Culture

Cannes might be ‘useless and wonderful’ but this year’s crop of films offers the chance to find the next cinematic hit and celebrate some of the greats.

The racing pulse of HBO’s prestige hit Succession is the emotional whiplash of unresolved family abuse.

Australian director Alethea Jones is forging a prosperous career in Hollywood – but the path to success was by no means a straight one.

I didn’t strike him, for I was a reasonable child. But how I wanted to. “Answer me properly, slave.”

Manis breathed long, as adults so often do. “Philosophers mock common ideas, master. Perhaps the stonemason said...”

Squinting up at the sky, the philosopher turned so that his back was fully to the sun. His laughter became forceful, more of a phlegmy wheeze, his mouth wide. I saw what he was pointing at now: his own shadow. Blackness on the grey dirt, a grotesque, misshapen version of his grotesque, misshapen being.

At various stages of her life, American playwright Lynn Nottage has revisited the award-winning play A Raisin in the Sun. Each time, she sees its reflections on life and class through a different character’s eyes.

The forthcoming Iraq War gallery at the Australian War Memorial promises to display differing views about this controversial conflict, but the curatorial approach seems heavily compromised.

In exploring how the oppressed can become oppressors, the stage adaptation of The Poison of Polygamy – Australia’s first Chinese-language novel – is a timely critique of the present.