Justin Kurzel shies away from depicting the Port Arthur massacre itself but outstanding performances mean it’s still a highly unsettling storyAustralian director Justin Kurzel has made his most purely disturbing film since his debut Snowtown in 2011. Like that film, Nitram is based on a real-life case of murder and family dysfunction (which incidentally also applies to Kurzel’s version of Macbeth). And he has four outstanding performances from Judy Davis, Essie Davis, Anthony LaPaglia and Caleb Landry Jones.The Port Arthur massacre in 1996 was perpetrated by a violently disturbed young man, Martin Bryant, who shot and killed 35 people at a Tasmanian tourist site with a semi-automatic rifle bought legally; he was apparently inspired by the UK’s Dunblane massacre one month earlier. The Australian government took immediate steps to limit the sales of weaponry. Kurzel and screenwriter Shaun Grant have dramatised Bryant’s own deeply disturbed home and family environment and the utterly bizarre twists that his life had taken in the time leading up to the shooting. His pre-murder existence has a stranger-than-fiction quality that would be worthy of feature film treatment, even if the killings had never happened. Continue reading...

Severe flooding has caused devastation in Germany and Belgium, where the death toll has risen to more than 120 as emergency services continued their search for many hundreds more still missing. No loss of life has been reported in Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, but flash floods swept through the Swiss villages of Schleitheim and Beggingen, several towns in the Grand Duchy were evacuated and thousands were told to leave their homes in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht

This Taiwanese sci-fi about an investigation in which the suspects’ minds are injected into a host body starts promisingly, but quickly ditches any complexityDabbling in a myriad of already weary tropes first pioneered by The Matrix trilogy, this Taiwanese sci-fi crime thriller Plurality could have put a fresh twist on big-budget Hollywood efforts, but falls flat on both the production design and the narrative front.The young son of a city councillor is the latest victim in a string of kidnappings targeting children with disabilities or facial disfigurements, and the police become convinced that the perpetrator is one of the five passengers who have died in a mysterious bus crash. Thanks to a new technology, they are able to use the vegetative body of a criminal on death row into which to inject the brain fluids of the suspects. (These include a shady businessman, a spoiled dropout, a reticent college student, a father estranged from his daughter, and the bus driver.) As the police try to extract information from these evasive subjects, the more gruelling the interrogation becomes, the more violently the five identities wrestle for control of their corporeal host, which leads to explosive revelations and bloodshed. Continue reading...

Cyril Ramaphosa says ‘good number’ of those who planned violence and looting had been identifiedThe wave of protest and looting that swept across much of South Africa over the past week was planned by enemies of democracy in a deliberate effort to sow chaos, the president has said.Speaking to reporters in some of the areas worst hit by the unrest, Cyril Ramaphosa said authorities had identified “a good number” of those who planned and coordinated the violence, the worst in South Africa since the end of the apartheid regime in 1994. Continue reading...

She has four films at Cannes film festival, but instead of strutting the Riviera red carpet the actor is isolating in Paris. She talks creativity, sex scenes and the joy of Bond stuntsLéa Seydoux is coming to Cannes. She’s starring in four pictures at this year’s film festival and our interview is booked for noon on Saturday, possibly on the beach. The beach is good for weird distractions and local colour. I once interviewed Juliette Binoche on the beach at Cannes while she was accosted by wandering vendors trying to sell her straw hats. “Non, merci,” she kept saying. She was very gracious about it.Seydoux is coming to Cannes and then all of a sudden she’s not. The 36-year-old actor has tested positive for Covid: the biggest casualty of an event marked by tight security, 48-hour spit tests and a constant background hum of tension. She was supposed to be on heavy red-carpet rotation. Instead, she has spent the festival isolating in Paris. Continue reading...

The economy is expected to reach a crucial stage in fourth quarter as support for business winds down

At least 110 people have died in devastating floods across parts of western Germany and Belgium. Search and rescue operations are continuing with hundreds still unaccounted for

Government says its Covid app is unlikely to be adjusted to make it less sensitive for weeks

After his father suffered a heart scare, psych-popper Connan Mockasin enlisted him to make an experimental EP. Who knew it would be such a breeze?Nepotism in the music industry is nothing new, but using your connections to get your father a record deal is surely a far rarer occurrence. However, that’s just what Connan Mockasin did for new album It’s Just Wind. The New Zealand musician, whose solo work is best described by the title of his 2013 psych-pop album Caramel – gooey, sweet and there to be chewed on – had long planned to make an album with his dad, Ade, but a bout of ill health on his father’s part focused him.Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips Continue reading...

Steve Jones and Paul Cook are suing John Lydon, who has refused to give permission for Pistol to use the band’s musicThe Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook are suing frontman John Lydon over the use of their songs in Pistol, Danny Boyle’s forthcoming TV series about the band.Lydon has said he will not approve the licences for Pistol to use the band’s music unless he is ordered to by a court. Continue reading...

Lawyer of Tim Atkins, who was stomped on by an officer, claims Ibac has failed to set the standard for ‘acceptable conduct for policing in Victoria’The lawyer for a man whose head was stomped on by police has been highly critical of Victoria’s independent anti-corruption body after it found the officer acted lawfully during the arrest.Tim Atkins, who has bipolar disorder, said he was suffering an episode last September when he broke a window at an Epping hospital, before running into traffic to escape police. Continue reading...

Rodney Reed’s case was championed by the reality TV star but celebrities’ role in the criminal justice system is complicatedWhen death row prisoner Rodney Reed found out his execution had been called off – only days before it was to occur – he was sitting in a tiny visiting room at an east Texas maximum-security prison, talking to Kim Kardashian West.The reality TV star had traveled to the Polunsky Unit, an hour north-east of Houston, to visit the condemned man whose cause she had taken up, repeatedly posting photos and firing off tweets in support of his claims of innocence. By the time the Texas court of criminal appeals stayed the execution in November 2019, Reed’s case had attracted other celebrity supporters – from Beyoncé and Dr Phil, to Oprah and Gigi Hadid. Continue reading...

Prime minister said leaders discussed ‘what is working’ in the rollout at national cabinet, and praised Victoria for high vaccination rateScott Morrison has encouraged states to administer AstraZeneca at mass vaccination centres and boost vaccination rates on weekends, in a sign that Australia is shifting away from its GP-led rollout model.National cabinet met on Friday as Delta strain outbreaks of Covid in greater Sydney and Melbourne placed 10 million Australians into lockdown. Continue reading...

Bafta nominee says incident last month followed dispute outside Euston station in LondonActor Ruth Madeley has told how a minicab driver took her wheelchair away after an argument outside a London train station.The Bafta nominee, who starred in the BBC One drama Years and Years, said the man refused to drop her outside Euston station’s accessible entrance because heavy traffic made it “too difficult” and it would “take too long”. Continue reading...

Officers investigating damage to Manchester artwork keeping open mind over motiveThe vandalism of a mural of England footballer Marcus Rashford was “not believed to be of a racial nature”, police have said as they appealed for witnesses.The artwork was attacked hours after England’s European Championship final defeat on Sunday as Rashford and fellow players Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka, suffered racist abuse on social media. Continue reading...

Six new cases in Victoria; Sydney records 97 local cases; WA and Queensland to close border to Victoria

Archie White awarded fine arts degree from East Sussex College aged 96 years and 56 daysA former solicitor from Hastings is believed to have become Britain’s oldest new graduate after receiving a degree in fine art at the age of 96.Archie White, who retired at 92, said he was “not too bothered about being the oldest graduate or not” and had thoroughly enjoyed studying at East Sussex College. Continue reading...

Tedros says ‘accidents happen’ in labs and calls on China to be more transparent

As the country becomes the epicentre of the pandemic, a growing number of volunteer groups have assembled to fill in gaps in the government response

Dumfries course teaches 11- to 18-year-olds how to create a persona, apply makeup and the history of drag“You can use drag to explore anything you want to,” says Natalie Doidge, the organiser of what is thought to be Scotland’s first “drag school” for teenagers, which opens its doors later this month after facing down controversy.“Drag isn’t limited to men dressed as women … and this course opens it out to anyone who wants to try it. It’s an exploration of [oneself] – especially for young people at the upper end of high school, when your life is just beginning and you’re thinking about who want to be. Gender is a performance, after all.” Continue reading...

The 2020 murder of Jenelyn Kennedy rocked Papua New Guinea to its core. Many of us know what it’s like to be covered in bruises under our clothesA year ago women and men across Papua New Guinea came together to protest in the streets. They wore black and held placards calling for an end to violence against women.

Their Adam Driver musical sent Cannes into raptures and Edgar Wright has made an all-star documentary about them. The Mael brothers explain why they’ll always be hopelessly in love with popIn 1974, John Lennon was startled as he was watching Top of the Pops. He rang Ringo Starr. “You won’t believe what’s on television,” he reportedly said. “Marc Bolan is playing a song with Adolf Hitler.”This was Sparks, performing their glorious pop opus This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us. “It was equidistant between the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and the Daleks on Doctor Who,” says Edgar Wright, the director of Baby Driver and Shaun of the Dead, and now a documentary about the duo, The Sparks Brothers. “Fifteen million people saw it. Think of the next generation of bands watching: the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Duran Duran, Joy Division, Squeeze, Vince Clarke. They’re all watching and they’re all thinking the same thing.” Continue reading...

It’s been 50 years this month since Henry Kissinger, the then national security advisor, made a secret trip to the People’s Republic of China. Joan E Greve talks to the Guardian’s China affairs correspondent, Vincent Ni, to find out how the current diplomatic relationship compares with 1971When president Nixon visited China in 1972 – following the secret trip that Henry Kissinger, his national security advisor, took there in 1971 – it marked a turning point in the cold war and 20th-century history.But a lot has changed since the 1970s, such as China now having one of the largest economies in the world, data security concerns and, of course, Covid-19. So how have US-China relations changed in the 50 years since Kissinger’s visit in 1971? In this week’s episode, the Guardian’s China affairs correspondent, Vincent Ni, shares his thoughts. Continue reading...

Experts say false domestic violence allegations less common than genuine victims who fail to report abuseThe union representing Queensland’s police officers has been criticised for claiming some people seek domestic violence orders to gain an advantage in family law disputes.The Queensland Police Union is aware of such claims against its own members, it says in a submission to a federal parliamentary inquiry considering a change to the Family Law Act. Continue reading...

Africa death toll driven by lack of intensive care beds and oxygen, WHO says; UK also reports 63 more deaths

Latest effort in Washington to punish Beijing for what officials say is an ongoing genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim groupsThe US Senate passed legislation on Wednesday to ban the import of products from China’s Xinjiang region, the latest effort in Washington to punish Beijing for what US officials say is an ongoing genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim groups.The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act would create a “rebuttable presumption” assuming goods manufactured in Xinjiang are made with forced labor and therefore banned under the 1930 Tariff Act, unless otherwise certified by US authorities. Continue reading...

Family announces death of 64-year-old just over a week after attack in AmsterdamThe Dutch crime reporter Peter R de Vries has died just over a week after he was shot in the head in central Amsterdam, the veteran journalist’s family said in a statement released to local media.“Peter fought to the end but was unable to win the battle,” the statement said, according to RTL Nieuws. “He died surrounded by the people who love him. Peter lived by his conviction: ‘On bended knee is no way to be free.’” Continue reading...

Startled owners hear a loud bang and call the police, who find a black suitcase filled with drugsThe suitcase stashed with cocaine was intended to fall from a light aircraft into the hands of drug traffickers waiting on the ground in Baratili San Pietro, a town of about 1,200 people in Sardinia.Instead it landed on the roof of a home, smashing a solar panel along the way. Continue reading...

Accessible only via an arduous two-day hike or by ferry, the Old Forge in Knoydart is up for sale at offers over £425,000It is known as Britain’s last true wilderness, and anybody making the mountainous two-day trek into the Knoydart peninsula on the west coast of Scotland would surely be dreaming of a thirst-quenching pint at the end of their journey.Listed in the Guinness World Records as mainland Britain’s most remote pub, the Old Forge in Inverie, Knoydart’s main settlement, is also accessible by ferry from Mallaig. But with no connecting roads, any aspiring punter would have to make a hike of nearly 30km across peat bog and looming Munros. Continue reading...

As the US boiled with violence, 1969’s Harlem cultural festival nourished spirits with soul, jazz and gospel. Now, Questlove has turned lost footage of it into a brilliant, pertinent documentaryIt’s 29 June 1969, and at Harlem’s Mount Morris park (now Marcus Garvey park), the 5th Dimension are about to take the stage. The Los Angeles group are already stars, thanks to hits including Up, Up and Away and Aquarius, from the musical Hair, which topped the Billboard charts that spring. But their pop-oriented repertoire, often penned by white songwriters, has kept them off the US’s R&B radio stations and thus from Black audiences. “We’d tried to separate ourselves from the segregation in our society, but we still got caught up in all that,” remembers the group’s founding singer, Billy Davis Jr, today. “And the average Black family didn’t earn enough to come see us at the nightclubs we were playing. They’d seen us on TV, but they’d never seen us live.”That was about to change with their headline performance on the opening day of the Harlem cultural festival. A series of six Sunday concerts that summer, the festival showcased the cream of the era’s soul, gospel, blues and jazz artists before an audience of 300,000, many from the surrounding neighbourhoods. “I looked out and saw a sea of faces, and their response was so loving, so welcoming and exciting,” says Davis Jr’s wife and bandmate, Marilyn McCoo, for whom the festival remains a treasured memory. She’s not alone. Harlemite Musa Jackson, then just a five-year-old, still remembers how the 5th Dimension’s orange costumes, gleaming in the sun, made them look “like Creamsicles”. Continue reading...

Activists say Ramzan Kadyrov’s regime uses televised confessions ‘under duress’ to hold back women’s rights, despite changes in societyKhalimat Taramova, the 22-year-old daughter of a prominent Chechen businessman, sits demurely on a velvet sofa ornately embellished in gold. She is wearing a modest dress and a headscarf. With her on the sofa are three men dressed in suits. They are appearing on Grozny TV, the state television channel of Russia’s Chechen Republic.Only a couple of weeks before the programme was shown on 14 June, Taramova fled her home, where she said she was subjected to violence after going against her family’s wishes. She sought help from a group of women’s rights activists, the Marem project , who let her stay in a flat owned by one of its members in the neighbouring republic of Dagestan. In a video released on social media on 6 June, she pleaded for the Chechen authorities not to come looking for her. Continue reading...

Ruling is part of ongoing fight for rule of law and freedom from discrimination in heart EuropeThe EU executive has launched legal action against Hungary and Poland to defend LGBTQ+ rights in the latest battle over values with the two nationalist governments in central Europe.The announcement that Hungary and Poland’s governments could end up in the EU’s highest court is part of an ongoing existential fight for the rule of law and freedom from discrimination in the heart of Europe. Continue reading...

With her latest movie, Jungle Cruise, out this month, we round up the finest work by the star of The Devil Wears Prada and A Quiet Place Part IIEmily Blunt can make bad films tolerable. Even her talents were stretched, though, by this horror reboot. She lounges demurely on a riverbank in funeral dress while Benicio del Toro grunts and growls and Anthony Hopkins goes full ham. The original director, Mark Romanek, jumped ship to be replaced by Joe Johnston. The result is a wolf’s dinner. Continue reading...

Kirill Serebrennikov’s prescient and audacious but oppressive drama is set in a post-Soviet Russia in the grip of a flu epidemicKirill Serebrennikov is the Russian theatre and film director whose work now makes its second appearance in the Cannes competition, and who, for the second time, has been effectively forbidden from coming in person, owing to his status as a courageous anti-government protester. For his previous film, Leto, he was under house arrest, and he now has a suspended sentence for charges that are clearly politically motivated. He is a remarkable figure, and it would have been agreeable to give a warm greeting to this already much admired, frenetically energetic new film, based on a novel by Russian author Alexei Salnikov, The Petrovs in and Around the Flu.It is set in a post-Soviet Russia in the grip of a flu epidemic and complete social breakdown, with people muttering how things were better before the country was ruined by “Gorby” and then finished off by Yeltsin. The narrative motif of a flu epidemic is shrewd and prescient, and the “flu symptom hallucination” imagery is fierce. Continue reading...

Victoria to go into hard lockdown as outbreak grows to 18 cases; NSW premier warns of higher case numbers on Friday. This blog is now closed

Over the past year, many of us have suffered from physical and emotional exhaustion. It is no surprise that people have turned to food for comfortNaomi Boles hit a wall last October. “I wasn’t sleeping at all and I felt like I couldn’t keep going,” she recalls. “I was so stressed, and even when I was in bed my brain was constantly racing as I was worrying so much about my health, about my income, about my children. When I went to the doctor, it was like I’d reached a point where I couldn’t carry on any more.”Nine months on, she is still recovering from that burnout. “I am finally getting to the point where I can be a bit easier on myself and not constantly be in this fight-or-flight mode,” she says. Continue reading...

Survivors’ groups say Thomas Bach should stay away, accusing him of using site to ‘justify holding of the Olympics by force’ despite pandemic

The pop star tells a Los Angeles hearing: ‘They were always trying to make me feel like I’m crazy’ as she gives shocking details

Cameras have been allowed in a Sydney hospital's Covid-19 intensive care unit, showing the struggle of one patient on a ventilator. The 53-year-old Covid patient from NSW is only able to take shallow breaths of air through the ventilator. His medical teams, dressed in full PPE, adjusts his ventilator tubes and monitor his oxygen levels. The patient has given his consent for his images to be published► Subscribe to Guardian Australia on YouTube

Citizens warned not to take law into own hands to protect property, as government plans to deploy 25,000 more troopsSenior officials in South Africa have appealed to ordinary citizens not to take the law into their own hands as vigilante groups form following days of unchecked looting and violent protests across a swath of the country.Thousands of soldiers have been deployed to help police on the streets, but law enforcement agencies still appear unable to stem ongoing attacks by crowds on warehouses, supermarkets, shopping malls, clinics and factories. Continue reading...

Thursday: A growing Covid outbreak in Victoria prompts indoor mask mandate. Plus: Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro in hospital for hiccupsGood morning. Victorians face Covid restrictions again as case numbers grow, South Africa continues to suffer significant violence and unrest, and the mourning family of Frank “Gud” Coleman call out a lack of respect from corrective services following his passing.A former member of the Morrison government’s immunisation advisory body has hit back at the prime minister’s criticism of the group, calling Scott Morrison’s comments “unfair” and “disappointing”. Morrison blamed Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisations (Atagi) on 2GB radio on Wednesday for being “overly cautious” about the AstraZeneca jab, suggesting this had slowed the Covid vaccine rollout. Former member, Debra Petrys, said Atagi had been “unfairly put in the spotlight”, while public health expert Bill Bowtell also claimed the federal government’s failure to diversify its vaccine supply was the most critical setback for the vaccine rollout, not the advice of Atagi. Continue reading...

Gen Mark Milley drew comparison to Nazi Germany as Trump tried to overturn election defeat, new book I Alone Can Fix This saysShortly before the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, told aides the US was facing a “Reichstag moment” because Donald Trump was preaching “the gospel of the Führer”, according to an eagerly awaited book about Trump’s last year in office.Related: Trump told chief of staff Hitler ‘did a lot of good things’, book says Continue reading...

Proposals to end prosecutions relating to Troubles before 1998 opposed by Irish governmentAll criminal prosecutions relating to the Troubles and future attempts to take civil actions would be blocked under UK government plans that have united Northern Ireland’s parties in opposition.The proposals, which are also opposed by the Irish government, were announced by Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, who told MPs it was a “painful truth” that criminal investigations were unlikely to deliver successful outcomes. Continue reading...

Boris Johnson has come under fresh pressure from metro mayors to change tack and keep mask wearing compulsory on public transport in England from Monday. At a news conference on Wednesday six Labour metro mayors said they would all be doing everything they could to require passengers to keep wearing masks. But the mayors have different powers in different places, and mostly their powers over transport are very limited. Continue reading...

Change means some people will have to quarantine when arriving in England from Monday, as red and green lists also updated

Despair and frustration have exploded into unrest. Demonstrators should be heard, not exploitedThe crackdown is well under way. On Sunday, thousands of Cubans took to the streets in cities across the country, impelled by food shortages, high prices and other anti-government grievances. These were the biggest protests in decades. Over 140 activists, demonstrators and journalists are believed to have been detained or disappeared, and one man has died. A few hundred more protested on Monday, but – while internet shutdowns make it harder to follow events – the unrest appears to have ebbed for now. The discontent has not.Though the speed and scale of the demonstrations took everyone by surprise, and owe much to the advent of social media, the pressure has long been building. Cuba is in the throes of its worst economic crisis since the “special period” of the early 1990s, after the Soviet Union, its patron, collapsed. The government’s long-term failings, including foot-dragging on reform, have been matched by the impact of the American embargo. Hopes aroused by Barack Obama’s restoration of relations and loosened restrictions were cruelly dashed when Donald Trump reclassified the country as a state sponsor of terrorism and imposed new sanctions barring travel to the country from the US and, crucially, remittances: a key source of income. Washington’s claim that Havana is failing to meet people’s most basic needs is undeniable. But the US has ensured this is the case. Mr Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, reportedly told diplomats that the aim of the tightened sanctions was to “starve” the island to bring down the regime. Continue reading...

Historically musicians steered clear of addressing political topics that risk reprisals at home but Sunday’s explosion changed thatHigh-profile Cuban musicians from salsa band Los Van Van and jazz pianist Chucho Valdés to pop star Leoni Torres have offered rare public support to protesters and criticized Communist authorities’ handling of the worst unrest in decades.Thousands of Cubans joined rare protests nationwide on Sunday over shortages, Covid-19 and political rights. The government blamed US-financed “counter-revolutionaries” exploiting economic hardship caused by US sanctions. Continue reading...

Met commissioner’s conduct was criticised in report into police corruption after 1987 unsolved murderTwo police watchdogs are considering launching a formal investigation into Dame Cressida Dick, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, following the report on police corruption that shielded the killers of Daniel Morgan.Since the publication of the Morgan report, which directly criticised Dick for hampering the government sponsored inquiry, the Independent Office for Police Conduct has been considering whether she, and other past and present officers that were criticised, should face action. Continue reading...