DECEMBER 11, 2025

By E. Alex Jung

Motaz Malhees and Kaouther Ben Hania on the set of the film. Photo: Berlin Flores/Block Party

The Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania first heard Hind’s voice while she was waiting for a flight at LAX in February 2024. The Red Crescent had released snippets of the call in the days after it lost contact with its colleagues and before it would be able to discover their bodies. Ben Hania had been on the road campaigning for her film Four Daughters, which had been nominated for Best Documentary at the Oscars. After the awards-show circuit was over, she was preparing to shoot her next feature, Mimesis, a film about beauty, poetry, and Islamic art that she had been working on since 2014. But she heard Hind’s plea as if it were directed toward her. “I thought she was asking me to rescue her because her voice was so immediate and strong,” Ben Hania remembers. What was the artist’s responsibility in a time of genocide? She called her longtime producer, Nadim Cheikhrouha, and told him Mimesis would have to wait again. “My first thought was, That film is cursed,” he says. “But when she told me she wanted to do something about what is happening, I thought, I totally understand.”

By Matt Zoller-Seitz

He’s transformed from bare-chested Method hunk to ruddy-cheeked scene stealer, and his body of work has never been better. Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Ryan Pfluger, Publishers

Hermann Göring, the highest-ranking Nazi tried for war crimes after World War II, is not the protagonist of Nuremberg. The story is focused more on Göring’s psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), and the head of the Allies’ prosecution team, Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon). Yet Göring dominates the movie thanks to Russell Crowe’s performance, somehow both indulgently big and dexterously subtle. He is the poisonous lure of machismo, incarnated as a boisterous psychic seducer of other men — a guy who can make anybody feel special and understood, even the psychiatrist hired to crack open his brain.

It’s the latest brilliant Crowe performance in an era that’s seen him abandon any interest in regaining the exalted position of movie star in favor of supporting roles and villain parts. These days, you’re more likely to see Crowe’s name associated with still-disreputable genres like horror, superhero fantasy, and R-rated action. Not only is Crowe comfortable in such categories, he seems to be liberated by them. Part of the Crowe-issance comes from the actor getting comfortable with the transition from bare-chested Method hunk to ruddy-cheeked, plus-size scene stealer who seems delighted to lead with his belly.

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