‘Athena’ Review: Romain Gavras’ Tense, Incendiary Thriller Declares War on Injustice

Tyler Perry has been working on his passion project for over 20 years, and now it debuts on Netflix. Set in the 1940s Deep South, the prolific filmmaker's new drama, , follows star-crossed lovers Bayou and Leanne, whose forbidden love is the backdrop for 40 years of secrets and lies. Written, directed and produced by Perry, the filmfeatures stars Joshua Boone and Solea Pfeiffer as the troubled lovers alongside an ensemble cast that includes Amirah Vann, Austin Scott, Milauna Jemai Jackson, Brent Antonello, Brad Benedict, Kario Marcel, Lana Young and Ryan Eggold. "[It's been] a 27-year marathon to get it here," Perry told ET at the film's world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Katie Thurston's season of and Clayton Echard's season of respectively, the duo is excited to meet on .«I've heard that she might be in Paradise and if she is here, then I'd definitely like to talk to her,» Andrew told ET, after making no secret about his crush on Teddi during podcasts appearances and on social media.The interest isn't one-sided, as Teddi told ET, «I hope that Andrew’s here… His personality is definitely the type that I I usually gravitate towards.»Though they're interested in each other, neither Andrew nor Teddi wants to commit to a relationship before they even get down to the beach.«I don't want to put any more pressure on the situation than it already is,» Andrew explained. «I just want to meet very genuinely and [have] no expectations.»«I'm coming in very fresh.

JoJo Siwa's keeping things short these days. Just look at her new hairdo!The 19-year-old social media star on Thursday posted a 41-second TikTok video in which she reveals that she's decided to go back to sporting short hair.

It’s a little bit past lunchtime on a Friday afternoon, but BNYX (pronounced Benny X) is still firing on all cylinders. He’d just left a studio session with athlete-turned-rapper Showjoe to return home where his wife is listening to our conversation through a Ring camera. “She’s being weird…” he says, eyebrow almost audibly raised and in a manner that suggests he is, in fact, the weird one.

When Tamino first began the practice of meditation during the pandemic, he thought of it as a method of disconnection, one that could help him shut out his thoughts. But during the 10-minute intervals when he tried to keep his inner monologue at bay, the 25-year-old Belgian-Egyptian singer and songwriter found himself more annoyed than serene. He soon realized that the key wasn’t to achieve silence, but perspective from deep observation and solitude.

Vogue interview about 16 iconic looks from her past, the model reflected on her “first high-fashion show” experience back in 2014. At 18 years old, walked the runway in a sheer brown Marc Jacobs V-neck sweater and completely bleached brows. “I actually could not believe I was there,” she said in Vogue's “” video.

Lamar Odom has been keeping up with the Kardashians. The former NBA player revealed that he watched his ex Khloé Kardashian on the new season of Hulu’s ‘The Kardashians,’ and has something to say about the emotional moments caused by Tristan Thompson’s cheating scandal, and Khloé’s new baby.“She was crying on the show and everybody was questioning her and s— like that,” Lamar said after watching the first episodes.

Kris Jenner is showing how wealthy she really is, after revealing on a new episode of Hulu’s ‘The Kardashians’ that she forgot about one of the properties she owned in Beverly Hills, California.The 66-year-old momager gave viewers a glimpse of her condo, however she didn’t give a tour, as she completely forgot she owned the place.“This is a cute little place if I must say so myself,” she said to Khloé Kardashian during a recent episode of the show, with the new mom asking Kris about the last time she visited the apartment.Kris went on to explain that she uses the luxury condo as her Christmas “gift wrapping station” and “Santa’s workshop,” indicating that she only visits the place in December. “I kind of forgot it was there,” she said.

Strictly Come Dancing viewers were in for a treat during this year’s launch episode on Friday. As the partnerships for the coming series were announced, last year’s winners Rose Ayling-Ellis and Giovanni Pernice reunited for a stunning performance.The pair looked like the winners they were as they started their performance with a conversation in British Sign Language before an incredibly moving dance to Alicia Keys’ “Fallin” that had viewers in tears. Strictly fans took to social media to share their awe at the winners for their dance with one saying: “Rose and Giovanni still have my heart,” and before their performance one said: “Can’t wait to cry over rose and giovanni again xxx”.

Miranda Kerr celebrated the launch of her KORA Organics Body Collection by hosting a workout class this week!

Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster‘s production of The Music Man has been on Broadway since December 2021 and will close at the end of the year, but the show will live on forever through this new cast recording!

Clayton Echard and Susie Evans have ended their relationship, just six months after the season finale of The Bachelor.

Kym Marsh and Scott Ratcliff recently tied the knot in a lavish ceremony in Sandhurst, surrounded by their close friends and families. The loved-up pair celebrated with a military themed wedding, in a nod to the actress' new husband's career. Kym, 45, and Scott, 33, got engaged back in July and quickly planned their special day to ensure Kym's terminally ill father Dave, 76, could walk her down the aisle.

Strictly Come Dancing star and OK! columnist Judi Love has given us her thoughts on the newly-announced pairings for the upcoming dance extravaganza. Writing in her column this week, Judi also discusses the current cost of living crisis - made worse by the prospect of an unexpectedly cold winter - as well as the rumours that she's set to appear on the forthcoming series of I'm A Celebrity...

met with with volunteer staff workers at Windsor Guildhall on Thursday to thank them for their service during the Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral on Monday.The monarch died at the age of 96 on Sept. 8 after 70 years as the sovereign.The new Prince and Princess of Wales noted how the queen is “looking down” on them after they saw several rainbows hanging above Balmoral Castle following her passing.“In Scotland, how many rainbows turned up?” William, 40, asked the staff, according to the Telegraph. “You hardly ever see rainbows up there, but there were five.”Middleton, 40, chimed in, “Her Majesty was looking down on us.”The colorful weather phenomenon has had much significance with the royal family in recent weeks.

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Days after Kyle Abrams and Deepti Vempati announced their romantic relationship was over, she shared an update about where they stand now.

Ellen DeGeneres went “above and beyond” for Greyson Chance, who on Thursday doubled down on his claims that the former “Ellen DeGeneres Show” host was “manipulative” and “way too controlling.”

For “Love Is Blind” fans, the surprise season 2 couple that everyone found themselves rooting for after the reunion aired in March was Deepti Vempati and Kyle Abrams.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Just how polished does a career-spanning documentary about the anarchic underground filmmaker behind “Greaser’s Palace” and “Putney Swope” need to be? If you’ve seen any of Robert Downey’s films, the answer is obviously: not very. You might even say, the scrappier the better. So goes the thinking behind “Sr.,” a loose seemingly seat-of-your-pants portrait of the antiestablishment director (perhaps best known for siring “Iron Man” star Robert Downey Jr.) that sneaks up on ya, emotionally speaking, seeing as how it doubles as a kind of farewell exercise between the two generations (plus grandson Exton) in the months before Downey succumbed to Parkinson’s Disease.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Most of the time, documentaries don’t get sequels, which is strange. Unlike their scripted fiction counterparts, the story doesn’t end when the cameras stop rolling. If you’ve ever attended a filmmaker Q&A after the screening of a great documentary, you know the first question from the audience is almost inevitably either “What’s happened since?” or “Where are they now?” Bryan Fogel must have heard that more times than he can count in the five years since his game-changing Russian sports doping doc “Icarus” won the Academy Award. “Icarus: The Aftermath” is his response, a daring and sure-to-be-divisive movie that’s even more shocking than the 2017 original, even if the big news is already out of the bag.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In the era where content is king, Sam Mendes still believes in moving pictures. “Empire of Light” is the proof. While the world was in lockdown these past couple years, Mendes let his imagination run to his happy place: a grand old English movie palace he dubbed the Empire Cinema. Thousands pass through its Art Deco doors seeking escapism, but Mendes is more interested in the employees — the projectionist, the ticket-takers, the box office attendant and so forth, who collectively form an ersatz family — whose stories, he senses, are every bit as interesting as the ones they show. And so he put them up on screen where they belong. But “Empire of Light” is more than just Mendes’ homage to an endangered art form — in fact, it spends a lot less time valorizing the medium than you might imagine. He has assembled a terrific cast, trusting that these performers can go deeper than their dialogue makes explicit, whether it’s Olivia Colman (who can do anything) as the romantically frustrated theater manager Hilary or relative newcomer (and “Blue Story” breakout) Micheal Ward as Stephen, Mr. Ellis’ latest hire (in an unusually sleazy cameo, Colin Firth plays the boss).

Vincent Cassel is getting some support on the red carpet.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Over the course of three quietly devastating features, Italian-born, America-based art-house director Andrea Pallaoro (“Medeas,” “Hannah”) has shown just how inadequate words can be when it comes to expressing some of life’s most complicated emotions. In his latest, “Monica,” Pallaoro takes on the near-universal craving for parent-child connection, knowing full well that his two lead characters — a Midwestern trans woman and the uncomprehending mom who rejected her — won’t be able to say what one another most needs to hear. But that doesn’t mean they can’t reach some kind of unspoken understanding, recognizable to those with experience reading between the lines.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic With a title like “Women Talking,” audacious actor-turned-helmer Sarah Polley’s fourth feature makes clear that it will be one of those rare films capable of passing the Bechdel test. That barometer, for those who may not know, poses three seemingly easy-to-meet criteria: (1) The movie has to have at least two women in it, (2) who talk to each other, (3) about something other than a man. It’s astonishing how many movies fail. Even Polley’s film, which consists of women talking for most of its 97 minutes, is a complicated exception, since most of the conversation — an urgent meeting among the wives, mothers and daughters of an ultraconservative religious colony — concerns the men. But even then, there’s no denying that “Women Talking” is unlike any film you’ve seen before, which is exactly what you’d want from the director of 2012’s astonishingly personal, format-shattering meta-documentary “Stories We Tell.” A decade later, Polley is back with another bold thought experiment, this one inspired by a horrific conspiracy of sexual abuse discovered within a Mennonite community about a decade ago.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic These days, with rappers singing about “wet-ass pussy” and Ana de Armas simulating a presidential blow job in “Blonde,” it’s hard to imagine a world in which a couple four-letter words are enough to get a book banned. In the case of D.H. Lawrence’s notorious 1928 novel “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” it was more than just the sex talk that riled the censors (the 1955 French film version was banned because it “promoted adultery”), although the book certainly seems tame by the standards of “Fifty Shades of Grey” and whatever gynecological surprises an un-Safe Google search might turn up. How then to approach Lawrence’s controversial classic today, when audiences have seemingly seen it all, but still find themselves surfing for titillation on Netflix (judging by the streamer’s T&A-skewing Top 10 lists)? In an admirable bid to make “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” at once respectable and arousing, French director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre (“Mustang”) embraces the erotic nature of its source, while making it something you can still recommend to your mom, assuming she’s got nothing against a nude romp in the rain.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Iconoclast, the international production group behind Romain Gavras’ Venice competition film “Athena,” is setting a wide-ranging slate of projects with emerging filmmakers from different audiovisual fields, including Leo Berne from the artists collective Megaforce, and Elias Belkeddar and Said Belktibia from the collective Kourtrajmé. The company is also producing the next projects of Harmony Korine and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, among others. In a rare interview, Nicolas Lhermitte, who co-founded Iconoclast with Mourad Belkeddar, says the company has emerged from the pandemic with a record number of developed projects. “We took the opportunity during the pandemic to develop a lot of projects, and today we have around 30 projects in the pipeline, spanning films and series that are set up at our studios in France, the U.S. and Germany,” says Lhermitte, who adds that Iconoclast aspired to “accompany multi-disciplinary artists to venture from one field to another, films, TV series, branded content, and music videos.”

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic The Lord works in mysterious ways, Christians are fond of telling us. More mysterious still is the matter of faith, a uniquely human idea which operates on the principle that phenomena we can’t explain are true, not because we understand them but because we don’t need to. Set in an almost medieval-feeling 1862, “The Wonder” asks audiences to ponder the meaning of a miracle. Is it possible, as the devout residents of a small Irish community believe, for an 11-year-old girl to survive for four months without food? The child, Anna O’Donnell (Kíla Lord Cassidy), suddenly stopped eating, and swears that since then, she’s been sustained by “manna from heaven.” As word of this “wonder” spread, pilgrims have come to see the phenomenon for themselves. Local authorities understandably have their doubts, calling for an English nurse, Lib Wright (Florence Pugh), to observe the situation.

Romain Gavras’ immersive modern tragedy Athena just had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, receiving a 4 1/2-minute standing ovation in the process.

Romain Gavras wastes no time in “Athena” informing the audience of the stakes. There have been three cases of police brutality within two months in the titular majority-minority community.

Designed as something akin to a Greek tragedy for today’s moment, Venice Film Festival Competition title Athena is a torrent, an inundation, a cascade of rage, fury and frustration over the realities of life for a particular group of French families. Such conditions exist in most societies, some more dire than others, but here the wages of pent-up anger are presented with a single-minded intensity and extended duration that would be hard to exceed.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent After the edgy crime comedy “The World Is Yours,” Romain Gavras is back with thriller “Athena.” Produced by Paris-based Iconoclast for Netflix, the ambitious, €15 million film ($15 million) unfolds in the aftermath of the tragic killing of a young boy. A leaked video showing the boy as a victim of police brutality goes viral and ignites an all-out war in an imaginary community called Athena. It’s the first French movie that Netflix is presenting in competition at the Venice Film Festival. “Athena” tells the story of the boy’s three siblings, who are responding to the tragedy in different ways. French star Dali Benssalah (“Les Sauvages,” “No Time to Die”) plays the older brother, Abdel, a French soldier. Faced with an impossible moral dilemma, Abdel is called back from the frontline to help diffuse the all-out war that has been sparked by his younger brother Karim (Sami Slimane), who wants revenge. Athena becomes the backdrop of a tragedy for both the family and its entire community. The film’s stellar cast also includes Ouassini Embarek, Anthony Bajon and Alexis Manenti.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic “The Kingdom Exodus” begins with a joke, and for the next five hours, it never gets serious, not even for a second. That’s not what you might expect for the long-delayed finale to Lars von Trier’s made-for-TV horror series, though it sure makes this over-the-top return to the haunted Rigshospitalet — that big, brutalist medical center in the heart of Copenhagen — a lot more fun. For all of two minutes, von Trier tricks us into thinking that maybe this third season is going to look like a polished, peak-TV miniseries of the sort you might find on HBO or Netflix (after all, the original series came out in 1994, one year before the artifice-renouncing Danish revolution that was Dogme 95, and von Trier has since gone back to making dark fantasies with heightened style). We open on a closeup of a woman’s eye, ideally lit and steadily framed, reflecting a TV screen on which a tuxedoed von Trier appears, a quarter-century younger, over the credits of Season 2’s final episode.