- Monaco take top spot in Ligue 1 with win at Rennes
- Madrid beat Villarreal to level Liga leaders Barca
- Thuram treble fires Inter past Torino and up to second
- 'Fight': defiant Trump jets in to site of rally shooting
- Mexico City's new mayor sworn in with pledges on water, housing
- Israel on alert ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Guardians maul Tigers in MLB playoff series opener
- Macron criticises Israel on Gaza, Lebanon operations
- French rugby player whistled but 'serene' on return amid ongoing rape case
- Retegui hat-trick fires five-star Atalanta to hammering of Genoa
- Heavyweights Australia, England off to World Cup winning starts
- Visiting UN refugee agency chief decries 'terrible crisis' in Lebanon
- Spinners come to party as England defeat Bangladesh at T20 World Cup
- Search continues for missing in deadly Bosnia floods
- Man City sink Fulham to get title bid back on track
- France's Auradou whistled on Pau return in Perpignan loss amid ongoing rape case
- A 'forgotten' valley in storm-hit North Carolina, desperate for help
- Arsenal hit back in style after Southampton scare
- Hezbollah heir apparent Safieddine out of contact after strikes
- Liverpool stay top of Premier League as Arsenal, Man City win
- In dank Tour of Emilia, Pogacar shines in rainbow jersey
- DR Congo launches mpox vaccination drive, hoping to curb outbreak
- Trump returns to site of failed assassination
- Careless Leverkusen held to Bundesliga draw
- O'Brien's 'superstar' Kyprios posts landmark win on Arc weekend
- Liverpool suffer Alisson injury blow
- Habosi helps Racing beat Vannes before Auradou's playing return
- Thousands march in London in support of Palestinians, 1 year after Oct 7
- Israel readying response to Iran missile attack
- Schutt, Mooney help Australia beat Sri Lanka in Women's T20 World Cup
- Liverpool extend Premier League lead with win at Palace
- Djokovic 'shakes rust off' to make third round of Shanghai Masters
- 'Imperfect' PSG fighting on all fronts - Luis Enrique
- Struggling Pakistan look to thwart adaptable England
- Child 'trampled to death' in asylum seekers' Channel crossing: minister
- Gauff fights back to set up Beijing final against Muchova
- Guardiola claims Premier League won't delay season for Man City
- Israel to mark October 7 attack as Gaza war spreads
- Gauff fights back to reach China Open final
- Recovering Stokes ruled out of first Pakistan Test
- Hezbollah battles troops on border as Israel pounds Lebanon
- Alcaraz, Sinner breeze into third round of Shanghai Masters
- Bagnaia wins Japan MotoGP sprint to cut Martin's lead
- Alcaraz breezes into third round of Shanghai Masters
- Gaza cultural heritage brought to light in Geneva
- 'Bullet for democracy': Trump returns to site of rally shooting
- Italy targets climate activists in 'anti-Gandhi' demo clampdown
- South Korean cult-horror series 'Hellbound' returns at BIFF
- Nepalis fear more floods as climate change melts glaciers
- Honduras arrests environmentalist's alleged murderer
Edgy Austrian director holds mirror up to 'ugly' Europe
Austrian director Ulrich Seidl has shocked arthouse audiences for two decades with hard looks at society's seedy underbelly and said Friday Europeans must be willing to confront the continent's "ugly" side.
Seidl premiered his latest dark, sexually explicit drama "Rimini" at the 72nd Berlin film festival as one of 18 contenders for the Golden Bear top prize.
The picture, which drew a positive reception, tells the story of Richie Bravo, a washed-up singer of Schlager -- schmaltzy love songs popular with pensioners in Germany and Austria.
Richie, resembling Las Vegas-era Elvis with his girth and addictions, makes his living performing for misty-eyed holidaymakers and bedding lonely women for money.
When his estranged daughter Tessa shows up during the winter slow season demanding two decades of child support he has failed to pay, Richie cooks up a scheme to blackmail a wealthy fan with a sex tape of his wife.
After Richie hands over the cash, Tessa thanks him, then promptly moves into his home with her Syrian boyfriend and a dozen of his friends, other Middle Eastern refugees who have recently arrived in Europe.
Meanwhile, Richie's father back in Austria is living in a home suffering from dementia, singing the songs of his own youth in the Nazi period.
The movie, like most of Seidl's pictures, features graphic warts-and-all sex scenes with a cast of non-professional actors and probes the exploitation that goes hand-in-hand with Europeans' search for recreation.
Seidl, 69, told AFP that he trusted audiences enough to give them the unvarnished truth.
"I'm not interested in cliches of beauty. I show people as they are and that means seeing bodies differently, not as the media likes to give them to us," he said.
- 'Determine our future' -
Seidl said this also applied the Italian resort town of Rimini where he spent summer holidays in the 1950s as a child which he opted to shoot in the fog and snow of winter.
"I like to interrogate what 'ugly' is. To me, it's the overfilled beaches and millions of sunbeds and umbrellas," he said.
Seidl said the fact that thousands of refugees wash up on the same beaches where hordes of Europeans seek pleasure every year was also an uncomfortable truth he wanted to explore.
"Refugees arriving in huge numbers is a reality of our world regardless of whether in France or Italy or another European country," he said.
"It is going to determine our future -- I wanted to show that no one is really dealing with it."
Seidl exploded onto the scene with deeply divisive features that penetrate the unflattering sides of European societies.
"Import/Export" from 2005 dealt with women from the former Soviet Union working in the West as prostitutes.
His "Paradise" trilogy of features about sex, power and the cultural obsession with women's bodies premiered at the Berlin, Cannes and Venice film festivals, marking a rare hat-trick for a contemporary director.
Seidl welcomed the decision by Berlin to stage an in-person festival just as Germany's coronavirus infections break daily records, saying it was time for Europe to return to cinemas.
"I would have withdrawn my film if it had gone online," he said.
The festival jury led by Indian-born American director M. Night Shyamalan ("The Sixth Sense") will present its awards on Wednesday.
R.J.Fidalgo--PC