It seems that after years, indeed decades, of vacillation, Saudi Arabia has finally decided to challenge its rival, Iran, if only via a proxy war in Yemen. The rebel Houthi Zaidis, who have taken control of much of the country, belong to a Shia school of Islamic thought distinct from the beliefs held by Shi’ites […]
The shaky relationship between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu has grown progressively worse in the past three weeks due to Netanyahu’s hardline policies and cynical electioneering tactics and Obama’s cold calculation that he can politically afford to say and do what what he pleases in the homestretch of his presidency. And because both sides are convinced […]
She may well have been the most famous victim of the Holocaust. Anne Frank, the young Dutch Jewish woman whose brief life has inspired mountains of commentaries, biographies, movies and plays, succumbed to typhus in a German concentration camp 70 years ago this month. The gabled house in the center of Amsterdam where she and her […]
Francois Girard’s Boychoir resonates deeply. This beautifully crafted film, which opens in Canada on March 27, is the story of an 11-year-old boy from the wrong side of the tracks who pulls himself up from a life of misery with the encouragement and support of a few key players. Stet (Garrett Wareing) and his single alcohol-addled mother […]
Picture this. The conservative prime minister of a major country in Europe calls a general election, confident he will win another term. Much to his chagrin, pollsters inform him he’s fallen behind his main competitor and may yet lose. In desperation, he issues an appeal to his core constituents. He says, “Right-wing rule is in […]
He’s clawed his way back to power, and that’s bad news for Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu, having scored a decisive come-from-behind victory over Isaac Herzog in the March 17 general election, is poised to surpass David Ben-Gurion as Israel’s longest-reigning prime minister. Netanyahu is no doubt chortling, having upended pundits’ predictions that he would go down […]
Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders — which opens at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto on March 27 — is as naturalistic as the sweet, liquidity product its main characters harvest daily. This film, set in rural Italy, is broadly about an eccentric Italian-German family of beekeepers. Beyond this, it’s a coming-of-age movie about a young woman from […]
When International Holocaust Remembrance Day was marked around the world on January 27, Turkey responded by sending high-ranking government officials to a ceremony in Istanbul and its foreign minister to a commemorative event in the former Auschwitz extermination camp. Turkey’s formal interest in the Holocaust may have come as a surprise to some, but Turkey has […]
In recent years, the new technology of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has made the United States the number one producer of natural gas in the world, and will soon make it first in oil production, according to television ads produced by the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade association in the nation for the oil […]
The Toronto International Film Festival, in conjunction with Human Rights Watch, is presenting the Human Rights Watch Film Festival from March 24 to April 2 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. There are eight films on the program, three of which I preview here. Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is broadly the theme of The Wanted […]