Dzeko has been a crucial player for his country since his international debut in 2007, and has 73 goals in 147 appearances – scoring every year for the past two decades.
Until as recently as last year he was still reaching double figures for goals at club level.
Last summer, he returned to Serie A to sign for Fiorentina and, at the time, dismissed suggestions he was slowing down with age.
“Age doesn’t matter, I’m not a write-off yet,” he said.
“Behind all this is the work that a 39-year-old has to do, even more than others. I feel good, we’re working hard, and this will bring us satisfaction later.”
That move did not quite work out and Dzeko soon found himself out of favour at the club, having failed to score in 11 Serie A games.
But a switch to Schalke in Bundesliga 2 in January has reinvigorated him – possibly at just the right time as the World Cup approaches – and he has scored six goals in eight games for the German side.
On what the future holds for him, Dzeko said recently: “I’ll listen to my body in the summer but at the moment, I still feel very good, and I still score goals.”
But if he does help his country qualify for the World Cup, it is very likely that conversation with his body will be delayed a little longer.
AUSTIN, Texas — “The Sun Never Sets” is filmmaker Joe Swanberg’s 10th indie to premiere at SXSW but his first to play the event since 2017. The astonishing pace with which he made his early work — loose, idiosyncratic stories that were progenitors of the emergent style known as mumblecore — has slowed significantly, but also given way to a newfound maturity as both a person and an artist.
Introducing “The Sun Never Sets” at its world premiere on Friday night to a sold-out crowd at the Zach Theater, Swanberg called his latest “my favorite film I’ve ever made.” Shot on 35mm in Anchorage, the movie follows a 30-ish woman, Wendy (Dakota Fanning in a vibrant turn), torn between pursuing a fresh romance with a reckless old flame (Cory Michael Smith) or continuing on with the settled-in-his-ways divorced father of two (Jake Johnson) she’s been seeing for a few years.
Dakota Fanning in Joe Swanberg’s “The Sun Never Sets,” filmed in Alaska.
(SXSW)
“I guess this is what they tell you about getting older and doing this job longer,” said a thoughtful Swanberg in a video interview from his home in Chicago shortly before the South by Southwest festival. “You get better at it and you sort of mature and all of this.”
The film marks Swanberg’s fourth collaboration with Johnson, a partnership that goes back to 2013’s “Drinking Buddies.” (The actor partly financed the new project along with his brother.) Following completion of the third season of the Netflix anthology series “Easy” in 2019, for which he wrote and directed all the episodes, Swanberg was planning to take a break. A divorce and the pandemic caused that pause to grow even longer.
In the intervening years Swanberg produced a number of projects for other filmmakers, did some acting and opened a small video store in Chicago. Swanberg knew Anchorage-based producer Ashleigh Snead, who encouraged him to consider shooting something there. The scenic location would give Swanberg the opportunity to expand his visual style from his usual couches, bars and apartments of much of his work. (There still are a surprising number of scenes on couches and in bars.)
“Joe’s a real filmmaker,” says Johnson in a separate interview. “And I think sometimes he doesn’t get that credit because he can make movies with nothing. This is a real adult movie. This is a film about how complicated breakups are and how messy they get. And it’s in beautiful Alaska.”
Swanberg, center, on the set of “The Sun Never Sets.”
(SXSW)
Swanberg has now gone from someone making talky, provocative and at times controversial films about the lives of post-collegiate 20-somethings to exploring the nuances and specifics of being a 44-year-old divorced father of two still trying to figure out his place in the world. His original cohort of SXSW-affiliated filmmakers, many of whom also fell under the rubric of mumblecore — nobody much liked the name, but no one ever came up with anything better, so it stuck — included Greta Gerwig, Lena Dunham, Barry Jenkins, Ti West and others who have gone on to more conventional mainstream success.
But Swanberg doesn’t seem to feel left behind. Rather, he only sees doors opening.
“It’s gone so much better than I thought it was going to go for me,” he says. “I mean, when I was making these really tiny, sexually explicit 71-minute movies, I was like, I’m just grateful to be here. I can’t even believe these festivals are showing this work and it’s so cool that there’s a space for me in this ecosystem.
“And so to watch my friends go off to do these giant movies, to see Greta doing ‘Barbie’ and stuff like that, to me it just opens up the possibilities,” he adds. “Each time a friend of mine sets some new record or moves into some new space, I’m kind of like: Oh, that just opened up for all of us now.”
His earlier work often featured raw sex scenes, sometimes featuring Swanberg himself. From practically the start of his career, well predating the #MeToo-era reckoning that began in 2017, Swanberg weathered accusations that he was exploitative and manipulative of his female performers. His stepback from productivity coincided with a moment when his explorations of sexual power dynamics fell out of favor. It would be easy to interpret that Swanberg preemptively soft-canceled himself to avoid a broader scandal. He doesn’t see it that way.
“Certainly in Chicago, where I’ve spent the last five years, I’m not unwelcome places,” he says, drawing a distinction between himself and “people who lose jobs or are capital-C canceled. But also my work has always pushed those boundaries and always attracted some amount of positive and negative attention.”
Though “The Sun Never Sets” has numerous kissing scenes, it doesn’t go too much further than that.
“I won’t do it,” Johnson says of more graphic scenes. “When I worked with Joe early on, I was like, ‘I love you, man — I’m not doing this.’”
For her part, Fanning had no reservations about working with Swanberg. He offered both Fanning and Smith the opportunity to work with an intimacy coordinator, but neither felt it was necessary.
“There was no planet where you’d ever be asked to do anything you were uncomfortable with,” Fanning says. “If there was ever a moment like, ‘I don’t want to do that,’ he’d be like, ‘Oh, then let’s not.’ There was a day where there was a scene and it was pouring rain outside. And we both looked at each other and he was like, ‘We’re not going to do it. The scene’s cut.’ He’s just open. And I just trusted him implicitly.”
Jake Johnson and Dakota Fanning in the movie “The Sun Never Sets.”
(SXSW)
Swanberg has long worked in an unusual style in which the script is essentially a detailed outline and the actors work to come up with their own dialogue during rehearsals. For “The Sun Never Sets,” Swanberg and Johnson developed the longest, most complete outline Swanberg has ever used, including some dialogue exchanges. Then the actors were allowed to make it their own.
Fanning recalled an early Zoom call with Swanberg and Johnson on which they explained the process.
“It’s still made like a real film,” Fanning says. “And Jake and Joe promised it’s not like we’re just flying by the seat of our pants: ‘You will know what to say, I promise.’ And then friends that know me asked, ‘Are you so nervous?’ And I was, but for some reason, I don’t know why, I just knew that it was going to be fine. And that just proved to be true.”
Even though it takes places in Anchorage, Swanberg calls “The Sun Never Sets” “extremely personal.”
“I was definitely writing a movie about a divorced mid-40s guy dating a younger person,” he says. “The questions of marriage and having children were sort of an amalgam of two real relationships that I merged into one onscreen.” He describes the material as “questions that I had and have about what my own relationships are going to look like post-divorce.”
That comes through in Fanning’s rich, layered performance, which might rank among the best of her already lengthy career. Swanberg’s style draws both an ease and an intensity from Fanning, who captures a woman at a pivotal moment of figuring out what she wants amid the emotional whirlwind she is going through. (At the film’s premiere, Fanning said, “I’ve never put so much of myself into a role before.”)
“I think the goal of Joe’s films, and I think at least my goal with this film, is trying to make everything feel real,” she says. “Things are just a mess some of the time.”
Dakota Fanning and Cory Michael Smith in “The Sun Never Sets.”
(SXSW)
Swanberg himself appears in a small role as the new husband of the ex-wife of Johnson’s character. And the characters of the two kids in the movie are named after the director’s own children. With a newfound maturity and emotional depth, Swanberg is continuing to make movies that are part diary, part generational markers.
“It’d be really cool in my 40s to make movies about characters in their 40s,” he says, “and in my 50s, 60s and 70s. It’d be neat to be making sexually explicit movies about 70-year-olds in their dating lives and sex lives and stuff. It’s really exciting to have movies about characters at this phase of their life, whether they’re finally settling down in their 40s or whether they’re getting out of relationships and reexamining their life. It’s where my head is at.” .
As the deadline approaches to file to run for office, veteran Republican Rep. Darrell Issa has decided not to run for reelection in his newly-configured congressional district in San Diego and Riverside counties, according to two GOP strategists familiar with his plans.
An Issa spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment, but the congressman’s decision was confirmed by two veteran Republican strategists who requested not to be named because they were not authorized to speak about Issa’s plans.
Issa, among the wealthiest members of Congress, began telling people earlier this week that he would retire from Congress, those sources said. The Republican congressman is backing San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond to replace him, they said.
Desmond has been running in a neighboring congressional district that straddles Orange and San Diego counties that is currently represented by Rep. Mike Levin (D-San Juan Capistrano). Desmond withdrew from that race and filed to run in Issa’s district on Thursday, according to the San Diego County registrar of voters.
Desmond’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Issa, 72, has represented various San Diego-area districts in Congress for more than 23 years. Issa’s once solidly Republican district had been trending more moderate in recent years. Then, his district was redrawn to favor Democrats in the Proposition 50 redistricting plan voters passed in November to counter President Trump’s efforts to push GOP-led states to redraw their congressional lines to favor Republicans.
Democratic registered voters outnumber Republicans by more than four percentage points in the new district, which spans San Diego and Riverside counties and was reshaped to include liberal communities such as Palm Springs, according to the nonpartisan California Target Book. Issa’s current congressional district had a 12-percentage-point GOP edge in voter registration in 2024.
As soon as the new districts were approved, speculation began swirling about Issa‘s reelection plans. Some of his supporters in Texas urged him to move there to run in a GOP-friendly Dallas-area district, but he said in December that he declined and would instead seek reelection in California.
“I believe that the people of San Diego County, who have elected me so many times, will, in fact, regardless of registration, vote for me,” Issa told the Fox affiliate in San Diego in December. “This is my home, and I’m going to fight for it.”
Several Democrats had already announced plans to challenge Issa.
The high school dropout and Army veteran made his fortune by purchasing a struggling electronics business in 1980 and transforming it into the Viper car alarm system, with Issa’s voice warning potential thieves to “stand back.”
In exchange for Carlson, the Ducks will send a conditional first-round pick (2026 or 2027 draft) and a third-round pick (2027) to Washington.
Carlson, who played an integral part of the Capitals’ 2018 Stanley Cup win and is a former Norris Trophy runner-up for the NHL’s top defenseman, should bring a veteran presence to a young Ducks team that is on pace to make the playoffs for the first time since 2017.
“John Carlson brings leadership, character, a high hockey IQ and a presence to our lineup,” Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek said in a statement. “We are very excited to add a Stanley Cup winner to complement our group and make a big push down the stretch.”
Set to become a free agent this offseason, Carlson had 10 goals and 46 points in 55 games with the Capitals this season. He led all Washington skaters in ice time, averaging more than 23 minutes per game.
Carlson, however, has not played since Feb. 5 because of a lower-body injury. It’s unclear when he might make his Ducks debut, but was practicing with the Capitals before the trade. When he does get into the lineup, he’ll join Jacob Trouba and Radko Gudas as part of a formidable right-side defensive trio for the Ducks.
In 1,143 career games over 17 seasons entirely with Washington, Carlson recorded 771 points (166 goals, 605 assists) — ranking him 24th all-time among NHL defensemen. He also had 78 points in 137 playoff games. A two-time All-Star, Carlson played for the U.S. at the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games and in the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. He also scored the winning goal for the U.S. in the 2010 World Junior Championship.
The Ducks are second in the Pacific Division and have won 13 of their last 16 games. They face the Montreal Canadiens on Friday and the St. Louis Blues on Sunday before embarking on a four-game Canadian road trip.
The Carlson deal was finalized roughly 14 hours before Friday’s NHL trade deadline at noon PST.
