Although Europe hasn’t seen a major assassination attempt against a head of government in decades, the attack comes as the continent is experiencing growing violence against politicians.

Slovakia, which boasts a population of 5.4 million, is politically deeply divided and parties often use harsh rhetoric to berate each other.

Despite these divides, almost all of Fico’s opponents expressed their horror and shock at the assassination attempt.

Slovakia’s outgoing president, Zuzana Caputova, who received death threats during her time in office and decided not to run for a second term, said the the country’s political elite and public should renounce hatred and violence.

For now, it remains unclear what motivated the shooter Juraj C. (who DW is not naming in full in line with German laws) to carry out the attack.

According to Slovakian media, the 71-year-old had pursued an unsuccessful career as a writer and poet and reportedly belonged to a right-wing writers’ association. He had also apparently shared anti-migrant and anti-Roma content on social media in the past.

At the same time, he reportedly opposed Slovakia’s right-wing nationalist governing coalition headed by Fico. 

Slovakia’s Meciar era

Slovakia has a long history of political and criminal violence. As such, the attack can be seen as a product of this deeply polarized culture.

The Eastern European nation gained independence in 1993 after the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia.

At the time, under the leadership of Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar, Slovakia found itself at a crossroads, stuck between becoming an autocratic regime with close ties to organized crime or a state based on the rule of law. This era was marked by crimes in the economic realm also including privatizations, brutal mafia murders and attacks on opponents of the Meciar network.

The era reached a nadir when a 1995 power struggle between Meciar and then-President Michal Kovac led to the kidnapping of the president’s son by Slovakia’s secret service. Meciar is said to have masterminded the kidnapping, through no one was ever held responsible, as Meciar himself granted the perpetrators amnesty.

Murder of Jan Kuciak

Slovakia’s 2004 EU accession seemed to put an end to this era. It was also the time when Robert Fico’s political career began. Back then, Fico was a lawyer who made a name for himself as a social democrat fighting corruption and unbridled neoliberalism.

Yet after becoming prime minister for the first time in 2006, he too was soon accused of graft and involvement in the Penta Gorilla affair, Slovakia’s biggest post-communist corruption scandal involving shady businessmen influencing Slovakian politics.

In February 2018, when Fico was serving his second term as prime minister, journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova were murdered. Kuciak had been researching links between Slovakian politicians and organized crime.

Although Fico’s government had no direct involvement in the murders, Fico was forced to resign because Kuciak had uncovered links between his government and the Italian mafia, including through a Fico advisor and alleged lover. Businessman Marian Kocner, the man who reportedly ordered Kuciak’s killing, maintained close ties to members of the Slovakian government and senior officials in the state apparatus.

Slovakia’s lack of reforms

After the Fico era ended, Zuzana Caputova — a lawyer and anti-corruption activist — was elected president in 2019. A liberal-conservative coalition came to power the following year.

Yet hopes among ordinary Slovakians that the coalition would deliver far-reaching and lasting reforms were dashed with the governing alliance collapsing in 2023 due to ongoing infighting.

Following snap elections in September that year, Fico returned to power. Since then, Fico and his government have mainly focused on influencing the judiciary according to their political agenda, stopping corruption trials and silencing independent media.

Fico transformed from a social democrat into a right-wing nationalist many years ago. Today, he likes to rail against the EU, liberalism, “LGBTQ ideology” and what he says are those who oppose “traditional” values. He is pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian, and calls his opponents traitors.

Fico also heaps scorn on critical journalists whom he lambasts as hyenas, idiots and “anti-Slovak prostitutes.”

Speaking on Wednesday after the shooting, President Caputova warned that “this hateful rhetoric we are experiencing is leading to hateful acts — please, let’s stop that!”

State kidnapping

It is, however, doubtful whether anyone is heeding her warning. Immediately following Wednesday’s assassination attempt, government officials and members of Fico’s SMER party accused the opposition and critical journalists of having masterminded the attack.

Slovakian Defense Minister Robert Kalinak is among those who has been lashing out at independent journalists, and not without reason. Several years ago, independent Slovakian media uncovered his alleged involvement in a state kidnapping.

Serving as interior minister at the time, Kalinak is said to have helped get abducted Vietnamese businessman Trinh Xuan Thanh from Berlin to Vietnam via Bratislava. Kalinak reportedly made sure the man could be flown to Vietnam in July 2017 with a Slovakian government airplane thanks to forged documents.

Kalinak has long been a friend of Vietnam. On a visit to the Southeast Asian country in 2017, for example, Kalinak initiated cooperation between Slovakian and Vietnamese companies in the security and arms industry.

This article was originally written in German.

Although Europe hasn’t seen a major assassination attempt against a head of government in decades, the attack comes as the continent is experiencing growing violence against politicians.

Slovakia, which boasts a population of 5.4 million, is politically deeply divided and parties often use harsh rhetoric to berate each other.

Despite these divides, almost all of Fico’s opponents expressed their horror and shock at the assassination attempt.

Slovakia’s outgoing president, Zuzana Caputova, who received death threats during her time in office and decided not to run for a second term, said the the country’s political elite and public should renounce hatred and violence.

For now, it remains unclear what motivated the shooter Juraj C. (who DW is not naming in full in line with German laws) to carry out the attack.

According to Slovakian media, the 71-year-old had pursued an unsuccessful career as a writer and poet and reportedly belonged to a right-wing writers’ association. He had also apparently shared anti-migrant and anti-Roma content on social media in the past.

At the same time, he reportedly opposed Slovakia’s right-wing nationalist governing coalition headed by Fico. 

Slovakia’s Meciar era

Slovakia has a long history of political and criminal violence. As such, the attack can be seen as a product of this deeply polarized culture.

The Eastern European nation gained independence in 1993 after the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia.

At the time, under the leadership of Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar, Slovakia found itself at a crossroads, stuck between becoming an autocratic regime with close ties to organized crime or a state based on the rule of law. This era was marked by crimes in the economic realm also including privatizations, brutal mafia murders and attacks on opponents of the Meciar network.

The era reached a nadir when a 1995 power struggle between Meciar and then-President Michal Kovac led to the kidnapping of the president’s son by Slovakia’s secret service. Meciar is said to have masterminded the kidnapping, through no one was ever held responsible, as Meciar himself granted the perpetrators amnesty.

Murder of Jan Kuciak

Slovakia’s 2004 EU accession seemed to put an end to this era. It was also the time when Robert Fico’s political career began. Back then, Fico was a lawyer who made a name for himself as a social democrat fighting corruption and unbridled neoliberalism.

Yet after becoming prime minister for the first time in 2006, he too was soon accused of graft and involvement in the Penta Gorilla affair, Slovakia’s biggest post-communist corruption scandal involving shady businessmen influencing Slovakian politics.

In February 2018, when Fico was serving his second term as prime minister, journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova were murdered. Kuciak had been researching links between Slovakian politicians and organized crime.

Although Fico’s government had no direct involvement in the murders, Fico was forced to resign because Kuciak had uncovered links between his government and the Italian mafia, including through a Fico advisor and alleged lover. Businessman Marian Kocner, the man who reportedly ordered Kuciak’s killing, maintained close ties to members of the Slovakian government and senior officials in the state apparatus.

Slovakia’s lack of reforms

After the Fico era ended, Zuzana Caputova — a lawyer and anti-corruption activist — was elected president in 2019. A liberal-conservative coalition came to power the following year.

Yet hopes among ordinary Slovakians that the coalition would deliver far-reaching and lasting reforms were dashed with the governing alliance collapsing in 2023 due to ongoing infighting.

Following snap elections in September that year, Fico returned to power. Since then, Fico and his government have mainly focused on influencing the judiciary according to their political agenda, stopping corruption trials and silencing independent media.

Fico transformed from a social democrat into a right-wing nationalist many years ago. Today, he likes to rail against the EU, liberalism, “LGBTQ ideology” and what he says are those who oppose “traditional” values. He is pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian, and calls his opponents traitors.

Fico also heaps scorn on critical journalists whom he lambasts as hyenas, idiots and “anti-Slovak prostitutes.”

Speaking on Wednesday after the shooting, President Caputova warned that “this hateful rhetoric we are experiencing is leading to hateful acts — please, let’s stop that!”

State kidnapping

It is, however, doubtful whether anyone is heeding her warning. Immediately following Wednesday’s assassination attempt, government officials and members of Fico’s SMER party accused the opposition and critical journalists of having masterminded the attack.

Slovakian Defense Minister Robert Kalinak is among those who has been lashing out at independent journalists, and not without reason. Several years ago, independent Slovakian media uncovered his alleged involvement in a state kidnapping.

Serving as interior minister at the time, Kalinak is said to have helped get abducted Vietnamese businessman Trinh Xuan Thanh from Berlin to Vietnam via Bratislava. Kalinak reportedly made sure the man could be flown to Vietnam in July 2017 with a Slovakian government airplane thanks to forged documents.

Kalinak has long been a friend of Vietnam. On a visit to the Southeast Asian country in 2017, for example, Kalinak initiated cooperation between Slovakian and Vietnamese companies in the security and arms industry.

This article was originally written in German.

Noémie Merlant’s star is rising as an actress. Baby Ruby and Tár won her international recognition across 2022 and 2023, while anticipation is growing around her starring role in Audrey Diwan’s English-language reboot of erotica classic Emmanuelle. In the meantime, Merlant is hitting Cannes with The Balconettes, her second film in the director’s chair after Mi iubita, mon amour. Set against a Marseille heatwave, the riotous comedy and gorefest co-stars Merlant alongside Souheila Yacoub and Sanda Codreanu as female flatmates who are pushed to the brink when a late-night drink with an attractive neighbor (played by Emily in Paris actor Lucas Bravo) takes a bloody turn.

DEADLINE: What was the inspiration for Les Balconettes?

NOÉMIE MERLANT: Four, five years ago I fled my home in a sort of escape from something that was suffocating me. I sought refuge with two girlfriends who were living together and stayed for several months. I’d never been so much myself, or so free. I’d always lived with a man and play-acted, not only because of the other person, but because of myself and what I thought society expected. I wasn’t playing the role that I wanted to play in my life. With my friends, I was free to be myself, even in terms of my body… There was a release. Their way of looking at things and listening was different. We talked about our relationship with sexism, misogyny and patriarchal oppression. This place became our cocoon, outside we didn’t feel the same freedom. That’s when I came up with the idea of ​​making a film where I would be among women in an apartment in an atmosphere of complete freedom, both in terms of our bodies and from oppression outside. 

DEADLINE: The underlying theme is violence against women. It’s a topic you’ve been outspoken about in the past. Why do you feel so strongly about it?

MERLANT: I had my first brush with violence when I’d just started modeling. I had a traumatic experience with a photographer. I was 17 years old and had just left home and moved to Paris. It felt as if, straight away, I was being told, “There you go, you’re a woman, you’re entering the adult world. This is how it’s going to be.” Like many women, I’ve suffered microaggressions, major aggressions, and even physical violence with one partner, who I managed to leave. I needed to talk about these experiences, and then I did my own investigation. I’ve met quite a few men who have been victims of men too, although I don’t talk about it in the film. I wanted to, but I had to cut it to tighten up the story. 

DEADLINE: Yet, the tone of the film is very comedic, farcical… there are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments there. 

MERLANT: When we talk, what helps me, my friends, to escape from past trauma is humor, the absurd. It’s a way of keeping our heads above water. I also wanted there to be vulgarity. There’s something in vulgarity that is very true, very sincere, and intimate. It’s something that is not often shown or associated with women. I wanted to give my characters permission to be vulgar. Humor is also a way of reappropriating our stories. Allowing yourself to make fun of your attackers is a very powerful weapon. It was important to keep the absurd and comical tone… It wasn’t always easy to achieve this balance, but it was of vital importance for me with this film.

DEADLINE: You play with genres in the film. Where does that come from?

MERLANT: I knew I wanted there to be gore. I had this idea of two parts: initially, it feels like a nice little comedy between women, but then it shifts into horror and fantasy. I grew up watching Korean and Japanese films, which mix humor, the absurd and horror. Those were the only films I watched with my sister. Another reference is Vera Chytilová’s Daisies.

DEADLINE: Céline Sciamma, who you’ve been close to since co-starring alongside Adèle Haenel in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, takes a co-writer credit. How did that come about?

MERLANT: Above all, Céline is a friend, and she also changed my life in several ways. Firstly, Portrait changed my career, because it was a film that had international resonance. But beyond that, Céline changed my vision of how to work as an artist. She has a really collaborative approach to working, which I haven’t always experienced. Her methods are much more about sharing, and that you don’t need intimidation to get things out of actors, I’m sufficiently tough on myself. Céline talks about this in her interviews, but when you create a workspace without too much hierarchy, with real respect and kindness, in which everyone can contribute, that is where there are many more surprises and creative outcomes. She also changed my way of thinking about the female gaze, female desire. It was after Portrait that I left everything and ran away to my friends.

DEADLINE: How did Sciamma contribute?

MERLANT: At first, I was writing alone. I didn’t dare ask her. I didn’t want to encroach on our friendship. But Céline asked to read it and came back saying she loved it. She agreed it was a story that needs to be told with humor and told me she was there for me and would do all she could to help me, from helping secure the finance, to writing. 

DEADLINE: How did you find it, mixing acting and directing? 

MERLANT: There were advantages and disadvantages. We saved and lost time. I couldn’t watch the scenes in which I was playing on the monitor, so we wasted some time there, but then, I knew my character by heart, so I knew exactly what I had to do in each scene. That was a time-saver because I didn’t have to explain what I wanted to achieve to another actor. Sanda Codreanu who plays Nicole, is my friend in real life, which made everything very fluid in terms of playing the friendship. My sense of comedy was born with Sanda. She is very, very funny. She was always there with me on set. She and my cinematographer Evgenia Alexandrova were my safeguards. Céline was also there during filming. Not all the time, but she came on set several times. 

DEADLINE: Another aspect of the film is the liberated way in which you show the female body, with Souheila Yacoub’s character Ruby topless for most of the film and your character also stripping off. 

MERLANT: I just wanted to be free with our bodies. Ruby simply wants to be bare-chested like a man. It’s funny, because when we shot the film, it was in the middle of a heatwave — it was 40 degrees — and a woman was stopped in the street because she was walking around bare-chested, while all around her there were men walking around shirtless. I can’t understand the difference between a woman’s nipple and a man’s nipple. When I look at the body, I don’t sexualize it. I wanted there to be a complete sense of freedom, liberation, showing everything from farting to cellulite. I wanted this sense of these women not having to meet expectations, away from the male gaze and society.

DEADLINE: The Balconettes very much taps into the zeitgeist in France, which is seeing a fresh #MeToo moment sparked by actress Judith Godrèche’s campaign against sexual assault and harassment in the French film industry. France has been here before, when Adèle Haenel made #MeToo allegations in 2020 but didn’t get much support. Are things changing?

MERLANT: That was terrible. Nobody supported Adèle. Well, nearly nobody. There were people who wanted to but didn’t dare. They were scared. I hope things are changing. There’s still a lot of resistance and denial, but we’re seeing more and more women, and men, speaking up. A space is being created but we need to take care to preserve and make it bigger. I am trying to be optimistic, but you never know, backlashes often follow around the corner, I hope we’re going in the right direction. 

DEADLINE: We were also expecting to see you in Cannes with Audrey Diwan’s Emmanuelle. Where is that film? Can you talk about it?

MERLANT: I’ve just seen it, an unfinished version. I think people’s expectations are linked to the 1973 film, but it has nothing to with it. She has reappropriated the character of Emmanuelle, and it’s even as if the character of Emmanuelle has reappropriated herself. We’re with a woman who is cut from her pleasure, from her desire. There are interesting resonances with my film — even though they’re not at all the same — in this quest to free herself from something and reclaim her body, to reconnect with her desire as a woman. It’s done with ultra-elegant eroticism, and Audrey’s eye is so sensual. This film is a powerful journey. I came out of it with a real desire to live.

CANNES, France — CANNES, France (AP) — Francis Ford Coppola on Thursday premiered his self-financed opus “Megalopolis” at the Cannes Film Festival, unveiling a wildly ambitious passion project the 85-year-old director has been pondering for decades.

Reviews ranged from “a folly of gargantuan proportions” to “the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.” But most assuredly, once again, Coppola had everyone in Cannes talking.

No debut this year was awaited with more curiosity in Cannes than “Megalopolis,” which Coppola poured $120 million of his own money into after selling off a portion of his wine estate. Not unlike Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” some 45 years ago, “Megalopolis” arrived trailed by rumors of production turmoil and doubt over its potential appeal.

What Coppola unveiled defies easy categorization. It’s a fable set in a futuristic New York about an architect (Adam Driver) who has a grand vision of a more harmonious metropolis, and whose considerable talents include the ability to start and stop time. Though “Megalopolis” is set in a near-future, it’s fashioned as a Roman epic. Driver’s character is named Cesar and the film’s New York includes a modern Coliseum.

The cast includes Aubrey Plaza as an ambitious TV journalist named Wow Platinum, Giancarlo Esposito as the mayor, Laurence Fishburne as Cesar’s driver (and the film’s narrator) and Shia LaBeouf as an unpleasant cousin named Claudio.

Coppola, wearing a straw hat and holding a cane, walked the Cannes carpet Thursday, often clinging to the arm of his granddaughter, Romy Coppola Mars, while the soundtrack to “The Godfather” played over festival loudspeakers.

After the screening, the Cannes audience stood in a lengthy ovation for Coppola and the film. The director eventually took the microphone to emphasize his movie’s ultimate meaning.

“We are one human family and that’s who we should pledge our allegiance to,” Coppola told the crowd. He added that Esperanza is “the most beautiful word in the English language” because it means hope.

Many reviews were blisteringly bad. Peter Bradshaw for The Guardian called it “megabloated and megaboring.” Tim Grierson for Screen Daily called it a “disaster” “stymied by arbitrary plotting and numbing excess.” Kevin Maher for the Times of London wrote that it’s a “head-wrecking abomination.” Critic Jessica Kiang said “Megalopolis” “is a folly of such gargantuan proportions it’s like observing the actual fall of Rome.”

But some critics responded with admiration for the film’s ambition. With fondness, New York Magazine’s Bilge Ebiri said the film “might be the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.” David Ehrlich for IndieWire praised a “creatively unbound approach” that “may not have resulted in a surplus of dramatically coherent scenes, but it undergirds the entire movie with a looseness that makes it almost impossible to look away.”

“Is it a distancing work of hubris, a gigantic folly, or a bold experiment, an imaginative bid to capture our chaotic contemporary reality, both political and social, via the kind of large-canvas, high-concept storytelling that’s seldom attempted anymore?” wrote David Rooney for The Hollywood Reporter. “The truth is it’s all those things.”

“Megalopolis” is dedicated to Eleanor Coppola, the director’s wife who died last month.

Coppola is seeking a distributor for “Megalopolis.” Ahead of its premiere, the film was acquired for some European territories. Richard Gelfond, IMAX’s chief executive, said “Megalopolis” — which Coppola believes is best viewed on IMAX — will play globally on the company’s large-format screens.

In numerous places in “Megalopolis,” Coppola, who once penned the book “Live Cinema and its Techniques,” experimentally pushes against filmmaking convention. At a screening Thursday, a man emerged mid-film, walked across the stage to a microphone and posed a question to Driver’s character on the screen above.

Several weeks ahead of Cannes, Coppola privately screened “Megalopolis” in Los Angeles. Word quickly filtered out that many were befuddled by the experimental film they had just watched. “There are zero commercial prospects and good for him,” one attendee told Puck.

French police killed an armed in individual who intended to set a synagogue in the northern city of Rouen ablaze, France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Friday.

“National police in Rouen neutralized early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Darmanin said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

What do we know about the attack on the synagogue?

The Franceinfo broadcaster reported police were called to the scene early on Friday because smoke was billowing form the synagogue.

Local authorities that the man approached police armed with a knife and a crowbar.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol said on X.

He said that there were no victims besides the attacker.

Rouen prosecutors said that they had opened investigations into the fire at the synagogue, as well as a separate probe into the circumstances of the death of the man killed by police.

France recently raised its alert status to its highest level.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, who heads the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, said in a post on X.

France has the largest Jewish community in Europe.

The country has seen an increase in anti-Semitic incidents since the start of the war between Israel and the Hamas militant Islamist group on October 7.

Earlier this week, red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial, an act described by President Emmanuel Macron as “odious anti-Semitism.”

This is a developing news story and will be updated.

sdi/ab (AFP, Reuters)

French police killed an armed in individual who intended to set a synagogue in the northern city of Rouen ablaze, France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Friday.

“National police in Rouen neutralized early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Darmanin said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.Local authorities that the man approached police armed with a knife and a crowbar.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol said on X.

He said that there were no victims besides the attacker.

France recently raised its alert status to its highest level.

Rouen prosecutors said that they had opened investigations into the fire at the synagogue, as well as a separate probe into the circumstances of the death of the man killed by police.

This is a developing news story and will be updated.

sdi/ab (AFP, Reuters)

French police killed an armed in individual who intended to set a synagogue in the northern city of Rouen ablaze, France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Friday.

“National police in Rouen neutralized early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Darmanin said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Local media reported that the man approached police armed with a knife.

This is a developing news story and will be updated.

sdi/ab (AFP, Reuters)

French police killed an armed in individual who intended to set a synagogue in the northern city of Rouen ablaze, France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Friday.

“National police in Rouen neutralized early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Darmanin said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Local media reported that the man approached police armed with a knife.

This is a developing news story and will be updated.

sdi/ab (AFP, Reuters)

French police killed an armed in individual who intended to set a synagogue in the northern city of Rouen ablaze, France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Friday.

“National police in Rouen neutralized early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Darmanin said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

This is a developing news story and will be updated.

sdi/ab (AFP, Reuters)