Home · Category
When a West Bank village and Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre collide, an Oscar-winning documentary angers Israeli ministers and BDS activists alike — proof that in an absolutist conflict, collaboration and empathy remain the most subversive acts.
'Emmanuelle' was a provocative softcore movie (with some risible dialogue) from the 1970s about the study of an open marriage from a female perspective of liberated sexuality but, fifty years on, the Lebanese director Audrey Diwan has created her own more modern version of the legend.
The celebrated Valencian architect reflects on the circumstances that shaped his career, from attending art school aged eight to his ambitions for the School of Beaux Arts and the move that took him to Zürich.
Nearly seven years after founding La Revêche, creative director Sara Melis explains her ambition to move swimwear beyond the merely functional, introducing sophisticated pieces that make wearers feel beautifully dressed up for the beach.
The Saudi art scene is booming right now, but behind the hot-topic exhibitions and international showcases are some incredible curators such as Jumana Ghouth, who has put together a multitude of shows over the years, from thought-provoking spotlights on single artists to large group sho…
Speaking from her home in Cairo's leafy Maadi suburbs, the twenty-seven-year-old model-turned-actor proves utterly singular. Wrapped in faux fur against a cloudy morning, Heba El-Dessouky is happy in her own skin and would rather cook dinner.
The first woman to model in a hijab on major runways reflects on leaving the industry behind. Models are disposable and replaceable, she says, so she chose to replace modelling with something altogether better.
The celebrated creative director speaks candidly about reconciling a glamorous career with a deliberately simple life in Nettuno, the seaside town where he and his wife grew up and chose to raise their own children.
Lyna Khoudri has her work cut out for her in Wes Anderson’s ‘The French Dispatch’. In the king of kook’s latest film, a love letter to journalism, France and all things quintessentially Anderson, the little-known French-Algerian actress first has to stake a claim for herself in an insan…
“What I love about poetry is the freedom that comes with the page and what you can do with the blank spaces. You can do almost anything – even defy the confines of grammar – it’s like the abstract art of the literary world,” says Danielle Badra, the latest winner of the Etel Adnan Poetr…
“A fikra started while I was living in New York,” says Mikey Muhanna, who grew up in an expatriate community in Cyprus before attending high school in Lebanon and then moving to the U.S. for college, where he remained for another ten years after graduation. “Its genesis was born out of …
It’s crazy to think that Greta Thunberg, the Swedish environmental campaigner and pioneer of the school strike movement, is already 18. It feels like only yesterday that she appeared on the international stage – an impish 15-year-old prophet of doom telling world leaders they were steal…
Having been appointed Honorary Chair of the World Refugee & Migration Council (WRMC) earlier this year, we sat down with HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan in order to discuss the state of affairs in our region. YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, CONSIDERING THAT EACH COUNTRY SEEMS TO HAVE …
Where other girls of 21 might still be wondering what to do with their lives, Yousra Mohsen has already achieved her goal of making it as a professional dancer. But it wasn’t easy. Her achievement of becoming the first Middle Easterner to join the Crazy Horse in Paris, sparked an …
From the first Arab Nobel Laureate to the inventor of the lithium-ion battery, the Middle East's contribution to science did not end with its medieval Golden Age. It is still being written.
Creative Director Sarah Burton talks us through an Autumn/Winter 2020-21 ready-to-wear collection she wanted grounded, bold and heroic, drawing on Welsh heritage and the comfort of quilting and blankets.
In a new documentary for NBCUniversal's Oxygen, the reality star joins legal experts on four cases of people she believes were unfairly sentenced, while reflecting on criticism and her bold new direction.
As governments wrestle with political uprisings and pandemics, policy adviser Suzan Elsayed warns that the region risks falling behind unless it commits seriously to research, development and growth-centred thinking right now.
Both for countries across the Middle East and around the world, life as we know it came to a grinding halt in early March 2020. As a result it has become crystal clear how fragile our existence is. Talk about a reality check. Despite all the technology we’ve implemented, the complex fin…
From Saudi Arabia's G20 presidency and a debut Global AI Summit to Kaia Gerber, Yeezy's billions, electric Porsches, recycled cotton and Caribbean hideaways, here is the year ahead, letter by letter.
Linda Sarsour is a Palestinian-American who simultaneously criticises Israel while working on the campaign of a Democratic candidate who might well be the first Jewish US president. Few phrases in the world of politics are wheeled out more commonly than the cry of anti-Semitism. While m…
Fresh from playing Aladdin in the billion-dollar blockbuster, the Egyptian-Canadian actor talks candidly about typecasting, his foundation for artists of colour, plant-based living and his neo-noir Hulu thriller.
Fresh off the heels of his role as Aladdin in the blockbuster Hollywood film, Mena Massoud is speaking out about the lack of diversity in Hollywood, saving the planet and his new Hulu series ‘Reprisal’, a neo-noir thriller set to launch this December. ALADDIN EXCEEDED ALL EXPECTATIONS A…
American artist Nathan Sawaya abandoned a lucrative career as a mergers and acquisitions lawyer to sculpt with Lego. He reflects on the leap of faith that turned childhood bricks into a serious artistic calling.
Amid wildfires, conflict and hardship, the human spirit clings instinctively to optimism. This piece explores how art and playfulness offer a vital antidote, helping us take in the chaos while still finding room for joy.
From Saudi Arabia's G20 presidency and electric aviation to Kaia Gerber, hydrogen cars and the Caribbean's most secretive island, an alphabetical guide to the names, ideas and objects defining the year ahead.
He is among the world's most famous plastic surgeons, so the unannounced Skype call surprised our writer. Fresh off a flight to LAX, he was minutes from theatre and another case for Botched.
Her Instagram suggests a stylish influencer, but Fatima Al-Banawi is far more. The young Saudi actress carries serious ambition behind those hypnotic green eyes, plus the intellectual firepower to turn her plans into reality.
A 29-year-old former waitress, AOC made history as the youngest woman elected to the US House, taking New York's 14th district. Born in the Bronx, her victory is already changing her party.
Lebanese novelist and playwright Hanan Al-Shaykh’s work often challenges traditional women’s roles in the Arab world and was initially banned in many Arab countries. Her most recent book, ‘The Occasional Virgin’ is no exception. In her elegant London apartment overlooking Grosvenor Squa…
It might seem incongruous to deface a bag that costs more than a lot of people’s monthly salaries, but when Dubai-based artist Janan Shihadeh (@jananstudio) does it, you might actually be making it worth more than you paid for it. Using permanent, waterproof and bendable paint to custom…
Born in Moscow and raised in Syria, Dina Saadi has been transforming walls around the world with her large-scale murals for the best part of five years. Part pop art and part poetry, they’ll leave you with plenty to reflect on. Based in Dubai since 2012, Dina Saadi is an artist, i…
One day in 2004, the Iraqi-Dutch filmmaker Mohamed Jabarah Al Daradji was filming scenes for his first feature film, ‘Ahlaam’, on Haifa Street in Baghdad when he and his crew were abducted by an Iraqi militia affiliated with Al Qaeda. “They accused us of working with the Americans,” Al …
The Egyptian-American Mr. Robot star, now an Oscar contender, describes the daunting Live Aid recreation, flying out fake teeth and chasing the vulnerability beneath one of rock's most godlike performers.
In conversation, our subject reflects on Freddie Mercury as a formative hero, exploring how his struggle for identity and fearless stagecraft sent the message that it is perfectly fine to be yourself.
Supermodel feels antiquated now, a relic of a golden era when the world's most beautiful women were beyond question. Modelling has changed, says Ellen von Unwerth in Beirut; today it is all Gigi and Bella.
Hollywood superstar Will Smith stays at the Kempinski in Dubai’s Mall of the Emirates and has a go on the neighbouring indoor slope: first on some skis then in a giant inflatable ball. If nothing else, his enthusiasm is wildly contagious.
In her Ashrafieh office, Nadine Labaki's career is written across the walls: framed posters, production stills, scouts' photographs and hundreds of Post-its, a slapdash record of an extraordinarily busy year in film.
This human rights lawyer seemingly has it all – intelligence, looks, a career, George Clooney, twins , and let’s not forget an enviable wardrobe. 1. Amal might sound perfectly English with her cut-glass accent but, as the daughter of a Lebanese couple – Ramzi and Baria Alamuddin …
Is your identity as a Palestinian at the root of your drive, inspiration and self-expression? It’s an interesting question. My inspiration has come naturally since childhood, I’m like a kid who never stops drawing. But I think there’s a drive in all of us to make pictures, it’s a human …
Founder Laure Hauteville reflects on Beirut Art Fair, the region's rare censorship-free showcase that is fast winning admirers in Milan and at Art Basel as Middle Eastern art enjoys a moment.
Over an intensive four-month assignment, photographer Jeremy Chivers documented the soldiers, training and rarely seen equipment of the Lebanese Armed Forces, with book proceeds going to the country's military veterans.
Known for her savvy political commentary and rhetoric on international news networks, Raghida Dergham is following up a stellar journalistic career with a turn on the other side of Middle East policy. The first time I met Raghida Dergham was at a summer party in the charming modesty of …
Take a new look at Saudi cities.
After almost three decades of being banned by FIFA and it might be just what the Arab nation needs to help turn the page on decades of war.
Listening to Yasmine Hamdan’s music, her soaring and unique voice and vocal style, reminds me of listening to John Coltrane blow his horn. When she sings – as when Coltrane plays sax – Hamdan improvises, she creates, and it comes from within. It’s her soul. It’s the one space, as a Leba…
Creative director Pascale Habis explains why her Beirut slow-fashion house rejects mass production for timeless, impeccably finished pieces, reviving the garde-robe tradition and prizing individualism over the conformity of any It Bag.
Six metres below Bloomberg's new billion-dollar European headquarters lie the restored remains of one of London's oldest buildings: a Roman temple to Mithras, the bull-slaying deity, now open free to the public.
It’s hard to believe Instagram was launched only eight years ago. Before that, “no filter” was an expression used to describe a loose-lipped party guest, and “blessed” was how you felt inside when something really good happened. There were no “Followers” and “Influence…
Inflation, salaries, property maintenance, upgrades, introducing new curricula, let’s be honest, running an institute of higher education is very expensive. You can turn to tuition fees and alumni associations, revenues from intellectual properties and, if you have a healthcare arm, hos…
If you happened to be looking for a rock archetype you’d be hard pressed to find a better specimen than Faris Badwan. The lead singer of hard-to-describe British five-piece The Horrors, is a sort of Gothic Mick Jagger with more swagger – tall, thin, a big mop of black hair framing his b…
There’s something about meeting Salwa Chalhoub that gives you an irrepressible urge to collect art. She floats into the three-storey Opera Gallery in Downtown Beirut with her long dark silky smooth hair and the rhetoric of a young, cool and seemingly seasoned capitalist, and of course y…
DJ Khaled is a Grammy-award winning Palestinian-American record producer, radio personality, DJ, record label executive, and author with seven million followers on Instagram. He’s big, he’s loud and the world is listening. There are many cultural phenomena historians will struggle to ex…
Byblos is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, and Alice Eddé is the unlikely American determined to ensure no one forgets its extraordinary past, making heritage fresh and relevant once again.
Visa pour l'Image returns for a twenty-ninth year, gathering the finest photojournalism from around the world. Among the standout works at the South of France festival, a timely reminder of the human cost of war in Iraq.
Lalique's owner and chief executive, Silvio Denz, is making crystal cool again through contemporary collaborations and an inspired jewellery collection, with projects from Damien Hirst and Zaha Hadid bringing a fresh take to a traditional technique.
On Twitter (where she has 7.1 million followers), she describes herself as “a mum and a wife with a really cool day job”. That job is being queen and she looks the part with her fabulous designer clothes, long glossy hair and teeny-tiny waist. Her Instagram account (3.5m followers) ofte…
Jeff Koons is the most successful American artist since Andy Warhol, and this is a very brief but beautifully put together documentary about him. Narrated by Scarlett Johansson, the video was commissioned by MOCA Los Angeles for their 2017 gala honouring the artist.
Could it be the smoked salmon? The citizens of Norway are the happiest in the world – at least according to the index published in the World Happiness Report by the United Nations. Despite what we’ve heard about the benefits of Omega-3s, researchers in fact attribute the high level of h…
WHEN DID YOU GET INTO CLIMBING? I grew up in Saudi until I was 16 at which time I moved to the UAE to go to university. I then got a job in Dubai at an advertising agency and it wasn’t until I was 25 that I got into climbing. That’s considered pretty late yet, […]
WHEN DID YOU REALISE YOU COULD BE A PROFESSIONAL SINGER? -I never realised I could be one, I just followed my heart and my intuition. I always loved music and the arts and it is something I grew up learning and nourishing culturally and technically. The turning point though was when I m…
As private firms reach for orbit and NASA finds seven Earth-sized planets, Taschen's exhaustive Moonfire reflects on the giant leap the Apollo 11 astronauts took almost fifty years ago.
WHEN DID YOU REALISE YOU WANTED TO BE A JOURNALIST? I’ve always been that kid who asked questions, only to get answers that would prompt ten more questions. In the summer of 1990, my family flew from Kuwait to Berkeley, California for a summer vacation. A few weeks later, Saddam Hussein…
Since Christie's opened its regional hub in Dubai over a decade ago, semi-annual auctions of regional art have helped the Middle East account for eight per cent of the firm's global turnover. What lies behind the boom?
Two minutes into Mountain View, our writer spots his first driverless pod gliding through rush hour, ignored by blasé commuters, a fitting welcome to the boomtown heart of Silicon Valley.
Bespoke breaks its own rule against the interview format, gathering a hand-picked cast — a journalist, a designer, a Bugatti man, a singer, a mountaineer and a hotelier — to reveal what each finds truly indispensable.
The Kuwait-born, California-raised and Brooklyn-based designer makes furniture and objects that defy categorisation, moving from acoustics to medical-inspired provocations while rejecting both the millennial tag and the expectations placed on Arab art.
CL is a young South Korean singer making music the millennial way, with millions of followers on social media. But making it in the brick-and-mortar world brings a whole different set of challenges.
At just 28, the Syrian-Lebanese economist and activist has built the Sawa Foundation on dignity and ownership, drafting laws and rallying donors to support refugees the world too often forgets.
Seemingly overnight, Jim Chapman has become one of the internet's most popular stars. His good looks and boundless enthusiasm for daily life have placed him on a short list of men dominating the social media sphere.
Nadine Ghaith examines a multicultural, multilingual generation that has shed the religious and political labels it inherited. Exposed to turmoil rather than sheltered from it, these Middle Eastern millennials see the world quite differently from Western peers.
A sobering back-page reckoning with the Syrian conflict, marshalling UN and World Bank figures on the dead, the displaced and the impoverished to insist that the world's worst humanitarian crisis cannot be looked away from.
The latest groundbreaking project by award-winning author Hassan Blasim is ‘Iraq+100’, for which he edited the work of ten Iraqi writers asked to imagine their country in the year 2103. Citing a lack of contemporary sci-fi and contemporary genres in Iraqi literature, Hassan Blasim and B…
From his early days dancing in the underground rap scene of Memphis, Tennessee, to international stardom and being called “what you might get if Mikhail Baryshnikov and Chris Brown’s genes were combined in a blender,” Lil Buck displays his unique moves in the halls of …
Writer and artist Sophia Al Maria coined the term Gulf Futurism in 2007 to describe the architecture, urban planning and aesthetics of the oil-era Gulf, typified by isolation through technology and dizzying speed of change.
Meet Mashael Al Rahji, Saudi Arabia's representative at this year's London Fashion Week, whose bold street-versus-couture collection is shattering the status quo with a minimalism and underlying philosophy that treat fashion as an extension of identity.
Credited with over 3,500 inventions and still going, our subject reflects on a lifetime of relentless ideas, dwarfing even Thomas Edison's tally, and recalls the boyhood spark that started it all.
War, terror, people smugglers, storms, nothing could get between Syrian swimmer Rami Anis and his dream of sporting glory. Meet one of the athletes who competed in the Refugee Olympic Team in Rio 2016. Rami Anis rolled to one side of his single, carelessly made bed, then to the other. H…
On a humid June evening at Beirut's Hotel Le Vendome, our writer's discomfort melts away before the inimitable charm of Amr Koura, a rare quality in the cutthroat worlds of film and television.
Looking at Marc Quinn’s most recent work in the Middle East, as part of an inaugural ‘The World Meets Here’ group show in Dubai’s Custot Gallery, it’s difficult not to reflect on what a far cry it is from that which first brought him to fame. If “blood head” doesn’t sound familiar, then…
The bestselling author and social-science observer turned his name into shorthand for big-picture thinking. He cheerfully admits he is no scientist, yet his elegant theories still reshape how we read modern life.
Estimated to be worth over 400 million dollars, Gisele Bündchen is by far the most successful model ever. As a final adieu to a twenty-year career, she has created this 536-page tome with Taschen.
Kiwi cartoonist Malcolm Evans once drew two women, one in a bikini, one veiled, each pitying the other's oppression. Humorous yet pointed, the image opens a thoughtful reflection on covering, freedom and cultural prejudice.
Flown to Munich for BMW's centenary, our writer braced for two days of M3s, Hofmeister kinks and ultimate driving machines, but never expected a rival marque to muscle in on the carmaker's big day.
Founded in 1980, PETA lives and breathes a single mission: animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on or use for entertainment. Whatever you make of their tactics, you cannot but respect their dedication.
Miuccia Prada crowned her year with the Fondazione Prada, Rem Koolhaas's striking Milan art museum and proof of her cultural commitment. For more bookish minds, she now offers the Prada Feltrinelli initiative, another investment of name and resources.
There is something deeply organic about a cigar, the way rolled leaves unravel as they burn and the taste evolves towards the end. A fleeting, sensual affair, says Stéphane Nazzal, in which every lover has their own ritual.
In Camus' The Outsider, the murdered Arab is never named, a mere device in a fierce meditation on a godless world. Our writers revisit that emptiness and the figure history left voiceless.
Six years ago Bulgari pledged part of every Save the Children ring to the charity. With a pendant added in 2014, the jeweller continues to channel luxury towards the world's most disadvantaged children.
Defiant from the start, artist Monira Al Qadiri persuaded both her parents and Kuwait's education minister to send her, aged sixteen, on a Japanese scholarship reserved for boys, the first of many bold leaps.
Many of us romanticise the lives of writers, that is, until we try being a writer ourselves. It was the Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek who said that writing is a form of self-torture, which immediately brings to mind those incredibly frustrating moments of writ…
At first glance, Laudi Abilama's vivid canvases could be mistaken for Warhol, until you notice the subjects: Faten Hamama, Omar Sharif, Umm Kulthoum and Fairouz, golden-age Arab stars rendered in bold pop-art colour.
One ill-judged gesture, chopsticks left standing upright in a bowl of perfectly good noodles, turns a dinner date awkward, as our writer learns just how loaded the rules of the table can be.
Asked once whether he would give up eating if he could, our writer thought the question insane, unwilling to trade his quinoa salads for anything. Yet it lingers during the search for a quick, cheap Beirut lunch.
Raised among hardbound classics, airport paperbacks and Booker shortlists, and schooled at a Steiner school that forbade reading before six, our writer reflects on the eclectic library that shaped a lifelong love of stories.
Born the eldest of six in a middle-class Peruvian family, Mario Testino's outrageous sense of style courted trouble at home before London and New York beckoned. As he puts it, imagine David Bowie walking through Rome.
Our writer learned to tell time by the grandfather clock that tick-tocked in the family living room, rewarded with a sturdy Timex. Then came the manned space missions, and Omega watches strapped to astronauts bound for the moon.
Holding around fifteen per cent of the world's natural gas reserves, Qatar is the largest exporter of LNG. As Austen might note, a nation in possession of such fortune is busily finding ways to spend it.
Refusing to specialise, this gallery hangs modern beside contemporary and emerging beside established, pairing twentieth-century masters such as Renoir, Matisse, Dalí and Picasso with Takashi Murakami, Andy Warhol and even celebrated graffiti artists.
Some cultures believe photographers steal their subjects' souls, and in a sense that is what Mustafa Sabbagh attempts. The Milan-based Palestinian-Jordanian artist strips away humanity's social veneer to reveal something deeper: man uncorrupted by civilisation.