect on their own desires – some for the very first time,” Anderson said. “But Want unlocked so much more for so many and felt like just the beginning of a deeper conversation.”

Continue reading...

This contemplative documentary is a feast for the ears and the eyes, its gorgeous imagery giving Turner a run for his money

‘Here comes the squall,” says a voice excitedly. A girl of 11 or 12 clutching the side of the boat looks less thrilled. A squall is the most action you’ll get from this delicate, contemplative, rather eccentric documentary from film-maker Huw Wahl. It’s a love letter to engineless sailing: the art of navigating using only the wind, tides and good old fashioned seamanship. Though, really, that should be seawomanship, since the sailor we see most is Rose Ravetz (the director’s sister) who moors her engineless boat, the Defiance, at Maldon in Essex.

Filmed over three years and shot on 16mm film, there are some gorgeous images here that would give Turner a run for his money, like a milky sky melting into the white sea. It’s a feast for the ears, too, with a soundtrack of waves, creaking wood, the clank of metal and shrieking oystercatchers. Over in Maldon, Ravetz twists yarn to make rope by lamplight. Her musings about the effect of sailing on her anxious tendencies make it sound like meditation: “When you’re in that conversation with nature, it’s not in your head. It’s just feeling and responding without analysing it.”

Continue reading...

A new exhibition at the Los Angeles Gagosian showcases previously unseen pictures taken by the musician during the rise of Beatlemania

He is not drowning but waving. John Lennon’s arms stretch at angles like the sails of a windmill. His face wears a toothy, incandescent smile. Beads of water dance around him like an upside-down waterfall as he swims off Miami Beach .

“He’s so carefree,” says Joshua Chuang , director of photography at the Gagosian art gallery. “It’s almost like you’ve never seen him like that; he’s always kind of joking around or brooding or being sarcastic. He’s so happy. It’s his best friend at the time capturing that and, when you know about what happened, it’s so moving.”

Continue reading...