image

On the second floor of a cultural center at Christ Cathedral in Orange County, an AI-rendered depiction of Jesus, calm and smiling, fills one side of the room. Breaking a piece of flatbread in two, he passes it to the 12 similarly enlarged men projected on all four walls around him. On the ground are images of heaping plates of food — roast lamb, vegetables, olives and dips.

“Take and eat,” the AI Jesus says. “This is my body.”

In the center of the room, real-life visitors arrayed on 26 swivel chairs turn their heads back and forth to take in the supersized Last Supper occurring all around them. Already, they have been plunged into the sea of Galilee watching as Jesus walked on water and witnessed his transfiguration on a mountain top. It was all part of what’s being touted as “a museum unlike any other, where faith and forensics meet.”

Visitors watch a 360-degree, AI-rendered video depicting the life of Jesus as told in the Gospels at the opening of the Shroud of Turin Experience at Christ Cathedral.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Located five miles from Disneyland on the campus that once housed televangelist Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral Ministries, the Shroud of Turin Experience is Orange County’s newest tourist attraction with a Christian twist. The 10,000-square-foot exhibit, which opened to the public last week, uses digital projection, artificial intelligence and special effects to introduce visitors to the life of Jesus as depicted in the Gospels with a focus on the mysterious linen burial cloth that believers say wrapped his body after the crucifixion.

“It’s a little Disney-esque, but we really want you to feel like you are in these scenes,” said Pat Powers, a financial adviser who helped raise money for the exhibit. “We want the whole experience to be visually overwhelming.”

Powered by technological advances and a consumer desire for in-person connection, immersive experiences are reinvigorating the way businesses and organizations connect with new audiences and the Catholic Church has taken note. From the viral success of Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience which arrived in L.A. in 2021 to the 360-degree entertainment at the Sphere in Las Vegas, young people in particular are seeking new and dynamic ways of interacting with their entertainment. Now, as the Catholic Church seeks to connect with a new generation of Christians who may be unfamiliar with the Biblical Jesus and the mystery of the shroud, religious and lay leaders are exploring digitally enhanced ways of bringing people to faith.

An interactive screen at the Shroud of Turin Experience allows guests to zoom in on details of the shroud of Turin, a mysterious linen cloth which some believe covered Jesus after his death.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“We want to speak to people the way they are used to being spoken to today and in a way they can absorb,” Powers said.

Organizers said the desire to outfit the exhibit with digital bells and whistles came directly from the top. The Diocese of Orange only agreed to sign off on the privately funded project after organizers promised it would offer interactive elements beyond text and images.

“I said no static pictures, too boring,” said Bishop Timothy Freyer, auxiliary bishop of the diocese. “Posters on the walls wasn’t going to do it.”

Now, signs around the 34-acre Christ Cathedral campus where the Diocese of Orange is located advertise “The Shroud of Turin Experience” as if it were a summer blockbuster: “Discover the blood. Uncover the mystery. Encounter the light.”

Roughly 14 feet long and three feet wide, the shroud of Turin is one of the most scientifically studied and contested religious objects in the world — a holy relic to some and a medieval forgery to others. Scarred by burn marks and water stains, the narrow sheet of linen features hundreds of blood stains consistent with the wounds Jesus suffered at the time of his death. Even more mysteriously, it bares the faint image of a bearded man that some Christians believe provides physical evidence of Jesus’ resurrection. The Catholic Church has not taken an official position on the shroud’s veracity, but the exhibit’s organizers find the evidence for its divine provenance convincing and hope others will too.

A bronze statue of Jesus lies in front of an enlarged photo negative image of the face detail on the shroud of Turin.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“Our position is that the shroud offers evidence of the resurrection, but not proof,” said Nora Creech, a shroud scholar who helped organize the exhibit. “The goal is to lead people in and let them go on their own journey.”

Visitors will not be able to see the actual shroud of Turin. It hasn’t left its long time home of St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Turin, Italy, for centuries. However, with the bishop of Turin’s blessing, organizers were able to procure a high-resolution, full-sized replica. Docents at the exhibit will show visitors how to change their iPhone camera settings to create what looks like a photo negative, making it easier to see the shadowy figure on the cloth.

“Kids always think that’s cool,” said Creech.

The exhibit costs $20 for adults, and organizers say visitors should budget at least 90 minutes to make their way through it. In the first of three immersive rooms, a dizzying 360-degree video introduces guests to the story of Jesus’ life from his baptism to the crucifixion — including that jumbo last supper. At the end of the 20-minute film, a projected rock rolls away from a door leading into a second room designed to look like Jesus’ tomb, complete with a prone figure lying on a stone altar, draped in a white cloth. There guests watch an 18-minute documentary detailing the scientific research on the shroud before moving on to a third “chapel” room where a video animated by AI shares stories from the Bible of sightings of Jesus after his death.

Patrons view a supersized image of Christ on the cross.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The second half of the exhibit is more traditional. Guests can examine several instruments of torture that were reportedly used to inflict pain on Jesus, including replicas of the nails used for crucifixion, the crown of thorns that adorned his head, and the double-edged blade of a Roman lance that pierced his side. Interactive features include a kiosk that digitally separates each level of the shroud so visitors can examine just the blood stains, just the burn marks or just the shadowy image. Those who want a really deep dive on the shroud can interact with a virtual Father Spitzer, president of the Magis Center on Reason and Faith and a local expert on the shroud, to hear pre-recorded answers to questions like “What evidence suggests a supernatural cause was necessary for the image formulation on the shroud” and “How do neutrons explain the shroud’s exceptional resistance to aging and solvents?”

The final room of the exhibit is designed for reflection and includes a life-sized bronze statue of Jesus created by Italian artist Luigi Enzo Matte, according to the dimensions of the image on the shroud.

Although there is a clear religious bent to the entire experience, Creech said the exhibit, expected to remain at Christ Cathedral through at least 2030, is designed to share information on the life of Jesus and the shroud, but not necessarily to convert anyone.

“I think we can convince people that the shroud is the shroud that wrapped the physical body of Jesus,” she said. “But Jesus stresses the importance of belief. To proclaim that Jesus is our lord and savior is an act of faith that everyone has to take on their own.”

The king of cheeses is ready for the spotlight.

The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium, the governing body of the Italian cheese, has reportedly signed with United Talent Agency in order to pursue product placement opportunities in film and TV projects. According to a statement to the Hollywood Reporter, the organization is looking to “introduce Parmigiano Reggiano to a wide pool of partners [and] further its message of gastronomical excellence and high quality ingredients, production and distribution.”

The formaggio faithful know that Parmigiano Reggiano is a hard cow’s milk cheese that can trace its origins back to the Middle Ages. Because it has protected designation of origin, only the cheese made in the Italian provinces of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Bologna and Mantua can legally be called Parmigiano Reggiano. (That’s why the common grated variety you may remember shaking out of a green container onto some spaghetti as a child is called Parmesan.)

According to its website, the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium traces its roots back to the early 1900s when the chambers of commerce in Italian cities were looking to establish a way to authenticate the origin of the hard cheese produced in their region. The organization was formally established in 1928.

Among the association’s objectives is to “organize and take part in initiatives aimed at promoting ‘Parmigiano Reggiano’ cheese, at enhancing its fame, image, reputation, circulation and consumption both in Italy and abroad.”

“Parmigiano Reggiano is not just a symbol of excellence rooted in tradition, but increasingly a truly iconic global brand,” Carmine Forbuso, Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium’s head of marketing, said to the Hollywood Reporter. “This partnership with UTA … allows us to connect with new audiences in an authentic and relevant way. With just three natural ingredients and centuries of artisanal know-how, Parmigiano Reggiano stands for simplicity, quality and depth and we’re excited to explore new formats and platforms to express this story globally.”

So move over, pasta, Parmigiano Reggiano is looking for a new kind of pairing. Netflix and night cheese, perhaps?

New York Jets cornerback Kris Boyd remains in critical but stable condition a day after being shot in the abdomen in midtown Manhattan.

The New York Police Department has released surveillance images of a suspect wanted in connection with the shooting, which took place at approximately 2:06 a.m. Sunday in front of 156 West 38 St. in the Midtown South precinct.

“The sought individual is described as male, medium complexion,” the NYPD said in a statement emailed to The Times. “He was last seen wearing a black cap, black sweatshirt, black pants, multi-colored sneakers, and carrying a black bookbag.”

According to the NYPD, the suspect fled on foot traveling eastbound on West 38 St. Emergency medical services responded to the incident, the police said, and transported a 29-year-old male victim to NYC Health and Hospitals/Bellevue in critical but stable condition.

The office of New York Mayor Eric Adams was one of the first to identify Boyd as the victim.

“I am praying for New York Jets player Kris Boyd and his loved ones,” Adams wrote Sunday on social media. “Although we’ve gotten shootings to historic lows in our city, we must continue to work to end gun violence. Too many young lives have been tragically altered and cut short by this epidemic.”

The Jets, who had a bye in this week’s NFL schedule, said Sunday in a statement: “We are aware of the situation involving Kris Boyd and will have no further comment at this time.”

Boyd was selected by the Minnesota Vikings in the seventh round of the 2019 draft and has also played for the Arizona Cardinals and Houston Texans. Known primarily as a special teams player, Boyd signed a one-year, $1.6 million deal with the Jets this past offseason but was placed on the season-ending injured reserve list on Aug. 18 with a shoulder injury.

On Sunday, Jets linebacker Jermaine Johnson and defensive tackle Harrison Phillips offered prayers for their teammate on social media.

“Everybody please send prayers to my brother and teammate Kris Boyd and his family!!!” Johnson wrote. “Lord please hold your healing hand over Kris and guide him back to health and safety. Lord I ask that you please just get him through this safely.”

Phillips wrote: “Father God, we come to you right now, asking for your healing power over KB. You are a God of miracles. Lord, place your mighty hand on him as he fights lord God. Guide every doctor, nurse, and surgeon who touches him lord. Give his family strength! Kris is a fighter and we’re all here for him.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Nigerian Army’s statement that Brigadier General M Uba, the Brigade Commander 25 Task Force Brigade “successfully led troops back to base” after an ambush last Friday, Nov. 14, in the Damboa area of Borno State, northeastern Nigeria, has been challenged by an exclusive, verified image obtained by HumAngle. The image shows the senior officer alive but held by insurgents, contradicting the military’s official account.

The ambush by ISWAP fighters on a joint military and Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) convoy on Biu Road resulted in the deaths of several soldiers and CJTF members, with the general’s whereabouts initially reported as unknown. HumAngle’s early report cited sources on the ground who said the general was abducted during the attack. We later reported that he had escaped on foot and returned to base, after several security sources insisted on this.

The Nigerian Army also issued a statement denying the abduction, insisting the general had safely led his men back to base and that the incident was an ambush, causing casualties but no kidnapping. However, the military provided no evidence to back this claim at the time.

A verified image HumAngle has seen shows the commander in the custody of ISWAP insurgents, with a gunshot wound to the leg. Verification was carried out through detailed frame analysis, geolocation cross-checking, and confirmation from independent security sources familiar with the region and the incident. The image, shortly after the ambush, shows the general surrounded by armed fighters, appearing fatigued but alive. 

HumAngle, in line with our editorial policies, has made the editorial decision not to publish the picture. 

This new evidence directly challenges the army’s public statement, highlighting a significant discrepancy in the information being shared about frontline realities. The contradictory accounts raise concerns about communication gaps within the military and the potential consequences of misinformation for public trust and operational security.

The capture of a serving commander marks a rare and serious development in the ongoing conflict with insurgent groups in Nigeria’s Northeast. In recent months, ISWAP has intensified attacks around Damboa and the wider Borno region, escalating the dangers faced by both military personnel and civilians.

Security analysts who reviewed the image described the abduction as both an operational setback and a symbolic blow to Nigerian forces fighting the insurgency. Families of soldiers deployed in the area have expressed frustration and anxiety over the conflicting reports about their loved ones’ safety.

Efforts to secure fresh comments from the Nigerian Army have been ongoing, but as of publication, no new statement has been issued addressing the emerging evidence.

Annie Leibovitz strides onto the Wiltern stage to the thunderous cheers of 1,500 mostly female fans. She takes her place at the podium, a small, casually dressed figure on a big stage. On the screen behind her are images of the matching covers of her new two-book set, “Annie Leibovitz: Women.” Volume 1 is her 1999 collection. Volume 2 has 100 new photos captured in the 25 years since. Taken together, the slipcased set zooms in on the past quarter century of American womankind, rendered in 250 images of dancers, actors, astronauts, artists, politicians, farmers, writers, CEOs, philanthropists, soldiers, musicians, athletes, socialites and scientists.

“The book was Susan’s idea,” Leibovitz says on Tuesday, referring to writer Susan Sontag, her partner until Sontag’s death in 2004. “I thought doing a photo book about women was a bad idea, like going out and photographing the ocean. But then I heard what Hillary Clinton said at the U.N. Conference on Women in 1995 — ‘Women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights’ — and I reconsidered.” Applause shakes the Wiltern rafters.

An image from Volume 2 appears, featuring a somber-looking Sontag. “This is the last formal portrait of Susan,” Leibovitz says. “You could think she’s projecting a sense of strength, but really, she was mad at me for making her go outside to take the picture.” The crowd roars with laughter.

Think of Leibovitz, and some legendary photographs spring to mind. Whoopi Goldberg submerged in a milk-filled bathtub on the cover of Vanity Fair, July 1984. Also on VF covers: Michael Jackson, fittingly clothed and shot in black-and-white, in 1989. Demi Moore, fully pregnant and fully naked, two years later. But the photo that remains Leibovitz’s most iconic to date is the January 1981 cover of Rolling Stone featuring a nude, fetal John Lennon wrapped around Yoko Ono. “John showed up naked,” Leibovitz tells the audience. “Yoko wanted to wear clothes, so she’s fully dressed.” Leibovitz took the Polaroid on Dec. 8, 1980 — a few steps away from, and a few hours before, Lennon was shot and killed by former fan Mark David Chapman.

Joan Baez in Woodside, Calif., in 2007, from “Annie Leibovitz: Women.”

(Annie Leibovitz)

In Volume 2, we find a barefoot Joan Baez sitting in a tree strumming her guitar; a pregnant Rihanna draped in jewels and fur; Billie Eilish dreaming over a journal with pencil in hand; Shonda Rhimes with her feet up on a desk as massive as her oeuvre; and an uninhibited Michelle Obama as we’ve never seen her before: chin raised, eyes closed, hair tossed back, T-shirt and jeans parted to reveal her midriff. “I was in shock,” Leibovitz says. “But the first lady’s assistant was standing next to me, shouting, ‘That’s my first lady!’”

Familiar faces dominate, but woven between them are portraits of “regular” American women. A botanist precedes Oprah Winfrey, a philanthropist and a rabbi surround the founder of a Skid Row nonprofit, the reproductive rights activists of Moms Demand Action share space with a nude Lady Gaga. “I told her to bring a slip,” Leibovitz comments. “I’d rather people keep their clothes on at this point in my life.”

Volume 2 includes one essay each from activist Gloria Steinem, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Leibovitz herself. Steinem writes, “This book will help us to discover our adventurous true selves. … We are atoms whirling in place, affected by and affecting those near and far from where we are.”

Adichie agrees. “Taken as a whole,” she writes, “these photographs create a deeply moving experience, they refute the singular lens, they revel in plurality’s power, and because of — or perhaps in spite of — their wide range, they are infused with a spirit that is communal, collective, even unifying — and ultimately hopeful.”

Leibovitz concludes the second book. “For this volume I thought about issues that are important today,” she writes. In 2016, when she was beginning work on Volume 2, the notoriously cloistered Leibovitz told a New York Times reporter about the nationwide “talking circles” she and Steinem had organized, in which women shared their experiences with issues including sexual violence, technology and human rights. “Talking in groups like that, it brings me to tears,” Leibovitz told the reporter, adding that the new work she was making for Volume 2 was more “democratic.” Volume 2 is indeed more diverse, possibly in response to a widely discussed critique of Leibovitz’s photographs of Black women.

No celebrity survives fame without acquiring a layer or two of tarnish. In the decades between Volumes 1 and 2, Leibovitz’s representations of Black women painted Leibovitz with hers. A 2022 Guardian story was headlined, “Annie Leibovitz proves yet again: she can’t photograph Black women.”

“Leibovitz’s photographs are what happens when Blackness is seen through a white gaze incapable of capturing its true beauty,” contributor Tayo Bero wrote, referring to a list of Leibovitz subjects including Simone Biles, Viola Davis, Serena Williams and Rihanna. Bero wrote, “In all cases, she manages to make her subjects look dull, ashy, pained and sad, a far cry from the lively and graceful people that they usually are.”

Bero and others particularly criticized an image Leibovitz made for Vogue, depicting Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson at the Lincoln Memorial. In the photo, the snow-white marble statue takes center stage, overlooking Brown Jackson on the lower left. At the Wiltern, when that image appears, Leibovitz speaks of her own experience shooting it, not the controversy surrounding its publication. “I was skeptical about that idea,” Leibovitz says. “But she walked into the rotunda and she started reading Lincoln’s words that are engraved into the wall. It was such a moving moment.”

Two years later, the controversy was reawakened by Leibovitz’s depictions of Zendaya, also in Vogue. An April 2024 piece on the website Screenshot Media reiterated the photos’ failure to accurately reflect “the beauty of melanated skin tones, with poor lighting that often results in lackluster portrayals.”

In her introductory essay to Volume 2, Adichie, on the other hand, praises Leibovitz’s sensitivity. “The first time Annie photographed me, more than ten years ago at my home, she sensed my discomfort right away and knew it was not merely about my general awkwardness with being photographed. It was specifically about my belly, which was newly postpartum, although I would probably still have worried even if it wasn’t. … Annie’s sanguine reaction was a relief. There was no divisiveness, no judgment.”

Rihanna at the Ritz Hotel, Paris, in 2022, from “Annie Leibovitz: Women.”

(Annie Leibovitz)

Leibovitz, her representatives and her publisher, Phaidon Press, declined to comment on the critique. In an email interview with Phaidon Vice President Deborah Aaronson, who worked on four Leibovitz titles, Aaronson said, “‘Women’ reaffirms Annie Leibovitz’s place in the photographic canon. In the ‘Women’ series, she captures a breadth of experience and people who live and work in different spheres that’s unparallelled. I believe the series makes her the most important chronicler of women over the past 50 years.”

Annie Leibovitz entered the San Francisco Art Institute at 22, intending to be a painter. But a night photography class she took on a whim changed her medium, and her life. While still a student, manifesting the confidence that would characterize her career, Leibovitz pitched a Lennon shoot to Rolling Stone. Three years later, rendered immortal as the final photographer of Lennon and Ono, Leibovitz became Rolling Stone’s chief photographer.

In 1983, Leibovitz joined the staff of Vanity Fair, where her field of exploration, and her social sphere, expanded to include actors, athletes and politicians. In 1991, she became the first woman to have a solo show at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. She was designated a Library of Congress Living Legend in 2000.

In 2001, at age 52, Leibovitz gave birth to her first daughter, Sarah Cameron Leibovitz. Sontag was at her bedside. In May 2005, via surrogate, Leibovitz became the mother of twin daughters, Susan (named for her beloved painter sister) and Samuelle. In 2009, Leibovitz was commissioned to make the official portrait of the first family — President Barack Obama; his wife, Michelle; and their daughters, Sasha and Malia — continuing the relationship that began in 2004 when she photographed Obama in his run for the U.S. Senate.

“I want to photograph the White House,” Leibovitz says, “but I don’t think there will be much of it left when I get to it.” The evening ended as it began: with the enthusiastic applause of her audience.

PARIS — Salim Toorabally’s mental scars from the Paris terror attacks 10 years ago have not healed with time and the images of that night at Stade de France remain indelible.

The November 2015 attacks began at France’s national stadium and spread across the city in assaults that killed 132 people and injured more than 400. One person died and least 14 were injured outside Stade de France that night, but casualties there could have been far heavier without Toorabally’s vigilance.

It was Toorabally who stopped Bilal Hadfi — one of the three terrorist bombers who targeted the national stadium when France’s soccer team played Germany — from getting inside.

Toorabally was praised for his actions, by then-President François Hollande, by the Interior Ministry and also by the general public. Yet his own suffering, unrelenting since that night, went unnoticed.

“I was seen more as a hero than as a victim,” Toorabally told the Associated Press in a recent interview. “But this part of being a victim is equally inside me.”

Later on Thursday, France played Ukraine in a World Cup qualifier at the Parc des Princes stadium in Paris, where a commemoration was planned and Toorabally was invited by the French Football Federation.

“I will be there but with a heavy heart,” he said. “Ten years have passed like it was yesterday we were attacked.”

Stopping the bomber

Toorabally was positioned at Gate L as a stadium security agent.

Hadfi tried to enter but was stopped by Toorabally when he spotted him trying to tailgate another fan through the turnstile.

“A young man showed up. He was sticking close behind someone, moving forward without showing his ticket. So I said to him, ‘Sir, where are you going? Show me your ticket.’ But he just kept going, he wasn’t listening to me,” Toorabally told the AP. “So I put my arm out, put my arm in front of him so he couldn’t go inside, and then he said to me, ‘I have to get in, I have to get in.’ It made me suspicious.”

Toorabally kept an eye on the 20-year-old Hadfi, who was now standing back a few yards away.

“He positioned himself right in front of me, he was watching me work and I alerted [fellow security agents] over the radio: ‘Be careful at every gate, there’s a young man dressed in black with a young face, very childlike, who is trying to get in. Do not let him in,’” Toorabally recalled. ”He stood in front of me for about 10 minutes, watching me work, and that’s when I got really scared. I was worried he’d go back in, that I wouldn’t see him. I watched him intently, he stared at me intently and suddenly he disappeared in the crowd, he slipped away.”

Toorabally’s warning worked. Hadfi was denied entry elsewhere, before later detonating his explosive vest.

The explosions

There were two explosions close together during the first half of the match; the first ones around 9:20 p.m. near Gate D, and a third explosion approaching 10 p.m. close to a fast food outlet.

Toorabally vividly remembers them.

“I could feel the floor shaking,” he said. “There was a burning smell rising into the air, different to the smell of [smoke] flares.”

He also tended to a wounded man that night.

“I took charge of him, I lay the individual down. He had like these bolts [pieces of metal] lodged in his thigh,” said Toorabally, who still speaks to the man today. “I looked at my hands, there was blood. I didn’t have gloves on, and there were pieces of flesh in my hands.”

Keeping fans in the dark

Toorabally said he and other security agents were told not to inform spectators of the attack, to prevent a potential situation where 80,000 people tried leaving at the same time.

“The supporters inside couldn’t know the Stade de France had been attacked otherwise it would have caused enormous panic,” Toorabally explained. “At halftime some fans came up to us and asked, ‘What happened? Was there a gas explosion at the restaurants in front of the stadium?’ We didn’t answer them so as not to cause panic.”

After the game the stadium announcer told spectators which exit gates to use and many went home by train, including Toorabally.

Traumatic images

Five days after the attack he was called to a police station to help identify Hadfi as one of the bombers. Toorabally was given no forewarning of what he was about to see.

“They showed me a photo, his [Hadfi’s] head was separated from his body. The forensic police [officer] was holding his head,” Toorabally said. “I formally recognized him. It was indeed the man who had been in front of me, who had stood there, who had been alive and was now lifeless.”

Hadfi’s face remains imprinted on Toorabally’s mind.

“The image is very violent, someone’s head separated from his body. Then there’s the explosion, the odor of burning and my hand filled with human flesh. These images have stayed in my mind for 10 years.”

Toorabally‘s wage that night was 40 euros ($46). “I suffer from post-traumatic stress, it is very severe, very violent.”

Horrific memories can appear at any moment.

“I could be with you and talking with you and then all of sudden my mind goes back there,” Toorabally said. “This is something very, very difficult to deal with. It handicaps you.”

Talking helps

Toorabally talks to a psychiatrist and says it helps to tell people about what happened. But at the time of the attacks and in the months afterward he received no psychological support.

“That’s how traumatism sets in,” Toorabally said. “The proof being it stayed 10 years.”

He dealt with his mental anguish alone, having potentially saved hundreds of lives.

“Every time I go back to the Stade de France, I can’t help thinking about it,” Hollande told L’Équipe newspaper. “I realize what could have happened if an attack had taken place inside the stadium, or if panic had gripped the crowd.”

Former France midfielder Blaise Matuidi called Toorabally “more than a hero” and added “if the terrorists had entered, what would have happened? Just talking about it gives me chills.”

Pugmire writes for the Associated Press.

Renate Reinsve is the new face of Scandinavia: depression with a smile. Standing 5 feet 10 with open, friendly features, the Norwegian talent has a grin that makes her appear at once like an endearing everywoman and a large, unpredictable child. Reinsve zoomed to international acclaim with her Cannes-winning performance in Joachim Trier’s 2021 “The Worst Person in the World,” a dramedy tailor-made to her lanky, likable style of self-loathing. Now, Trier has written his muse another showcase, “Sentimental Value,” where Reinsve plays an emotionally avoidant theater actor who bounces along in pretty much the same bittersweet key.

“Sentimental Value” gets misty about a few things — families, filmmaking, real estate — all while circling a handsome Oslo house where the Borg clan has lived for four generations. It’s a dream home with red trim on the window frames and pink roses in the yard. Yet, sisters Nora (Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) aren’t fighting to keep it, perhaps due to memories of their parents’ hostile divorce or maybe because they don’t want to deal with their estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård, wonderful), who grew up there himself and still owns the place, even though he’s moved to Sweden.

Trier opens the film with a symbolically laden camera pan across Oslo that ends on a cemetery. He wants to make sure we understand that while Norway looks idyllic to outsiders jealous that all four Scandinavian countries rank among the globe’s happiest, it can still be as gloomy as during the era of Henrik Ibsen.

More impressively, Trier shifts to a fabulous, time-bending historical montage of the house itself over the century-plus it’s belonged to the Borgs. There’s a crack in it that seems to represent the fissures in the family, the flaws in their facade. Over these images, Reinsve’s Nora recites a 6th-grade school essay she wrote about her deep identification with her childhood home. Having grown up to become terrified of intimacy, today she’s more like a detached garage.

Nora and Agnes were young when their father, a modestly well-regarded art-house filmmaker, decamped to a different country. At a retrospective of his work, Gustav refers to his crew as his “family,” which would irritate his kids if they’d bothered to attend. Agnes, a former child actor, might note that she, too, deserves some credit. Played in her youth by the compelling Ida Atlanta Kyllingmark Giertsen, Agnes was fantastic in the final shot of Gustav’s masterpiece and Trier takes a teasingly long time to suggest why she retired from the business decades ago, while her older sister keeps hammering at it.

Gustav hasn’t made a picture in 15 years. He’s in that liminal state of renown that I’m guessing Trier has encountered many times: a faded director who’s burned through his money and clout, but still keeps a tuxedo just in case he makes it back to Cannes. Like Reinsve’s Nora, Gustav acts younger than his age and is at his most charming in small doses, particularly with strangers. Trier and his longtime co-writer Eskil Vogt have made him a tad delusional, someone who wouldn’t instantly recognize his graying reflection in a mirror. Sitting down at a cafe with Nora, Gustav jokes that the waitress thinks that they’re a couple on a date. (She almost certainly doesn’t.)

But the tension between Gustav and Nora is real, if blurry. He’s invited her to coffee not as father and daughter, but as a has-been angling to cast Nora as the lead of his next film, which he claims he’s written for her. His script climaxes with a nod to the day his own mother, Karin (Vilde Søyland), died by suicide in their house back when he was just a towheaded boy of 7. Furthering the sickly mojo, Gustav wants to stage his version of the hanging in the very room where it happened.

His awkward pitch is a terrific scene. Gustav and Nora are stiff with each other, both anxious to prove they don’t need the other’s help. But Trier suggests, somewhat mystically, that Gustav has an insight into his daughter’s gloom that making the movie will help them understand. Both would rather express themselves through art than confess how they feel.

When Gustav offers his daughter career advice, it comes off like an insult. She’s miffed when her dad claims his small indie would be her big break. Doesn’t he know she’d be doing him the favor? She’s the lead of Oslo’s National Theatre with enough of a social media following to get the film financed. (With 10 production companies listed in the credits of this very film, Trier himself could probably calculate Nora’s worth to the krone.)

But Gustav also has a lucky encounter with a dewy Hollywood starlet named Rachel (Elle Fanning) who sees him as an old-world bulldog who can give her resume some class. Frustrated by her coterie of assistants glued to their cellphones, Rachel gazes at him with the glowy admiration he can’t get from his own girls. Their dynamic proves to be just as complex as if they were blood-related. If Rachel makes his film, she’ll become a combo platter of his mother, his daughter, his protégée and his cash cow. Nora merely merits the financing for a low-budget Euro drama; Rachel can make it a major Netflix production (something “Sentimental Value” most adamantly is not).

It takes money to make a movie. Trier’s itchiness to get into that unsentimental fact isn’t fully scratched. He seems very aware that the audience for his kind of niche hit wants to sniffle at delicate emotions. When Gustav’s longtime producer Michael (Jesper Christensen) advises him to keep making films “his way” — as in antiquated — or when Gustav takes a swipe at Nora’s career as “old plays for old people,” the frustration in those lines, those doubts whether to stay the course or chase modernity, makes you curious if Trier himself is feeling a bit hemmed in.

There’s a crack running through “Sentimental Value” too. A third of it wants to be a feisty industry satire, but the rest believes there’s prestige value in tugging on the heartstrings. The title seems to be as much about that as anything.

I’ve got no evidence for Trier’s restlessness other than an observation that “Sentimental Value” is most vibrant when the dialogue is snide and the visuals are snappy. There’s a stunning image of Gustav, Nora and Agnes’ faces melting together that doesn’t match a single other frame of the movie, but I’m awful glad cinematographer Kasper Tuxen Andersen got it in there.

The film never quite settles on a theme, shifting from the relationship between Nora and Agnes, Nora and Gustav, and Gustav and Rachel like a gambler spreading their bets, hoping one of those moments will earn a tear. Nora herself gets lost in the shuffle. Is she jealous of her father’s attention to Rachel? Does she care about her married lover who pops up to expose her issues? Does she even like acting?

Reinsve’s skyrocketing career is Trier’s most successful wager and he gives her enough crying scenes to earn an Oscar nomination. Skarsgård is certainly getting one too. But Fanning delivers the best performance in the film. She’s not only hiding depression under a smile, she’s layering Rachel’s megawatt charisma under her eagerness to please, allowing her insecurity at being Gustav’s second pick to poke through in rehearsals where she’s almost — but not quite — up to the task.

Rachel could have been some Hollywood cliché, but Fanning keeps us rooting for this golden girl who hopes she’ll be taken seriously by playing a Nordic depressive. Eventually, she slaps on a silly Norwegian accent in desperation and wills herself to cry in character. And when she does, Fanning has calibrated her sobs to have a hint of hamminess. It’s a marvelous detail that makes this whole type of movie look a little forced.