Geneva — Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival opens on Wednesday with Shah Rukh Khan, Jane Campion, Alfonso Cuaron and Irene Jacob set to be honored with special awards.

Founded in 1946, Locarno is one of the world’s longest-running annual film festivals and focuses on auteur cinema.

Held on the shores of Lake Maggiore, in the Italian-speaking Ticino region of southern Switzerland, films are screened in Locarno’s central square, a feature of Swiss national life depicted on the country’s 20-franc banknotes.

The open-air Piazza Grande holds up to 8,000 moviegoers, and films are shown on one of the largest screens in the world.

Bollywood superstar Khan, 58, will on Saturday be given the Pardo alla Carriera award for people whose artistic contributions have redefined cinema.

“The wealth and breadth of his contribution to Indian cinema is unprecedented,” said the festival’s artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro.

“Khan is a king who has never lost touch with the audience that crowned him. This brave and daring artist has always been willing to challenge himself.”

The 77th festival, which runs until August 17, features 225 films, including 104 world premieres and 15 debut movies.

Locarno’s top prize is the Golden Leopard. Previous winning directors include Roberto Rossellini, John Ford, Stanley Kubrick, Milos Forman, Mike Leigh and Jim Jarmusch.

Seventeen films, all world or international premieres, are vying for the award, including movies from Lithuania, France, Austria, Italy and South Korea.

The Golden Leopard comes with a prize fund of $87,400, shared between the director and the producer.

Switzerland’s largest film event will feature a retrospective dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Columbia Pictures.

‘Tortured, fascinating characters’

New Zealand’s Campion will be recognized with the Leopard of Honor, given to outstanding personalities of world cinema.

She was the first woman to be nominated twice for the best director Oscar: first for “The Piano” (1993) and then for “The Power of the Dog” (2021), which secured her the Academy Award.

“Her work, peopled with tortured, fascinating characters and marked by an astonishing skill in grappling with the more disturbing side of the human condition, represents one of the undisputed pinnacles of contemporary filmmaking,” Nazzaro said.

Previous recipients include Ennio Morricone, Jean-Luc Godard, Bernardo Bertolucci, Paul Verhoeven, Terry Gilliam and Werner Herzog.

Mexican filmmaker Cuaron, who won the best director Oscars for “Gravity” (2013) and “Roma” (2018), will receive the lifetime achievement award.

“Cuaron has reinvented himself as an artist with each new film,” said Nazzaro.

French-Swiss actress Jacob, who starred in “The Double Life of Veronique” (1991) and “Three Colours: Red” (1994), will receive the Leopard Club Award, given for film work touching the collective imagination.

Stacey Sher — the U.S. film producer behind “Pulp Fiction,” “Get Shorty,” “Gattaca,” “Erin Brockovich,” “Django Unchained” and “The Hateful Eight” — will receive the Raimondo Rezzonico Award for major achievements in international movie production.

Nearly 150,000 people attended last year’s festival.
…

New York — After 10 days in theaters, “Deadpool & Wolverine” is already the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever, not accounting for inflation.

In its second weekend, the Marvel Studios blockbuster starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman continued to steamroll through movie theaters, collecting $97 million according to studio estimates Sunday. That raised its two-week total to $395.6 million, pushing it past the long-reigning top R-rated feature, “The Passion of the Christ,” which held that mark for 20 years with $370 million domestic. 

Worldwide, the Shawn Levy-directed “Deadpool & Wolverine” has quickly amassed $824.1 million in ticket sales, a total that already surpasses the global hauls of the first two “Deadpool” films. The 2016 original grossed $782.6 million worldwide; the 2018 sequel collected $734.5 million.

The weekend’s primary challengers both struggled.

M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller, “Trap,” managed a modest opening of $15.6 million at 3,181 theaters for Warner Bros. The film, starring Josh Hartnett as a serial killer hunted by police at a pop concert, didn’t screen for critics before opening day and scored lower in reviews (48% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) than Shyamalan’s films typically do. Audiences gave it a C+ CinemaScore.

With a budget of about $35 million that Shyamalan largely finances himself, “Trap” didn’t need a huge opening. But it may struggle to break even.

“This is a soft opening for an M. Night Shyamalan suspense crime thriller,” wrote David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter for Franchise Entertainment. “The writer/director’s movies out-earn other original thrillers by a wide margin, and that’s true here, but this start is not on the level of recent Shyamalan films.” 

The live action “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” adapted from the classic kids’ book, also didn’t make much of a mark in theaters. The Sony Pictures release debuted with $6 million. It, too, got dinged by critics (28% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), though audiences (an A- CinemaScore) liked it more. “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” which stars Zachary Levi, cost about $40 million to make.

“Twisters,” the Universal Pictures disaster film, continues to kick up a storm at the box office. It held in second place with $22.7 million in its third weekend. Lee Isaac Chung’s sequel to the 1996 original, starring Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Anthony Ramos, has racked up $195.6 million domestically. While it has made less of an impression overseas, “Twisters” is holding particularly well in North American theaters, down just 35% from the week prior.

Hollywood closed July with its best month in a year and its first $1 billion month since July 2023. While comparisons to last year aren’t favorable — July was when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” launched — a pair of Walt Disney Co. releases in “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” (the two top films of the year) powered a banner month for the movie industry.

There will still be reminders, though, of harder times in cinemas earlier in the spring and early summer, when a sparse release calendar and a few notable flops put the box office at a deficit. On Friday, AMC Theatres, the largest North American chain, posted a $32.8 million loss for the second quarter of 2024.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday. 

1. “Deadpool & Wolverine,” $97 million. 

2. “Twisters,” $22.7 million. 

3. “Trap,” $15.6 million. 

4. “Despicable Me 2,” $11.3 million. 

5. “Inside Out 2,” $6.7 million. 

6. “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” $6 million. 

7. “Longlegs,” $4.1 million. 

8. “A Quiet Place: Day One,” $1.4 million. 

9. “Daaru Na Peenda Hove,” $615,782. 

10. “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” $600,000.
    …

PARIS — Faith leaders gathered with Olympic officials Sunday morning in front of Notre Dame Cathedral to celebrate how “faith and sport can complement each other,” in the words of International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach.

The 2024 Paris Games got off to a rocky start with many religious groups around the world, including the Vatican. They criticized a scene in the opening ceremony seen as mocking Christianity by evoking “The Last Supper” and featuring drag queens, though the performers and the ceremony’s artistic director denied being inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s painting.

“We wanted to show that the most important thing is peace,” Catholic Bishop Emmanuel Gobilliard said at the gathering. It was modeled after the first such interfaith meeting, organized by modern Olympics founder Pierre de Coubertin in the 1924 Paris Games.

Far from the controversy, in an inconspicuous tent-like structure tucked away at the end of the athletes’ village in Paris, ordained and lay representatives from the five major global religions have taken up that mantle, providing spiritual comfort to Olympians.

Representatives of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism worked for months to set up a shared hall where the more than 10,500 athletes and their staff can find information about worship and speak with a chaplain.

For the first half of the Games, many seem to have found their way there to have a quiet moment away from the overwhelming pressure of competition.

“Some of the athletes who come to pray, I think they came to give up their pressure, to take some time to get out of their own heads,” said the Rev. Jason Nioka, a former judo champion who’s in charge of the largest contingent of Olympic chaplains, about 40 Catholic priests, nuns and lay faithful.

Each religion got 50 square meters (538 square feet) of the structure provided by the Paris Games organizing committee, with instructions to comply with France’s secularism laws that strictly prescribe the role of religion in public spaces.

What the faith leaders have done with the space is itself a wordless message of dialogue, tolerance and welcome — beginning with redistributing the size of the different rooms based on the expected number of faithful.

The door between the small Jewish room and the Muslim space, about twice its size but equally sparingly adorned, is often kept open.

“Here it’s very symbolic,” said Rabbi Moshe Lewin, vice president of the Conference of European Rabbis and one of the Jewish chaplains. “The conviviality, that’s the image that we should transmit.”

“People smile when they see an imam and a rabbi together,” added Najat Benali, president of the Coordination of Muslim Associations of Paris, who leads the Muslim chaplaincy. “We do ‘geo-fraternity,’ not geopolitics.”

The Hindu space also welcomes visitors with blessings by a small water fountain as chanting resounds from a volunteer’s cellphone. It’s the most exuberantly decorated space, with statues from India and a recreated temple structure in painted polyester foam.

In the middle is the Christian area, where Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox share an altar with a large Bible flanked by a cross and icons. Next to it hangs a poster with a quote about faith by U.S. star gymnast Simone Biles.

Last week, three athletics competitors from Australia, Finland and Jamaica walked in to pray, and faith leaders asked if they could join them.

“It was like a little Pentecost,” said Anne Schweitzer, who’s coordinating about three dozen Protestant chaplains.

She discovered one of the three athletes, a silver medalist, is also quoted in the Gospel edition called “More Precious than Gold,” created for the Games and available to visitors there and at churches across Olympic host cities.

Some Catholics, as well as volunteers in the village, have gone next door to meditate in the Buddhist space, said Luc Charles, a Zen monk with the Buddhist Union of France.

“It’s the occasion to get to know each other better,” he added.
…

LOS ANGELES — Aerosmith says Steven Tyler’s voice has been permanently damaged by a vocal cord injury last year and the band will no longer tour.

The iconic band behind hits such as “Love in an Elevator” and “Livin’ on the Edge” posted a statement Friday announcing the cancellation of remaining dates on its tour and provided an update on Tyler’s voice.

“He has spent months tirelessly working on getting his voice to where it was before his injury. We’ve seen him struggling despite having the best medical team by his side. Sadly, it is clear that a full recovery from his vocal injury is not possible,” the statement said. “We have made a heartbreaking and difficult, but necessary, decision — as a band of brothers — to retire from the touring stage.”

Tyler announced he injured his vocal cords in September during a show on the band’s Peace Out: The Farewell Tour. Tyler said in an Instagram statement at the time that the injury caused bleeding but that he hoped the band would be back after postponing a few shows.

Tyler’s soaring vocals have powered Aerosmith’s massive catalog of hits since its formation in 1970, including “Dream On,” “Walk This Way” and “Sweet Emotion.” They were near the start of a 40-date farewell tour when Tyler was injured.

“We’ve always wanted to blow your mind when performing. As you know, Steven’s voice is an instrument like no other,” the band said in Friday’s statement to fans.

“It has been the honor of our lives to have our music become part of yours,” the band said. “In every club, on every massive tour and at moments grand and private you have given us a place in the soundtrack of your lives.”

Aerosmith is a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and a four-time Grammy-winning band. In addition to Tyler, its members are Joe Perry, Brad Whitford, Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer.
…

PARIS — LGBTQ+ athletes, officials and observers have warned that a deluge of hateful comments misidentifying female boxer Imane Khelif in the Paris Olympics as transgender or a man could pose dangers for the LGBTQ+ community and female athletes.

The concerns come as famous figures — from former U.S. President Donald Trump to Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling — have railed against the Algerian boxer after her Italian competitor Angela Carini quit their bout Thursday. They and other social media comments falsely claimed Khelif was a man fighting a woman.

The comments have rippled across social media, pulling Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-Ting into the larger social contention about women in sports.

International Olympic Committee spokesperson Mark Adams said Friday that Khelif “was born female, was registered female, lived her life as a female, boxed as a female, has a female passport.”

He warned “not turn it into some kind of witch hunt.”

Some athletes and LGBTQ+ observers worry that hateful comments from critics — and the IOC failing to address a larger global conversation before the Olympics — have already started to vilify transgender, nonbinary and other LGBTQ+ people at an event championing inclusion. It comes as expanding interpretations of gender identity have spurred a larger political tug-of-war, often centered around sports.

While the Paris Olympics has pushed an agenda of openness and a record 193 openly LGBTQ+ athletes are competing, a performance by drag queens during the opening ceremony faced intense backlash from religious conservatives and others contending that it mocked the Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. Some performers and the opening ceremony’s artistic director say they have received threats.

Nikki Hiltz, one of the world’s top middle-distance runners competing in the women’s category for the U.S. Olympic team, has faced such hateful comments firsthand. Assigned female at birth, Hiltz identifies as nonbinary.

“Transphobia is going crazy at these Olympics,” Hiltz wrote on a post on Instagram responding to the boxing debate. “Anti-trans rhetoric is anti-woman. These people aren’t ‘protecting women’s sport,’ they are enforcing rigid gender norms, and anyone who doesn’t fit into those norms is targeted and vilified.”

The controversy is rooted in claims by the International Boxing Association that Khelif and Lin failed unspecified and untransparent eligibility tests for women’s competition, which the IOC called “a sudden and arbitrary decision” from a governing body it has banned from the Olympics since 2019.

While some sports have detailed guidelines about transgender athletes and hormone levels in competitions, boxing is relying on rules dating to the 2016 Olympics that say the threshold for eligibility is what appears on an athlete’s passport amid a larger rift between the IBA and the IOC.

“The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision (by the IBA), which was taken without any proper procedure,” said Adams of the IOC. “These dangerous, misogynistic and baseless attacks can lead to misinformation.”

Athletes have faced “quite a few cases of online aggression,” said Adams of the IOC. He said it is the responsibility of the Olympic body to “look after” the athletes and “make sure that they’re safe.”

Though some like Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of Outsports, a site that tracks LGBTQ+ participation in the Olympics, say failures by the IOC to provide clarity before the Games has hurt both female athletes and LGBTQ+ competitors, both of whom have long fought for recognition.

“The issue is not the athlete trying to compete, it’s whoever is making the policy,” Zeigler said. “The awful part of this is the vitriol over the last two days has been aimed at these athletes.”

Zeigler said the backlash is likely to stifle LGBTQ+ public participation in the Games in the future despite activists saying the Olympics have taken major strides in recent years.

“By trying to bury the issue they knew was coming, transphobic (people) begin to direct the conversation,” Zeigler said. “We can have conversations about the inclusion of trans athletes. There are thoughtful conversations to have. It is the vitriol, the nasty, horrible, graphic, ghastly language that gets used around this that eats at me.”

Former athletes like Belgium’s Charline Van Snick, 33, a former judo medalist in the 2012 Games, said the testing and comments about Khelif and Hamori’s bodies are undoing years of work by female athletes to push back against stigma.

While many say they have seen major progress in recent years, Ilona Maher, a star of the U.S. women’s rugby team, broke out in tears in a social media post before the Olympics following comments claiming she was a man.

“There are some women with more testosterone, or different kinds of body,” Van Snick said. “In judo, you are fighting, and you have to stay a woman, what is accepted of a woman. If you look too much like a man, they say, ‘Oh, she’s a man.’ But I’m a woman” who could beat a man in the sport.
…

NANTERRE, France — The party for Léon Marchand spread beyond the pool, quickly sweeping across Paris.

At Stade de France, hosting the first night of track and field, an enormous ovation broke out when Marchand won his fourth gold medal of the Olympics. The roar was so loud that the first heat of the 400-meter run in the decathlon was delayed.

At the French Olympic house, nearly 20,000 gathered outside to watch Marchand cap his dominating run at the pool, including 19-year-old Arthur Oursel.

“He’s a hero,” Oursel said. “He’s our hero.”

With French President Emmanuel Macron among the more than 15,000 fans cheering him on in a rugby stadium-turned-natatorium, Marchand soared to another runaway victory in the 200-meter individual medley Friday night.

“I don’t think anything went wrong this week,” Marchand said. “It was just perfect.”

The 22-year-old French phenomenon left no doubt he’ll be remembered as one of the biggest stars of the Summer Games in his home country. He finished in an Olympic record of 1 minute, 54.06 seconds, just missing Ryan Lochte’s 13-year-old world mark.

That was about the only thing he didn’t accomplish in six magical days at La Defense Arena, previously winning the 400 IM, 200 butterfly and 200 backstroke — the latter two about two hours apart in the same session.

Marchand became only the fourth swimmer in Olympic history to win four individual golds at a single Games.

The others? Michael Phelps, who did it in both 2004 and 2008; Mark Spitz in 1972; and East German Kristin Otto in 1988.

Heady company, indeed.

“That’s crazy. Those guys are legends,” Marchand said. “I don’t think I have realized it yet. Maybe I will in a few days.”

The silver went to Britain’s Duncan Scott, a body length behind at 1:55.31. China’s Wang Shun grabbed the bronze in 1:56.00, edging out American Carson Foster for a spot on the podium.

What a night for France

A packed house at La Defense Arena came to cheer on their favorite son one more time. They chanted, sang Sweet Caroline, waved the French tricolor flag and unveiled a huge tifo in the upper deck.

After Marchand touched the wall, he held up four fingers — one for every gold. He climbed from the pool, pumped his fists, then held out his arms as if to say, “What more could you want?”

Not a thing.

He had done it all, more than fulfilling the expectations of his nation and the comparisons to Phelps, who was here to cheer Marchand on. What might have been a burden to some athletes only seemed to push Marchand to even greater heights.

Macron shook Marchand’s hand during Friday’s celebration and sent his congratulations via social media.

“The impossible isn’t French!” Macron wrote in French. “Four home gold medals and a new Olympic record — it’s historic. It’s Leon Marchand.”

Marchand certainly enjoyed his moment, which his American coach Bob Bowman — Phelps’ coach, in an appropriate touch — had encouraged him to do.

He led the fans behind the podium in a cheer before climbing to the top step one more time. The crowd erupted in its most rousing rendition yet of La Marseillaise — though, of course, they’ve had plenty of chances to work on the French national anthem this week.

Chants of “Léon! Léon! Léon!” filled the arena as soon as the anthem was done. Someone held up a sign that simply said “Merci Léon.”

“I’m extremely proud,” Marchand said, “to be French.”

Australian gold for McEvoy, McKeown

Before Marchand’s triumph, Cameron McEvoy and Kaylee McKeown won more gold for Australia.

McEvoy touched first in the 50 freestyle, denying Caeleb Dressel a repeat in swimming’s most frantic event. McKeown followed with a victory in the 200 backstroke to become the first female swimmer to sweep the back at two straight Summer Games.

Asked if she could’ve envisioned such an accomplishment, McKeown said, “Not in a million years.”

McEvoy became the first Australian man to win gold at these games, and McKeown quickly boosted her country’s total to an Olympics-leading seven golds overall — three more than both the U.S. and Marchand, who is essentially a country unto himself.

McKeown noted what an amazing time this is for women’s sports, following in the footsteps of athletes such as Simone Biles and Caitlin Clark in raising the profile of female athletes.

“Not just the Aussie girls, but the whole world and female sports has been unreal this year,” McKeown said.

McEvoy made it from one end of the pool to the other in 21.25, edging Benjamin Proud of Britain by five-hundredths of a second. Florent Manaudou of France gave the home crowd another thrill by taking the bronze in 21.56.

Dressel, who won five gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics, finished sixth in 21.61.

McKeown rallied again, just as she did in the 100 backstroke, to chase down perennial American runner-up Regan Smith. The winning time was an Olympic record of 2:03.73, breaking the mark that Missy Franklin set at the 2012 London Games.

Another silver for Regan Smith

Smith touched in 2:04.26 for the fifth silver medal of her career, to go along with a single bronze. She has yet to win gold.

The bronze went to Canada’s Kylie Masse in 2:05.57.

Smith insisted that she was satisfied with the result, even though a gold medal remained just out of reach.

“That’s one of my fastest times ever. I think I really gave Kaylee a run for it and I made things really close and exciting. So I’m thrilled with it.”

Dressel comes up short

The American star qualified in two individual events, and he won’t be winning a medal in either of them.

Shortly after his sixth-place showing in the 50 freestyle, he returned to the pool for the semifinals of the 100 butterfly — another of the events he won in Tokyo.

Dressel couldn’t pull off the grueling double, managing only the 13th-fastest time to miss out on the final Saturday night.

He did anchor the U.S. to gold in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay for the eighth gold medal of his career.

It was a disappointing showing for one of the biggest stars of the Tokyo Games, but not all that unexpected given what he’s been through.

A year after the pandemic-delayed 2021 Olympics, Dressel walked away from swimming in the middle of the world championships.

He desperately needed a break to recapture his love of swimming, which is still a bit of a work in progress. Dressel seems much happier now, welcoming his first child about five months ago, but he couldn’t recapture that blazing speed from three years ago.

“Obviously not my best work,” Dressel said. “I’ve had a lot of fun, but this hasn’t been my best week. I don’t think I need to shy away from that.”

He has one more relay to go in Paris, giving him another shot at his ninth career gold.

Dressel would like to go out on a high note, because these Games have been “a little heartbreaking, a little heartbreaking for sure.”

After leaving the pool deck, he broke down in tears.
…

EAUBONNE, France — Growing up in cutthroat New York gave Lauren Scruggs the competitive mindset needed to claim an unexpected fencing silver medal on her Olympic debut in Paris.

The 21-year-old Queens native shared the podium with fellow American Lee Kiefer, who retained her Olympic title in the women’s individual foil event gold medal bout on Sunday.

“I’ve grown up in New York my whole life. It can be kind of rough sometimes,” Scruggs, the first Black American fencer to win an Olympic medal in a women’s individual event, told Reuters.

“You develop a hard shell, and in terms of how that translates to my fencing, I think it came out, that energy and that toughness.”

When Scruggs found herself neck-and-neck with then world No. 2 Arriana Errigo in the quarterfinals, she managed to score the last touch, knocking out the Italian 15-14.

“I think that was my toughest bout of the day in terms of energy, and going past my limits, and I have definitely New York to thank for that,” said Scruggs, one of the rare Black fencers at the highest level.

“Fencing is predominantly white, I think for a multitude of reasons, it’s just the history of the sport, and the lack of representation and encouragement,” she explained.

“To have this accomplishment is a big deal for me, because when I was younger I only had a few people to look up to in the sport, so to be someone that little kids now can look up to is very special to me.”

They can draw inspiration from her impressive grit, which coach Sean McClain described in the U.S. training venue in Eaubonne, in the outskirts of Paris, saying that since she was eight, Scruggs only cared about winning medals.

“And she’s maintained that distaste for losing her entire career,” he said. “I really think in an event like the Olympics, it’s more about how you compete.”

Expensive sport

Born in the U.S. to Jamaican immigrants, Scruggs grew up in Queens with her mother and grandmother.

“I was in a single-parent household early on, so my family had to basically cut some corners around here and there to support us,” said Scruggs, whose brother was the first to get into fencing and inspired her to take up the sport.

Now a college student at Harvard, where she trains every day, Scruggs had to fight to make it into a “pretty expensive” sport.

“It was not easy growing up, trying to fence while being from where I’m from, just income-wise,” she said.

“If you have the funds, it makes it a lot easier to pursue the sport and feel comfortable asking that from your family.

“But if you’re coming from a lower-income background, it might push you harder. And I think it’s what happened with me. I just wanted it more than my peers.”

On paper, Scruggs did not have a big medal chance, but she showed her mettle at the Grand Palais arena.

“Fencing skill wise, Lauren is on par with the better fencers in the world, but she’s not better than them. What made the difference was that competitiveness,” said McClain, who has also become Scruggs’ stepfather.

“That comes from my wife,” he added. “I knew it was possible, but I didn’t really think Lauren was going to win a medal in her first Olympics. But my wife did. She was like, she’d better win a medal. So that’s where it comes from — that’s the fiery spirit!”

With Kiefer and alongside teammates Jackie Dubrovich and Maia Weintraub, Scruggs will represent the U.S. against China on Thursday in the quarterfinals of the women’s foil team event.

Scruggs is aiming for gold this time and is dreaming already of qualifying for the next Games, which will take place in Los Angeles in four years’ time.

“I can’t imagine myself not fencing,” she said. “It’s not even love, it’s just a part of me. It’s connected to who I am,” she said. 
…

Paris — As a gay youth growing up in central France, Hugo Bardin never felt he lived in a world that represented who he was — a world in which he had a place.

And that is why Bardin, who performs as the drag queen Paloma, felt it was meaningful and important to be part of a Paris Olympics opening ceremony that presented a multifaceted, multiethnic France with people of different ethnicities and orientations.

“It was a really important moment for the French people and the representation of France around the world,” says Paloma, who took part in a single scene that has drawn some furious criticism — including from presidential candidate Donald Trump in the United States, who called it “a disgrace.”

Although the ceremony’s artistic director, Thomas Jolly, and other participants have repeatedly said the scene wasn’t inspired by “The Last Supper,” critics interpreted that part of the show as a mockery of Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting showing Jesus Christ and his apostles. 

Paloma, best known for winning “Drag Race France,” appeared with other drag artists and dancers alongside Barbara Butch, a popular DJ who wore a silver headdress that looked like a halo. Butch has now filed a complaint alleging online abuse and harassment, and Paris police have launched an investigation.

Paloma is not, at this point, planning to take legal action over online harassment, and would prefer to focus on the many “loving messages” that have been pouring in. The performer been getting thousands of messages daily, she told The Associated Press, most of them positive but some that he described as “violent” and even “from the Middle Ages.”

Still, there are no misgivings, despite the backlash. Paloma said she was proud to have been part of a show that did not rely on a series of French cliches — for example, “the Parisian with a baguette under their arm.”

“It could have been a postcard from 1930,” she said of the ceremony. “But instead, it was a photograph of France in 2024.”

Many agreed, and praised the ceremony for its creativity, style and showmanship.

But French Catholic bishops and others were among those who said Christians had been offended, though Paris Olympics organizers have said there was “never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group” but rather to “celebrate community tolerance.”

Trump was asked on Fox News what he thought of the so-called “Last Supper” scene. “I’m very open-minded,” the former president and current Republican nominee told host Laura Ingraham, “but I thought what they did was a disgrace.”

Of Trump’s comments, Paloma said: “My first reaction is to say that if Donald Trump is not reacting, then we have not done our job.”

The criticism, she said, has been fueled by hate. “Where is the Catholicism, the Christianity in that? It is very hypocritical that their message is not about religion or kindness, it’s about hate towards Jews, fat people, queer people and trans people.”

“We have been accused of trying to impose our vision on the world,” Bardin said. “We are not. … We just want to let people know that we have a place in the world, and we are claiming that place.”

Paloma spoke to the AP in a phone interview and later at her Paris workshop, a studio devoted to her drag performance. Bardin debuted the drag queen persona some five years ago, the Spanish name inspired by the films of Pedro Almodóvar.

Asked if she had any regrets, Paloma replied: “My only regrets is people’s reactions. I’m sorry if people are offended but we did not try to parody, to mock ‘The Last Supper.’ It was not the point. So I can’t regret what I did. I’m sorry for people to only see things in a bad way.”

She added: “Maybe change the perspective. Change the point of view. Try to see the beauty in what we did. Because it was just beauty. It was just only about beauty and reunion, and reparation.” 
…

Midyat, Turkey — Through a basement door in southeastern Turkey lies a sprawling underground city — perhaps the country’s largest — which one historian believes dates back to the ninth century before Jesus Christ.

Archaeologists stumbled upon the city-under-a-city “almost by chance” after an excavation of house cellars in Midyat, near the Syrian border, led to the discovery of a vast labyrinth of caves in 2020.

Workers have already cleared more than 50 subterranean rooms, all connected by 120 meters of tunnel carved out of the rock.

But that is only a fraction of the site’s estimated 900,000-square-metre area, which would make it the largest underground city in Turkey’s southern Anatolia region.

“Maybe even in the world,” said Midyat conservation director Mervan Yavuz who oversaw the excavation.

“To protect themselves from the climate, enemies, predators and diseases, people took refuge in these caves which they turned into an actual city,” Yavuz added.

The art historian traces the city’s ancient beginnings to the reign of King Ashurnasirpal II, who ruled the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 883 to 859 BC.

At its height in the seventh century BC, the empire stretched from The Gulf in the east to Egypt in the west.

Referred to as Matiate in that period, the city’s original entrance required people to bend in half and squeeze themselves into a circular opening.

It was this entrance that first gave the Midyat municipality an inkling of its subterranean counterpart’s existence.

“We actually suspected that it existed,” Yavuz recounted as he walked through the cave’s gloom.

“In the 1970s, the ground collapsed and a construction machine fell down. But at the time we didn’t try to find out more, we just strengthened and closed up the hole.”

A hiding place underground

The region where the cave city is located was once known as Mesopotamia, recognized as the cradle of some of the earliest civilizations in the world.

Many major empires conquered or passed through these lands, which may have given those living around Matiate a reason to take refuge underground.

“Before the arrival of the Arabs, these lands were fiercely disputed by the Assyrians, the Persians, the Romans and then the Byzantines,” said Ekrem Akman, a historian at the nearby University of Mardin.

Yavuz noted that “Christians from the Hatay region, fleeing from the persecution of the Roman Empire… built monasteries in the mountains to avoid their attacks”.

He suspects that Jews and Christians may have used Matiate as a hiding place to practice their then-banned religions underground.

He pointed to the inscrutable stylized carvings — a horse, an eight-point star, a hand, trees — which adorn the walls, as well as a stone slab on the floor of one room that may have been used for celebrations or for sacrifices.

As a result of the city’s long continuous occupation, he said it was “difficult to pinpoint” exactly what at the site can be attributed to which period or group.

But “pagans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, all these believers contributed to the underground city of Matiate,” Yavuz said.

Centuries of invasions

Even after the threat of centuries of invasions had passed, the caves stayed in use, said curator Gani Tarkan.

He used to work as a director at the Mardin Museum, where household items, bronzes and potteries recovered from the caves are on display.

“People continued to use this place as a living space,” Tarkan said.

“Some rooms were used as catacombs, others as storage space,” he added.

Excavation leader Yavuz pointed to a series of round holes dug to hold wine-filled amphorae vessels in the gloomy cool, out of the glaring sunlight above.

To this day, the Mardin region’s Orthodox Christian community maintains that old tradition of wine production.

Turkey is also famous for its ancient cave villages in Cappadocia in the center of the country.

But while Cappadocia’s underground cities are built with rooms vertically stacked on top of each other, Matiate spreads out horizontally, Tarkan explained.

The municipality of Midyat, which funds the works, plans to continue the excavation until the site can be opened to the public.

It hopes the site will prove a popular tourist attraction and attract visitors to the city of 120,000.
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