Philip Oltermann

Malta has become one of Europe’s leading destinations for major film and television productions, hosting more than 30 productions annually and offering a 40% cash rebate that can cover foreign crews and equipment. The policy has created year-round employment, attracted projects including Gladiator II and Jurassic World Rebirth, and generated substantial economic returns. Critics warn that international productions are outbidding Maltese filmmakers for local talent, while road closures, restricted parking and damage to heritage sites are increasing public resentment. Malta plans to revise its rebate scheme and develop an €80m studio complex, but faces the challenge of supporting its own cinema alongside its role as an international production hub.

Filmmaker Tom Six has disclosed that he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2020 and has spent six years largely secluded in his Amsterdam home. His homemade documentary, The End of Tom Six, which he calls his final film, depicts his deteriorating mobility, daily routine and refusal to present himself as a victim. Six also blames the film industry’s “woke cowardice” and safe-space culture for preventing the release of The Onania Club, while his producer says the prolonged stress worsened his disease. The documentary is due to be released on YouTube on 15 August under a pay-what-you-want model.

The European Central Bank has shortlisted 10 designs for the first full redesign of euro banknotes since their 2002 introduction. Half feature cultural figures including Maria Callas, Beethoven, Marie Curie, Cervantes, Leonardo da Vinci and Bertha von Suttner, while the others depict European birds and landscapes. More than 6 million people participated in an initial survey, with further public polling and a designers’ jury set to influence the final choice. The redesign is primarily intended to improve anti-counterfeiting measures, but the ECB also wants the notes to create a stronger sense of European identity by moving beyond the current neutral architectural imagery. The winning design is expected at the end of 2026, with new paper notes entering circulation in 2030 or 2031.

Gunther von Hagens, the German anatomist who invented plastination and created the Body Worlds exhibitions, died in Heidelberg on 24 July at age 81 after a cerebral haemorrhage. His body is expected to be plastinated in accordance with his wishes, although its eventual display location is undecided. The exhibitions attracted more than 50 million visitors and aimed to make anatomy accessible, but faced criticism over their provocative presentation of human remains and allegations that a facility in China had obtained unclaimed bodies, including those of executed prisoners. Von Hagens had lived with Parkinson’s disease since 2008 and had transferred much of his work to his wife, Angelina Whalley, and son, Rurik.

The 83rd Venice Film Festival will open with Danny Boyle’s Ink, a drama about Rupert Murdoch’s 1969 acquisition of The Sun, while Alex Gibney’s four-hour documentary Musk will screen out of competition. The lineup includes films by Martin McDonagh, Werner Herzog, Nanni Moretti, Florian Zeller and others, alongside documentaries addressing Soviet history, ICE operations in Minneapolis and media power. Major stars including Robert Pattinson, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Kate Mara and Rooney Mara are expected, but female representation has sharply declined: May El-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown is the only female-directed film among the 20 competition titles, compared with six female directors in 2025.

Hamburg's satirical play Timmy: Hope Dies Last recasts a stranded humpback whale as a Jesus-like saviour onto whom Germans projected fear, guilt, loneliness and hope. The production explores the whale's cultish public following, criticism from Catholic theologians and praise from German media, while depicting the privately funded €2m rescue mission as driven partly by populist hostility toward experts and elites. Timmy ultimately died near Anholt on 14 May, leaving unresolved questions about the rescue's cost and the public's troubled relationship with wildlife, politics and collective belief.

Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam has recreated Wim T Schippers’ 1969 Pindakaasvloer, covering a gallery floor with about 800lb of smooth peanut butter in accordance with the late artist’s detailed instructions. The installation honours Schippers, who died aged 83 after a career spanning conceptual art, television, comedy and voice acting. The work will remain on display until 6 September, alongside peanut-butter-themed offerings at the museum, and continues to provoke questions about what constitutes art.

German author Wolfram Lotz spent five years collecting and translating thousands of dreams from European online forums for his anthology Dreams in Europe. He finds a striking pattern of adventurous or frightening dreams ending in mundane anticlimaxes, which he interprets as reflecting Europe’s practical, melancholy and seemingly disenchanted mindset. Political events such as Brexit, Trump and Covid rarely appear directly, while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine features more prominently in Ukrainian- and Russian-language material. Many dreams are set in the United States, suggesting that dreams may reveal changing European feelings about America beyond the usual political discourse.

Canada will enter the Eurovision Song Contest from 2027 after joining the European Broadcasting Union, becoming the first new participant since Australia joined in 2015. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation will select the country’s act, with the contest scheduled for Sofia, Bulgaria, in May 2027. The move is presented both as an opportunity to showcase Canadian talent and as a sign of Canada’s closer cultural and diplomatic ties with Europe. Eurovision continues to face boycotts and financial and audience pressures over Israel’s participation and the war in Gaza, but organizers are pursuing expansion through a planned Eurovision Song Contest Asia in Bangkok.

Wim Wenders has withdrawn his 1975 film Wrong Move from streaming, television and other distribution channels after Nastassja Kinski said she had spent 15 years seeking changes to a scene filmed when she was 13. Following criticism of his initial comments, Wenders apologized unreservedly and acknowledged that Kinski should have been better protected. The withdrawal was carried out by the nonprofit Wim Wenders Foundation, which owns the film.

Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev used his Grand Prix acceptance speech at Cannes to call on Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine, then sent a further message criticizing the Kremlin for ignoring the Russian public. Putin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov refused to relay the appeal and accused Zvyagintsev of failing to condemn alleged violence in Donbas. Zvyagintsev called that response hypocritical, while Ukrainian commentators criticized his appeal to Putin and his comparison of Russian soldiers’ deaths with Ukrainian civilian suffering. His new film, Minotaur, premiered positively at Cannes after his recovery from severe Covid-19 and subsequent exile in France.

At Cannes, Pedro Almodóvar said filmmakers have a moral duty to speak out against political conditions, warning that silence and fear enable democratic decline and that Europe must avoid the kind of politics associated with Donald Trump. His remarks came amid concern over the rise of far-right parties in Europe and reports that Canal+ chief Maxime Saada threatened to blacklist actors who signed a petition against shareholder Vincent Bolloré. Almodóvar also criticized the lack of protests at the Oscars over war and Trump, noting Javier Bardem’s public statement in support of Palestine. His new film, Bitter Christmas, received a nine-minute standing ovation despite mixed reviews.

Bulgaria won its first Eurovision Song Contest after Dara took the 2026 title with the folklore-inspired party anthem “Bangaranga.” Israel finished second, helping avert the organizational and hosting difficulties that would have followed an Israeli victory amid continuing war in Gaza. The Vienna contest was boycotted by Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Iceland after the European Broadcasting Union retained Israel’s participation while changing voting rules. The UK finished last with Sam Battle’s “Eins, Zwei, Drei,” while Australia placed fourth.

Director Andrey Zvyagintsev spent 11 months in German hospitals after severe Covid-19 caused 90% lung damage and temporary paralysis. After recovering and choosing exile in France because he did not want to be associated with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he returned to filmmaking with Minotaur, an adaptation of Claude Chabrol’s The Unfaithful Wife. The film, set in a fictional Russian town in 2022 and made without Russian state support, premieres in Cannes, where Zvyagintsev is competing for the Palme d’Or after a nine-year absence. His earlier films, including Leviathan and Loveless, are examined as bleak critiques of Russian social apathy, state power and institutional corruption.

Austrian feminist performance artist and filmmaker Valie Export has died in Vienna at 85, shortly before her 86th birthday. Known for provocative works such as Tapp und Tastkino and Geburtenbett, she challenged patriarchal power structures and the objectification of women, initially scandalising audiences in Austria and Germany before becoming recognised as a major influence on feminist and contemporary art. Export also made films, co-founded the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative, taught multimedia and performance, and inspired later artists including Marina Abramović.

Carla Simón discusses how her experiences of being orphaned by parents who died of AIDS shaped her autobiographical films, including Romería. The film follows an 18-year-old visiting relatives in Galicia to investigate her biological father and family history, drawing on Simón’s own trips and her mother’s letters. Simón rejects narratives of shame and blame toward the generation affected by Spain’s heroin epidemic, arguing that her parents suffered bad luck amid the social upheaval following Franco’s dictatorship. She explains her preference for improvisation and working with children, reflects on Spanish cinema and the country’s transition-era culture, and reveals that her next project will be a flamenco musical.

A three-day Russia-Ukraine ceasefire ended with more than 200 reported Russian drones striking Ukrainian energy facilities, apartment buildings, a kindergarten and railway infrastructure, killing at least one person and injuring others. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine would respond and called for continued or stronger sanctions against Moscow. EU defence ministers met in Brussels to discuss Ukraine support, including a proposed €90bn loan, European defence production and wider security issues. The live coverage also reported the formal installation of Péter Magyar's new Hungarian government, a corruption investigation involving former Ukrainian presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak, disputes over UK-EU youth mobility, European proposals for third-country asylum hubs, and economic criticism of Friedrich Merz in Germany. A separate hantavirus incident linked to the MV Hondius cruise ship prompted monitoring and quarantine measures in several countries, while Eurovision faced boycotts and broadcaster concerns over Israel's participation.

Artist Sung Tieu has recreated the facade of Gehrenseestrasse, a former East Berlin housing estate for Vietnamese contract workers, on Germany’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Drawing on her childhood there, she uses three million mosaic stones to memorialize workers recruited under a socialist labor agreement between East Germany and Vietnam and later abandoned after reunification. Tieu’s work examines bureaucracy, migration, racism and contested German identity, including neo-Nazi attacks on Vietnamese residents and the broader erasure of the Vertragsarbeiter generation. Her intervention also engages with the German pavilion’s Nazi-era architecture and the history of artists who altered it, but adds a migrant perspective rather than stripping the building back.

Eurovision 2026 is opening in Vienna amid an unprecedented boycott by Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Slovenia and Iceland over Israel’s inclusion. The withdrawals and related broadcasting blackouts threaten audience figures and raise concerns about the contest’s finances as public broadcasters face budget pressures. Pro-Palestinian protests and a smaller counterdemonstration are planned in Vienna, while critics accuse the European Broadcasting Union of applying double standards compared with its exclusion of Russia. Israel’s entrant Noam Bettan remains a strong contender, but the political dispute has dampened the normally celebratory atmosphere. The EBU is also promoting a new Asian Eurovision competition in Bangkok and other anniversary initiatives.

The rapid improvement of AI translation tools is reducing demand, rates and creative opportunities for many European translators, particularly in technical and post-editing work. Translators describe lower offers and precarious incomes, while surveys show widespread concern that AI will replace some or all of their work. However, machine systems still struggle with context, dialogue, cultural nuance and genuinely original expression, producing errors such as mistranslating “capital” as “capital city.” Literary translation has so far proved more resilient than technical translation, with strong publishing figures and authors increasingly restricting AI use contractually. The future is likely to involve continued human oversight, but the profession’s economic sustainability remains uncertain.