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London, United Kingdom – Juliet Stevenson, one of Britain’s most recognisable actors who is widely regarded as a national treasure, has taken on a new role over the past two years.

She has become a leading voice for Palestinians, marching at rallies, making speeches, signing protest letters, writing columns and producing films – using every opportunity to spell out the brutality of Israel’s atrocities on Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Last week, alongside dozens of other cultural icons such as Judi Dench, Meera Syal and Sienna Miller, Stevenson wrote to the founder of Mumsnet, a popular online forum where mothers discuss a range of issues from childcare and parental leave to transgenderism, politics and global wars.

The famous mothers want Justine Roberts, the founder, to pressure the United Kingdom’s government to demand that Israel allow maternity clinics stuck in Egypt into Gaza and give access to NGOs trying to deliver aid – especially items essential to women and girls, such as menstrual and hygiene supplies.

Mumsnet has said Roberts will meet with the group.

Al Jazeera spoke with Stevenson about why she believes British mothers should offer moral support to Palestinian parents, the roots of her activism, and her determination to keep speaking up despite the risks it carries to careers.

Al Jazeera: Why are you appealing to Mumsnet?

Juliet Stevenson: Mumsnet has about nine million users monthly in this country. So I am told that it has the ear of the government, because that’s a good chunk of the electorate. And the community of mothers on Mumsnet crosses divisions of class, faith, ethnicity.

This campaign is about mothers for mothers. The situation being endured by mothers in Gaza is unimaginably brutal and horrific.

We want to galvanise the mums of Great Britain to speak up for the mums of Gaza through their communities, one of which – and probably the most powerful – is Mumsnet. Many people express the desire and need to do something in relation to the suffering they see in Gaza and across the occupied territories, but they don’t know what or how. This campaign is something they can join with if they want to.

Al Jazeera: As a mother yourself, how has it felt watching the genocide unfold?

Stevenson: Honestly, unspeakable. Sometimes I feel beside myself.

Everybody in the world loves their children in the same way. Palestinian parents love their children just as much as we do. How can our politicians sit back and watch what these parents are enduring? And watch the unimaginable suffering being inflicted on children?

There are more child amputees now in Gaza than in any other time or place in history. There are many children who have lost all their family, young children without parents or family left. There are parents who have no children left. There are pregnant mothers who are starving, giving birth to premature and very underweight babies who struggle to survive. Most of Gaza’s healthcare system has been destroyed, and where hospitals are still functioning, they do so with a chronic lack of equipment and medicines. There are minimal resources for maternal and neonatal care. The infant mortality rate has leapt up by 75 percent, and miscarriages by 300 percent.

Any mother in the world seeing this situation would be haunted and horrified, I think. I would hope so.

Al Jazeera: For many years, you’ve protested for the rights of Palestinians. What’s behind your activism, something that, as we have seen, comes with risk to careers?

Stevenson: I learned about the situation of the Palestinian people many years ago. It struck me from the very first as a narrative of extreme injustice. My husband is Jewish and his mum, my beloved mother-in-law, was a refugee from Hitler’s Vienna [Austria was annexed by the Nazis in 1938 and liberated in 1945].

I fully understand what the Holocaust left in its wake, and the need for the Jewish people to feel secure and safe – and never again to be vulnerable to the appalling ravages of anti-Semitism. But as many, many Jews are now saying, what the Israeli government is doing now, what has been perpetrated on the Palestinian people since 1948, was never a just or wise solution. The UK is deeply implicated in those historical events.

I read Edward Said and other Palestinian writers, and I read Israeli writers … I’m concerned with the safety and security of Israeli citizens, too. The brutality lashed out against Gaza and the occupied territories serves nobody in the region.

As for careers, my career – I honestly feel that if people don’t want to work with me because they don’t like what I’m saying about this, then I don’t think I want to work with them. And if they’re going to punish me for my belief system, then I probably don’t belong there. And most importantly, I don’t think my career is more important than the lives of Palestinian children. I really, really don’t.

And when I come to the end of my life, whenever that is, I want to be able to look back at my life and say I hope I did the right thing at the right time.

Of course, I want to go on working as an actor; I love the work. And I need my platform and my profile to be able to be effective – that’s important, too. But I haven’t yet felt that I’ve been penalised for activism – I’ve never worked as hard or as much as I did last year. So I’m optimistic that there are enough people in the industry who don’t want to punish me for this, and who feel the same.

Al Jazeera: How do you characterise the muted response to the genocide in Gaza from usually outspoken characters in the arts or feminists who speak up about oppression in other regions of the world?

Stevenson: I’m painfully disappointed by the silence in my industry, by the silence everywhere. I’m dismayed by how people are allowing the bullying into silence to be effective – by their yielding to that power. At this point in the genocide, silence is not a passive act. It’s active – it’s a decision to collude.

We look back at Germany at the time of the Holocaust, and we harshly judge those who didn’t speak out against that barbarism, and we admire those who did. But what about the current genocide? Why do we so often look back at history and assess it in that way, but we don’t bring those judgements to bear on the world we’re living in now?

I do wish more leading figures in the arts, and more arts and cultural institutions, would engage with what is happening in Palestine and use their voices and influence. It’s our job, isn’t it, to reflect the human condition, human experience? If we’re not doing that in relation to the genocide, then I don’t know what we are doing, really.

Al Jazeera: Several British actors over the years, yourself included and Vanessa Redgrave, have criticised Israeli policy that disregards Palestinian rights. Has the space for speaking up become more restrictive in recent years?

Stevenson: I’d like to acknowledge Vanessa’s astonishing legacy of always speaking out and always fighting for human rights. She’s been a really inspiring person in our industry doing that. And I would also like to acknowledge the voice and the actions of many young people in my industry now – not famous or with high profile, but who are really engaged and tirelessly support the Stop the War movement, and who call for humanity and action. It takes bravery – as it does in Hollywood, where a few have stood up and spoken out. I’m so grateful that they found the courage. … But most people have not.

There was a great wave of public support that grew during last summer. My great fear now is that it’s subsiding again – the illusion of the so-called “ceasefire” has taken hold – when in fact there has been no ceasefire [and] much of the mainstream media colludes. There is, in addition, so much distraction in the news because of world events elsewhere …  and then of course there is the power of Israel’s propaganda machine, which is immense and far-reaching.

Al Jazeera: What propels you to keep going?

Stevenson: It’s vitally important to keep Palestine conscious in people’s minds – to sustain its presence in the media. To keep the movement for peace and justice alive and energised.

My values have shifted, my community of friendships has partly shifted, my work and general interests have shifted. Much has changed for me in relation to this. A lot of the people I spend time with now are people who are in this community, and who will not give up hope. My mantra in life is one that I adopted when I was very young – “Despair is a luxury we cannot afford.”

Al Jazeera: Does your family join your activism?

Stevenson: My husband Hugh [Brody], though not religious, feels his Jewish identity very deeply. Our children identify as Jewish. And we have many Jewish friends, but all of them are appalled by what’s happening. Most of them would adhere strongly to those who are saying “Not in my name”.

This insistence by the government of Israel that to criticise Israel is anti-Semitic, this eliding of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, is not only ludicrous – what government in the world is beyond criticism? – but it’s very, very dangerous for Jewish people. Because if you say that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, then it means that all Jews are somehow implicated in what Israel’s doing. Which is palpably very far from the truth – and feeds the real and abhorrent currents of genuine anti-Semitism in the world.

Hugh is a writer and an anthropologist, less inclined to be collective. But for a while now, he has gone on the Saturday marches and walked with the Holocaust group. He has committed to that community.

I am relieved and very strengthened by that and by the support of our children. It would be very painful and difficult if we were not of like mind in this.

Note: This interview was lightly edited for brevity.

As movies have morphed from a vibrant public event into a product we watch on our personal screens, film criticism has also been disrupted thanks to apps like Letterboxd. Fortunately, film critic A. S. Hamrah hasn’t gotten the memo. He is an insurrectionary voice in a time of critical complacency. Hamrah, who contributes reviews to Bookforum, n+1 and the Baffler, wields his pen like a flame thrower, lambasting Hollywood’s decline in a trenchant voice spiked with barbed wit while also shining a light on great marginalized films.

Hamrah has recently published two new books: a collection of his reviews called “Algorithm of the Night,” as well as a compilation of Hollywood news items called “Last Week in End Times Cinema” that reads like a doom scroll of cultural decay. I chatted with Hamrah about Marvel, Pauline Kael and AI.

✍️ Author Chat

A. S. Hamrah is a film critic and author of the recently published books “Algorithm of the Night” and “Last Week in End Times Cinema.”

(Courtesy of A. S. Hamrah)

Both of these books really describe the end of an era for movies, what you call the end of a worldview. What do you mean by that?

I think the goal of the studios, Netflix in particular, is not just to end theatrical exhibition but to end a certain way of understanding the cinema and to just turn it into television. The merger of cinema and television is very bad for cinema.

In the past, when existential threats of film reared their head, whether it was television or videocassette recorders, there was a sense of movies having to work harder to maintain its supremacy. But if everything is film, then there is no countervailing force. It all just merges into one thing.

People who watch a lot of TV were seen as kind of not really up to life in some ways. But it was never the goal of TV to crush cinema, which is the case now. Someone like Ted Sarandos at Netflix, his whole thing is based on pretending that no one likes to go to the movies anymore, when, in fact, millions of people all over the world love going to the movies.

I feel like your criticism is not about thumbs up, thumbs down. Even when you write a negative review, it’s fun to argue against it. You are creating a dialogue with your readers.

I don’t write a negative review to stop people from seeing a film. I want them to see it and make up their own mind about it. I also really try to avoid writing anything that can be extrapolated for a movie ad. I don’t want my stuff to be taken out of context and thrown onto a movie poster.

“Algorithm of the Night” is a collection of reviews by film critic A. S. Hamrah.

(Courtesy of A. S. Hamrah)

What critics inspired you?

Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael. The writer who had the biggest influence on me is Manny Farber, for the way he thinks about things and the freedom of his writing.

“Last Week in End Times Cinema” is the most depressing book I read last year, just a desultory litany of headlines about movie reboots, the creeping influence of AI on film, and so on.

When I first started publishing these, people thought I was making them up. I started culling them with great joy and mirth, but as the year progressed, with the wildfires in LA, the whole project became much more dire. And the death of David Lynch was a real blow, I thought.

You take a dim view of AI.

It seems to be Hollywood’s goal to not have any human beings involved in filmmaking. Why pay Will Smith $20 million when you can have an AI voice? But they’ve been preparing the ground for this since the beginning of the century. It feels like the whole system of production of Marvel films is already a form of AI. They’re trying to educate audiences into liking garbage, and that is what I mean when I write about the death of a worldview.

What films did you like last year?

“The Secret Agent,” “The Mastermind,” “Bugonia.” I saw “One Battle After Another” twice. There’s plenty of good commercial films that people can see in theaters, but the media acts like they don’t exist.

(This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

📰 The Week(s) in Books

“One of the reasons I decided to focus on Orange County is that it’s not the norm — not what you think of as the Deep South. It’s Disneyland. It’s California,” author Eric Lichtblau says.

(Photos by Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times, Little Brown Company)

Costa Bevan Pappas has a chat with Eric Litchtblau about his new book “American Reich,” which explores the roots of white supremacy in Orange County. “One of the reasons I decided to focus on Orange County is that it’s not the norm — not what you think of as the Deep South,” Lichtblau tells Pappas. “It’s Disneyland. It’s California. These are people who are trying to take back America from the shores of Orange County because it’s gotten too brown in their view.”

Xialou Guo has crafted a radical remix of “Moby Dick” titled “Call Me Ishmaelle,” and Leanne Ogasawara is enchanted: “There is so much pleasure to be had in rereading old favorites — and part of the joy is meeting beloved characters, who have been updated or somehow arrive in a new form to resist old tropes and types.”

A year after the wildfires, L.A. native Jacob Soboroff has written “Firestorm,” and he sat down with Mariella Rudi to discuss the first book to be written about the calamity. “For me, it’s a much more personal book,” Soboroff says. “It’s about experiencing what I came to understand as the fire of the future. It’s about people as much as politics.”

Finally, Bethanne Patrick gives us the lowdown on January’s must-read book, while Eva Recinos gives us the five best science books of 2025.

📖 Bookstore Faves

Josh Spencer, owner of the Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles, opened a second location of the book store at 4437 Lankershim Blvd.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Ever since it opened a little over a year ago, Josh Spencer’s second edition of The Last Bookstore has grown a vibrant community of Valley-dwelling book lovers hungry for a store that sells newly published titles and a curated selection of second-hand gems. I chatted with store manager Shane Danielson about what customers are excited about right now.

What’s selling right now at the Valley store?

Right now film adaptations current and upcoming are driving a lot of our fiction sales – “Frankenstein,” Pynchon’s “Vineland” (for “One Battle After Another”), “Wuthering Heights.” Certain “brand name” authors always do well: Brandon Sanderson, Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut. But generally, our stock is so diverse that it’s hard to spot broader trends.

What kind of community has gathered around the store?

We have a growing community of literate, curious, frequently funny, often politically-engaged readers and book lovers, both young and not-so-young, who see reading and things like book groups as an act of resistance to the dominant culture. They want to turn off their screens for a while, and give themselves over to the longer narrative and deeper pleasures that a book provides.

What specific genres are popular?

Plays and books about acting sell every day – unsurprising, since we’re close to the Warner Bros. and Universal studios as well as two local theatre schools. Horror, science fiction and fantasy are perennials; and an increasing number of women, presumably disillusioned with real-world dating options, are enthusiastic consumers of “romantasy” authors like Rebecca Yarros and Sarah J. Maas. Classics also do surprisingly well: people seem to be reading an awful lot of Dostoevsky and George Orwell and Jane Austen. Which is encouraging.

We know how difficult it is in this culture to make folks care about books. Do you still find in people that desire — to read, and to explore through books? Are people still curious to learn about the world via books as opposed to ChatGPT?

Many of our customers say they treasure the physicality of a book – its heft, the tactility of the pages – as opposed to the frictionless experience of reading on a Kindle or another device. And interestingly, they all say variations on the same thing, which is that those other reading experiences just don’t stick; for whatever reason, they don’t retain much of what they’ve read afterward.

The Last Bookstore in Studio City is located in 4437 Lankershim Blvd.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)

A SOUTH Korean movie star, hailed “The Nation’s Actor” has died, following a years long battle with cancer.

Ahn Sung-ki, who began his career as a child star, was a heavyweight in the industry and spent six decades on South Korean screens.

His death was confirmed by his agency, Artist Company, and Seoul’s Soonchunhyang University Hospital, which said Ahn had been battling blood cancer.

Born to a filmmaker in the southeastern city of Daegu in 1952, Ahn made his debut as a child actor in the movie The Twilight Train in 1957.

He subsequently appeared in about 70 movies as a child actor before he left the film industry to live an ordinary life.

In 1970, Ahn entered Seouls Hankuk University of Foreign Studies as a Vietnamese major.

Ahn said he graduated with top honors but failed to land jobs at big companies, who likely saw his Vietnamese major largely useless after a communist victory in the Vietnam War in 1975.

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The finale of Netflix’s blockbuster series “Stranger Things” gave movie theaters a much needed jolt, generating an estimated $20 to $25 million at the box office, according to multiple reports.

Matt and Ross Duffer’s supernatural thriller debuted simultaneously on the streaming platform and some 600 cinemas on New Year’s Eve and held encore showings all through New Year’s Day.

Owing to the cast’s contractual terms for residuals, theaters could not charge for tickets. Instead, fans reserved seats for performances directly from theaters, paying for mandatory food and beverage vouchers. AMC and Cinemark Theatres charged $20 for the concession vouchers while Regal Cinemas charged $11 — in homage to the show’s lead character, Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown.

AMC Theatres, the world’s largest theater chain, played the finale at 231 of its theaters across the U.S. — which accounted for one-third of all theaters that held screenings over the holiday.

The chain said that more than 753,000 viewers attended a performance at one of its cinemas over two days, bringing in more than $15 million.

Expectations for the theater showing was high.

“Our year ends on a high: Netflix’s Strangers Things series finale to show in many AMC theatres this week. Two days only New Year’s Eve and Jan 1.,” tweeted AMC’s CEO Adam Aron on Dec. 30. “Theatres are packed. Many sellouts but seats still available. How many Stranger Things tickets do you think AMC will sell?”

It was a rare win for the lagging domestic box office.

In 2025, revenue in the U.S. and Canada was expected to reach $8.87 billion, which was marginally better than 2024 and only 20% more than pre-pandemic levels, according to movie data firm Comscore.

With few exceptions, moviegoers have stayed home. As of Dec. 25., only an estimated 760 million tickets were sold, according to media and entertainment data firm EntTelligence, compared with 2024, during which total ticket sales exceeded 800 million.

The French star reshaped post-war cinema before retreating from global fame into animal rights activism and, later, far-right politics.

Brigitte Bardot, the French actor and singer who became a global sensation before reinventing herself as an animal protection campaigner and outspoken supporter of the far right, has died aged 91.

The Brigitte Bardot Foundation announced her death on Sunday, saying “with immense sadness” that its founder and president had died.

In a statement sent to the AFP news agency, the foundation described Bardot as “a world-renowned actress and singer, who chose to abandon her prestigious career to dedicate her life and energy to animal welfare and her foundation”. It did not give details about when or where she died.

Bardot rose to international fame in 1956 with her role in And God Created Woman, a film that sought to project female sexuality on screen. She went on to appear in about 50 films, becoming one of the most recognisable faces of post-war French cinema.

In the early 1970s, Bardot quit acting at the height of her fame, turning her attention to animal protection. While her campaigning earned admiration from supporters, her public life grew increasingly controversial as she embraced far-right politics and made repeated racist and inflammatory remarks.

Her activism hardened into open support for France’s far-right National Front, now known as National Rally, and the party’s longtime leader Marine Le Pen. Over the years, French courts convicted Bardot multiple times for inciting racial hatred.

In 2022, a court fined her 40,000 euros ($47,000) after she described people from Reunion, a French overseas territory, as “degenerates” who had “kept their savage genes”. It marked the sixth time authorities had sanctioned her for racist and hate speech. Muslims and immigrants were among her frequent targets.

Born in Paris in 1934, Bardot grew up in a conservative Catholic household and trained as a ballet dancer at the Conservatoire de Paris. She began modelling as a teenager, appearing on the cover of Elle at 15, which led to early film roles and her marriage to director Roger Vadim.

Despite later being hailed by some as a trailblazer for women in cinema, Bardot dismissed complaints about sexual harassment in the film industry.

“Many actresses flirt with producers to get a role. Then when they tell the story afterwards, they say they have been harassed. … In actual fact, rather than benefit them, it only harms them,” she said.

“I thought it was nice to be told that I was beautiful or that I had a pretty little a**. This kind of compliment is nice.”

Celebrated director of ‘Jenin, Jenin’ documentary leaves behind legacy of artistic resistance.

Acclaimed Palestinian actor and filmmaker Mohammad Bakri has died in northern Israel, ending a five-decade career that established him as one of the most influential voices in Palestinian cinema.

Bakri died on Wednesday at Galilee Medical Centre in Nahariya after suffering from heart and lung problems, hospital officials said.

His passing removes a towering figure whose work directly challenged Israeli narratives and whose decades-long legal battles over censorship became a defining chapter in Palestinian cultural resistance.

The 72-year-old was best known for his 2002 documentary, Jenin, Jenin, which captured testimonies from Palestinian residents following a devastating Israeli military operation in the refugee camp that killed 52 Palestinians.

The film ignited years of controversy in Israel but elevated Bakri’s status as a creative and would overshadow the remainder of his life.

Israeli authorities banned the documentary from screening in 2021, with the Supreme Court upholding the prohibition in 2022, deeming it defamatory.

“I intend to appeal the verdict because it is unfair, it is neutering my truth,” Bakri told the Walla News website at the time.

Five soldiers sued Bakri, and courts eventually fined him hundreds of thousands of shekels while ordering all copies seized and online links removed.

In an interview with the British Film Institute earlier this year, Bakri said, “I don’t see Israel as my enemy … but they consider me their enemy. They see me as a traitor … for making a movie.”

Born in 1953 in the Galilee village of Bi’ina, Bakri was a Palestinian citizen of Israel who studied Arabic literature and theatre at Tel Aviv University. He made his striking film debut at age 30 in Costa-Gavras’s Hanna K, playing a Palestinian refugee attempting to reclaim his family’s home.

His role as a Palestinian prisoner in the 1984 Israeli film Beyond the Walls earned international acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for the production.

But it was Bakri’s commitment to telling Palestinian stories that defined his career. He appeared in more than 40 films and directed several documentaries examining the experiences of Palestinians living under occupation and within Israel.

His solo theatrical performance of The Pessoptimist, based on Emile Habibi’s novel about Palestinian identity, was performed more than 1,500 times worldwide and cemented his status as a cultural icon.

Bakri is survived by his wife Leila and six children, including actors Saleh, Ziad and Adam, who have followed him into cinema. His funeral was held the same day in Bi’ina.