Keyword – Film
Trefwoorden – Film, Horror films, Culture, World news, Sexuality
Title – Shadows of Willow Cabin review – secrets fester beneath horny hookup in low budget horror | Film | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/philhoad
Link – Shadows of Willow Cabin review – secrets fester beneath horny hookup in low budget horror | Film | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-22T08:00:50.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/22/shadows-of-willow-cabin-review

T he best elevated horror makes a metaphor out of its writhing emotional subtext, but writer-director Joe Fria sadly can’t make the leap in this low-budget debut that undoubtedly has issues on its mind: repressed homosexuality, compulsive hookups and generational trauma. For much of the film the horror elements abruptly waylay what is otherwise a fraught two-handed gay drama.

After meeting on the apps, middle-aged English teacher Albert (Bryan Bellomo) and lithe paramedic Devon (John Brodsky) are finally getting cosy at Willow Cabin – the former’s childhood summer getaway, named for a line in Twelfth Night. But secrets fester beneath this ostensibly horny hookup. In Albert’s case, he has a wife and son – and this spot, which once belonged to his uncle, is where he first explored the other side of his sexuality, with his cousin. As for Devon, Albert is the latest in a long line of unfulfilling liaisons with married men, thanks to the emotional damage inflicted by his abusive dad. While both of them are candid to a point, the sporadic phantom eruptions inside the cabin suggest they’ve not got everything out of their systems.

Painstakingly seeping out in 114 minutes full of circuitous and sometimes cheesy dialogue, Shadows of Willow Cabin if nothing else feels highly personal. But Fria takes too long to move beyond pantomime gothic and find a deeper rooting for what verges on a compelling saga of familial shame and damage. And the claustrophobic bounds undeniably wring visual inventiveness out of Fria: he lights interiors to match the mood, giving them a pallid wash as the atmosphere sours. And on a couple of occasions, he breaks out the revolving shot Alfonso Cuarón used in Roma and lets the sound outside the shack do its work.

While Brodsky’s outbursts belong with the film’s erratic fright-night side, beyond the cultured exterior Bellomo has a pugnacious set to his jaw that lends substance to this would-be primer in escaping the binds of the past. A pity then that Fria couldn’t fully manifest his themes in a killer conceit – though a closet monster probably would have been pushing it.

Shadows of Willow Cabin is on digital platforms from 29 June.

Keyword – Opinion
Trefwoorden – Health policy, Smoking, Palau, United Nations, World news, Vaping, Health, Society, Tobacco industry
Title – The Guardian view on nicotine: we shouldn’t buy the idea of addiction without harm | Editorial | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/editorial
Link – The Guardian view on nicotine: we shouldn’t buy the idea of addiction without harm | Editorial | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T16:25:35.000Z
Category – Opinion
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/21/the-guardian-view-on-nicotine-we-shouldnt-buy-the-idea-of-addiction-without-harm

T he health case for banning cigarettes is ironclad. As the then head of the World Health Organization, Gro Harlem Brundtland, put it in 2000, “a cigarette is the only consumer product which when used as directed kills its consumer”. Smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death worldwide. Many countries, including the UK, have taken strong measures to restrict and even ban cigarettes and other tobacco products. Over the past two decades, however, tobacco-free nicotine products such as vapes and nicotine pouches, which use a synthetic version of the addictive ingredient, have exploded in popularity .

Regulation has been slow. The nation of Palau has now tasked the WHO expert committee on drug dependence with reviewing nicotine , which will lead to a UN vote – likely to be in 2028 – on banning it worldwide. The case relies partly on deciding whether addiction and dependence themselves – in the absence of other major health consequences – are harmful. There is certainly an argument for that, and smoking taught us that it is often better to stamp out highly addictive habits if consequences may become obvious later. But there is also reason for caution.

Nicotine products have some benefits. There are still 1.2 billion smokers worldwide, and people who switch to vaping are twice as likely to quit smoking, according to a recent Cochrane review . Palau’s submission includes some data linking nicotine to cardiovascular disease and other health conditions. But a recent Royal College of Physicians report in the UK found that “current evidence suggests nicotine itself confers little risk to health”.

However, regulators cannot make decisions on the current science alone. Reading between the lines of Palau’s submission, there is obvious frustration with the way that the market for nicotine products sprang up rapidly in a regulatory grey area, and targeted children specifically. A WHO report found that children on average are nine times more likely than adults to vape. Some e-cigarettes contain harmful ingredients like heavy metals, and nicotine is proven to be harmful to adolescent brain development. This experience is common worldwide. The UK did not have vape-specific legislation until 2016: the previous law covered tobacco only. It is understandable that countries do not want to continue this game of regulatory Whac-A-Mole, separately evaluating every highly addictive new product only after it takes hold with the public. Banning nicotine would cut this problem off at the source.

There is a middle ground. The UK smoking ban coming into effect next year will also restrict e-cigarette displays and advertising, and leaves room to restrict child-friendly flavours. Ministers should go further. The Canadian province of Quebec has fully banned flavoured vapes and limits the sale of nicotine pouches to pharmacies. Those sorts of restrictions should apply to all forms of nicotine to head off novel forms that flout existing regulation, while still allowing suffering smokers and consenting adults limited access.

Synthetic nicotine – freed of the carcinogens in tobacco – is a fascinating case, seeming to offer addiction without other obvious harm. But there is no clear benefit to allowing nicotine to become widely available, the science on pure nicotine use is still limited and downstream products like vapes are not benign. Addictive substances are by definition difficult for individuals to control, which is why countries may need to manage them.

Keyword – Film
Trefwoorden – Steven Spielberg, Film, ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Empire of the Sun, Culture
Title – ‘Once my tummy stopped shaking, I was absorbed by the scale, spectacle and wonder’: your Steven Spielberg film favourites | Steven Spielberg | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/guardian-readers,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/alfie-packham
Link – ‘Once my tummy stopped shaking, I was absorbed by the scale, spectacle and wonder’: your Steven Spielberg film favourites | Steven Spielberg | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-20T12:00:02.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/20/readers-favourite-spielberg-films-close-encounters-et-raiders-hook

ET the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

ET is my favourite Spielberg film. It was the first I ever saw at the cinema, when I was eight years old, at Bolton Odeon in 1982. It was also the first film that made me cry – not just cry, but sob all the way home on the bus. I remember feeling completely confused by the fact that I was so happy and yet so sad at the same time. I watched the film with my mum and some of her friends from the Gingerbread Club, a single parents’ organisation that arranged social events and outings, mainly for single mothers. At a time when there was still a stigma attached to being a single parent, it provided a sense of community and support.

Looking back, I think part of the reason I connected so strongly with ET was that it featured a single mum rather than the perfect nuclear family that dominated so many films and TV programmes of the time. It felt much closer to my own reality, and that made me love the film even more. That Christmas, my favourite present was an ET doll with a light-up stomach and glowing fingertip. I adored it. More than 40 years later, I still love the film dearly and never hesitate when someone asks me what my favourite film is. Even now, hearing a few notes of John Williams’s score is enough to bring tears to my eyes within seconds. Andrea, 51, Manchester, UK

Hook (1991)

Universally touted as a Spielberg flop. So much so, that even Spielberg himself started to regret ever making the film. All of this is inconsequential to its meaning for me as a child of the 90s. The film is a trusted comfort. I can quote all the dialogue, and even use phrases from it in my day-to-day life. The casting, the effervescently sad Robin Williams as the boy who accidentally grew up, the lawyer jokes, the warm haze that permeates the film. I remember it being played on free-to-air many times as a child and having my own – pardon the pun – pirated copy. I returned to this film often as a child, and still return to it at least once a year now, when a dose of nostalgia is needed. So despite Spielberg’s protestations, it is my favourite of his oeuvre for many selfish reasons. Rhea, Melbourne, Australia

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind will always be the Spielberg movie that means the most to me, as much for the circumstances that led to me seeing it as the wonderful film itself. I was five years of age and my mum decided to take my sister and I to see a movie double bill at a cinema in nearby Chester. From memory, the films we were meant to see were a Spider-Man movie that was actually made for TV, and a much older, Ray Harryhausen-animated, Sinbad film. Long story short, my dad dropped us at the wrong cinema, on the opposite side of town, and my mum decided we should see whatever was showing there rather than venturing through an increasingly dark, wet evening.

The only “suitable” movie was Close Encounters, although my mum said numerous times before buying the tickets that she was worried I might find it scary. Needless to say, her saying that made me feel very nervous indeed! Up until that point, my only issue with seeing a movie with the words “of the Third Kind” in the title was that I hadn’t seen the first two films (I was similarly confused when the crawling text at the beginning of the original Star Wars movie referred to it as “Episode IV”).

Anyway, I sat in the cinema next to my mum, quaking like crazy at this scary movie she was making me watch. But not for long! About 15 minutes in, I famously announced that my tummy had stopped shaking and from that point on I was utterly absorbed by this film of such mindblowing scale, spectacle and wonder. I vividly remember going to bed that night and asking my mum to leave the curtains open so I could see the stars. Spielberg’s genius had opened my very young mind and made it suddenly more curious as to what magic there might be out there. More importantly, I wasn’t afraid to look for it. Scott Harrison, 54, north Wales, UK

Always (1989)

Always, starring Holly Hunter, Richard Dreyfuss and John Goodman, is my feelgood movie. Funny, heartbreakingly sad, great action and classic dialogue: “Girl clothes!” Holly and Richard at their peak, their chemistry was excellent and that they are not your typical Hollywood handsome made you love them more. I have to watch this film every couple of years and I always laugh and always messy-cry and it never fails to reaffirm my faith in people. Spielberg made the perfect love story, but its joy is so often overshadowed by his summer blockbusters. Karen Cusick, 61, Devon

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Raiders, for its propulsive energy and giddy excitement as Indiana Jones cracks his whip through a booby-trapped temple in the South American jungle. Also choosing Nazis as the villains (and snakes!) was a masterstroke that helps keep the plot itself timeless. Steven Spielberg tips his fedora to the cliffhanger serials of the 1930s and the Tintin stories to bring us the adventure of a lifetime!

Spielberg’s name translates as “play mountain” in German and he brings that playfulness to the screen from the opening shot of the Paramount logo transitioning into a mountaintop in the Peruvian jungle as Indy searches for hidden treasures, before getting caught in snowbound Himalayan bar fights, foot chases through Cairo and an exhilarating truck chase through the desert. As you catch your breath, the chemistry between Indy and Marion has the alchemy of a 1930s screwball comedy. Niall Laverty, Dublin, Ireland

Empire of the Sun (1987)

For me, it is Empire of the Sun . It was one of the first major Hollywood productions allowed to film in communist China, in Shanghai. It is also faithful to JG Ballard’s excellent book. In fact, I can’t read the book now without seeing young Christian Bale as Jamie/Jim. The imagery is extraordinary, the acting feels real, and John Williams’s score is beautiful. The opening scene, with coffins floating down the Yangtze as Suo Gân plays in the background, hooked me immediately. I think I first saw it in year 11, towards the end of term, when our history teachers played it for us.

I already loved history, so the setting was the perfect recipe for me. But what really stayed with me was Jim himself. I was only a few years older than him at the time, and I remember wondering how I would have coped in his situation: separated from his parents, forced to fend for himself and having to grow up amid some awful scenes. I didn’t much like the conclusion I came to. There are scenes I still think about: the young Japanese pilot, the “difficult boy” scene, the atom bomb, and that extraordinary “Cadillac of the skies” moment. War might be the backdrop, but I don’t see it as a film about war. It is about imagination, resilience, choices and consequences. That is why it has stayed with me. Matthew Vandermeer, 50, Brisbane, Australia

The Fabelmans (2022)

I’m a high-school English and film studies teacher. I’m 49 – just a few months older than Close Encounters. The Fabelmans is my favourite film of all time, and is the capstone film we watch to finish my film studies class at Appleton West High School. In it, Spielberg explicitly tells the story of his own childhood and adolescence and his family’s influence on him becoming a film-maker, but he also uses that story to reveal the “how” and the “why” of a lifetime influencing the emotions of his audiences.

Watching The Fabelmans for the first time is an almost religious experience for Spielberg fans around my age. It’s a meditation on growing up with the movies and a sincere attempt to show the next generation of film-makers and enthusiasts all they need to take up the mantle themselves. For fans of Spielberg and the rest of the “New Hollywood” visionaries, there is no better (or more accessible) film to demonstrate how the movies that move us are built on foundations of both science and art, how Spielberg is an absolute master of both, and how his parents’ influence in those polar-opposite arenas made him (and us!) capable of dreaming so vividly on screen.

The Fabelmans also features the most joyous final shot you’ll see in a movie. It made me leap out of my seat in 2022 the same way I did as a kindergartener when ET’s heart started glowing again 40 years prior. The whole film is an elaborate magic trick, and nothing is spoiled when Hollywood’s master emotional illusionist reveals his – and his family’s – biggest secrets. Nathan Ossmann, Appleton, Wisconsin, US

The Color Purple (1985)

The Color Purple tells the stories of sisters separated and of women who help each other through hard times and characters who grow and mature. It shows the downtrodden rising, features fantastic singing and love lasting through decades of separation. The Color Purple is Spielberg’s best film because it shows the strength of women to overcome their circumstances when they support each other. It also has an amazing soundtrack of gospel and jazz and blues. The scene that sticks in my mind is Shug singing gospel demanding her father forgive and accept her. Mandy Purcell, 54, Melbourne, Australia

Duel (1971)

I first read Duel as a very enjoyable short story in Playboy magazine early 1970s. I was elated to learn it had been made into a film and first saw it on UK Channel 4 TV. Now have it as a DVD, regularly watch it, pleased that the lead is played by Dennis Weaver whom I recall from 1950s TV as Chester in Gunsmoke, an American western series. I am mesmerised by the way Spielberg captures the menace of the anonymous driver in the equally anonymous, oversized, unmarked, rust-brown truck, repeating the same conceit – the truck appearing from nowhere to intimidate, bumper to bumper. It’s a one-trick pony but Spielberg makes it fresh every time the bullying takes place. And the ending. Literally a cliffhanger, as an intimidated car driver abandons his vehicle at a cliff’s edge while the truck follows, over the edge and to oblivion. Very clever for a directorial debut. Mike Abbott, 83, London, UK

Keyword – Books
Trefwoorden – Books, Science fiction books, Culture, Fiction
Title – M John Harrison: ‘If we met a real alien we’d have no clue what they thought’ | Books | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/chrispower
Link – M John Harrison: ‘If we met a real alien we’d have no clue what they thought’ | Books | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T11:00:29.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/21/m-john-harrison-if-we-met-a-real-alien-wed-have-no-clue-what-they-thought

T hree years ago, in a greasy spoon on the fringes of the City of London, M John Harrison – Mike to his friends – told me about the novel he was working on. Rather than describing its plot or characters, he spoke purely about the challenge the book presented to him as a writer. With this one, he said, he wanted to push things as far as they could go.

Now that book, The End of Everything – his 13th novel – is about to be published. It describes a disintegrating Britain in which the iGhetti – monstrously sized, extremely powerful and strange lifeforms that look like powdery, slow-motion explosions – rule the country and possibly the world. Or do they? In its unwillingness to divulge any more than its characters know, which isn’t much, the novel is more alien evasion than invasion.

No one knows where the iGhetti came from. Maybe the astral plane, or “out of the internet”. Their purpose is similarly obscure. What remains of the authorities treat them as hostile, sending ineffectual waves of bombers and attack helicopters, but the incomers might equally well be engaging in “spiritual tourism and gentrification” as in colonisation. “If we were to meet a real alien,” Harrison says, sitting on the sunny terrace of a riverside pub in Barnes, south-west London, where he used to live, “we would have no clue whatsoever what they quote ‘thought’, or why they did anything, or if they thought they were doing something.” Science fiction often pays lip service to that idea, he says, but “never passes that feeling on to the reader”.

Harrison is a slim, nimble 80-year-old, his full beard and long hair glowingly white. His skin has the nutty tone – unusual in writers – of someone who has spent plenty of their life outdoors. The planes of his face look austere in photographs but in person he is often laughing, and the eagerness with which he talks about meeting the demands of the new book underlines how much he’s enjoying himself.

This wasn’t always the case. In 1998, a year after Harrison published the bleak toxic waste-themed dystopia Signs of Life, Iain Banks took him out for a night of drinking in Soho with the aim of persuading him to return to the purer sci-fi realms where his career began. “I always keep in mind what Iain said to me,” Harrison admits, “which is that I don’t have enough fun on the page. That was hurtful.” The next day, he started writing the notes for Light, the first volume in his Kefahuchi Tract trilogy. Not the space opera Banks suggested but a parody of one, because nothing with Harrison is straightforward. “Nothing at all,” he happily agrees.

Harrison was born in Rugby, Warwickshire, in 1945. He had a difficult relationship with his father, an engineer, who died when Harrison was 13. He truanted a lot from school, spending part of each day in the local library. “The great thing about libraries then was there weren’t so many dust jackets about,” he tells me. “I would pick a book up, read the first two pages, think, ‘Oh wow, that’s weird’, and it would turn out to be a Robbe-Grillet, and it would open a door to the anti-novel. Or it would be Ballard, or another sci-fi book. You never knew what you were going to get.”

When Harrison began writing as a teenager in the 1950s, the genres of fantasy and sci-fi were supported by numerous monthly magazines. In 1966, one of them accepted a story of his. He moved to London and began writing obsessively through the night. He met Michael Moorcock, then the editor of New Worlds magazine, and became a regular contributor. “I had to be in New Worlds,” he says, “because it was Ballard’s main medium for short stories at that time. It was at the height of my interest in him as a kind of combination of a surrealist and an imagist. Especially in the short story form. And I wanted to be that. I really wanted to be that.”

On his blog, Harrison has described The End of Everything as the kind of book that might have been serialised in New Worlds circa 1967. I’m not so sure they would have accepted it. “I think it might have been too much even for them,” he agrees. “I wanted it to have the flavour of the novel that I would have submitted then if I’d had any technique, skill or talent, a book that on the surface looks like sci-fi but then, as you read it, gets depthier and depthier. That was what I wanted. My heroes could do that. And now, 60 years later, so can I.”

He laughs as he says this, but it’s taken Harrison a long time to arrive at a place where he’s happy both with his work and its reception. The 1970s saw him strain against the genre conventions of sci-fi and fantasy, which he tried to undermine in The Centauri Device (a book he now disparages) and his Viriconium sequence. A breakthrough occurred when he resolved to write a short story without allowing himself to plan it out beforehand or keep notes. The New Rays is “about Katherine Mansfield. And it’s for Katherine Mansfield.” He admired what she and Virginia Woolf had done with fragmented narrative back in the 1910s and 20s (Eliot’s The Waste Land was also formational) but didn’t know how to approach that way of working himself. “The only techniques I had were almost exactly opposite to what I needed. They were the techniques of genre fiction: making a narrative, making a synopsis, following the synopsis, making the causalities plain, following the causalities. And none of that would do.”

By the time The New Rays was published in 1982, Harrison had left London for “the boondocks outside Huddersfield” to pursue an obsessive interest in rock climbing. The next two decades, which saw the publication of the novels Climbers (1989), The Course of the Heart (1992) and Signs of Life (1997), were the most intensely creative of his life. “I let it take over,” he says now of writing. “And I produced, as a result, several short stories and three novels that had real depth and density of observation, and a deep, dense sense of place.”

This is an understatement when it comes to Climbers, which isn’t just one of Harrison’s masterpieces but one of the best English novels of the last 50 years. The book follows a group of climbing junkies around the Peak District, men and women who, like many of Harrison’s protagonists, are out of joint with the wider world. It is still criminally obscure despite the loud enthusiasm of, among others, Robert Macfarlane and Olivia Laing.

As we quit one pub for another, walking through the quiet Barnes streets, Harrison recalls the moment the book became possible. Leaving a quarry outside Sheffield at sundown one day, “I noticed that the way the sun related to the jagged top of the quarry, from my viewpoint, meant the shadows looked like the turned-down pages of a book. I stopped and scribbled that in one of my notebooks. I suddenly thought, I can do this. I’m the person to do this. It was really weird. What had stopped me from writing fiction about my own experience, or even nonfiction, was that I didn’t really feel I was the person to do it. I didn’t feel I had the authority. And then I wrote that sentence down, looked at it and thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ It was amazing,” he says, still sounding as surprised as he was in that shadowed Yorkshire quarry decades ago. “You hunt for that your whole life.”

Harrison, “utterly determined to stop apologising for not being an SF writer”, now began producing work he fully believed in. But he had – and still has – an uneasy relationship with his creativity. “It was like discovering a different voice inside you,” he explains. “And it was better than me. I’m going to tell you this,” he says, lowering his voice as if this other presence might hear us. “He knows more than I do, he’s more mature than I am, he’s a better writer than I am, and he has very considerable contempt for me. But every so often he’ll look at something and think, yeah, that’s OK, and he’ll step in and take over and produce something like Climbers.”

At times, Harrison says, he feels he is the impostor. “There are two of us and one of us knows he’s the real me, and it isn’t me.” Then, thankfully, he laughs, dispelling the eerie sense of having slipped into one of his own fictions, where terrible things are revealed in the most pedestrian surroundings: a Pizza Express, a drab provincial courtroom, or a pub in Barnes after the lunchtime rush.

Having moved back to London after realising he was too old to continue climbing (and perhaps because some in that community “were offended by the clarity of the portrait”), in 2012 Harrison found himself suddenly overcome with anger at a publishing party in Covent Garden. “I got outside,” he says, “and the rain was pissing down and I flashed back to 1968: same street, same rain, same sense of failure, same sense of not getting on with the industry.” He remembers thinking: “I’ve wasted 30 years of my life in London and I’m no further forward. I’ve learned all this stuff and I can do all these things and it’s still not been recognised.” The solution, he thought, was to “be even more uncompromising in the provinces”.

He moved to Shropshire with his partner, the editor and writer Cath Phillips, and started to write The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. That book won the Goldsmiths prize in 2020. Frances Wilson, the chair of judges (of which I was one), called it “a literary masterpiece”. Harrison remembers the ceremony, an online affair due to Covid restrictions. “I felt so relieved. I had a drink or two and fell asleep. I relaxed for the first time in about 40 years. I thought: ‘I won a proper prize. I can go to sleep now.’”

The work of most writers who publish into their 70s and 80s tends to decline in quality. With Sunken Land and The End of Everything, and his “anti-memoir” Wish I Was Here, Harrison has produced some of his best work. One reason climbing was such a perfect subject is that he is motivated by problems, and climbers view a rock face as a sequence of problems.

The problem presented by The End of Everything, the one he talked about in that greasy spoon in 2023, was how to leave so much out while still exploring how “human beings are working with broken epistemologies to try and understand the world that we’ve made. The enigmas of reality,” he explains, “as in, say, quantum mechanics, aren’t the real mysteries any more. The real mysteries are what the fuck we’ve done to the world, why we did it, and what epistemology we used to perform this act of vandalism.”

Conveying bafflement without sacrificing readability is Harrison’s recurring problem, one he’s faced “for 30 or 40 years. You’ve got to be so careful with explanation,” he says, sounding almost pained. “If you help the reader too much, you lose that inexplicability. You’ve got to commit.” The End of Everything is the result of that commitment, thrilling to experience because, not in spite of, its resistance to disclosure.

The book is dizzying in its invention – not only in Harrison’s creation of a post-invasion world of semi-abandoned seaside towns, crashed airliners and repurposed polytunnels, but also at the granular level of moments you want to return to, sometimes for the sake of comprehension, sometimes just to re-experience their strange power: the “clean arch of brand new stars” revealed after the iGhetti’s arrival; the “rich surf of objects” – alien detritus – his characters scavenge from the sea. It is also a continuation of that late-night Soho conversation from nearly 30 years ago. “I thought: OK, here you go, Iain,” says Harrison. “I’m having fun but I’m also gonna commit. This is gonna be the one that is written without any compromise.”

And if the title sounds ominously final, we shouldn’t read into it. “I’ve got two or three short stories which,” he says with relish, “are being very intractable.” On to the next problem then? He laughs. “Yeah, what’s the next problem? What impossible thing can I try and do now?”

The End of Everything by M John Harrison is published by Serpent’s Tail. To support the Guardian order your copy from guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

Keyword – Politics
Trefwoorden – Politics, UK news, Keir Starmer, Labour party leadership, Andy Burnham, Labour, House of Commons
Title – Starmer announces resignation as prime minister and leader of the Labour party – UK politics live | Politics | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/andrewsparrow,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/benquinn,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jessica-elgot,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/peterwalker
Link – Starmer announces resignation as prime minister and leader of the Labour party – UK politics live | Politics | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-22T09:15:58.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/jun/22/keir-starmer-resignation-timeable-andy-burnham-labour-leadership-prime-minister-latest-news-updates

Starmer says he accepts ‘with good grace’ that he is not best person to lead Labour into next election

Starmer says he accepts the decision he has to go with good grace.

The question being asked now is not who was best placed to change the Labour party, to take us into power and to begin the vital work of improving lives for millions of people. Those questions have been answered.

The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election.

I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace.

Every decision I’ve taken has been about putting the country I love first. That is why I will resign as leader of the Labour party.

I have spoken to His Majesty the King this morning to inform him of my decision.

Jessica Elgot points out that, if Andy Burnham does become PM around 17 July (see 10.04am ), Keir Starmer will attend the Nato summit – but Burnham would be in post for the UK-EU summit.

Two very big dates around this period:

– 7th July is Nato summit which Starmer looks likely to attend – and by which we need the Defence Investment Plan

– 22 July is the EU reset summit in Brussels. Will this be PM Andy Burnham?

Farage calls for general election

Ben Quinn is a Guardian political correspondent.

The Conservatives may not be arguing that having a new PM requires an election (see 7.52am ) but Nigel Farage has called for an election. He claims that it is “ridiculous to pretend that Andy Burnham has any kind of meaningful mandate to lead the country.” The Reform UK leader, who is himself licking his wounds after his party was beaten in last week’s Makerfield by-election, referred to that result in an “essay to Britain ” in which he said that Burnham now presumed to be prime minister “based on less than 25,000 votes”.

“I’m not frightened of Andy Burnham or any of the other Labour Party stooges,” wrote Faragm who claimed that the “uniparty” of Labour and Conservatives were frightened of Reform. He added:

That’s why they band together at every byelection to attempt to block us from victory, why they tried to cancel the local elections and why they’ll try their very hardest to hold off on a general election for as long as possible.

Andy Burnham has good reason to be afraid of us. Reform is the only party that listens to the desires of working people and offers them solutions, rather than flattery and patronisation.

How Burnham could become PM around 17 July

Jessica Elgot is the Guardian’s deputy political editor.

If there are no challengers then you can expect Andy Burnham to be prime minister on or around 17 July.

Keir Starmer said that Labour’s governing body – the national executive committee – will open nominations on 9 July and that the process will be concluded by the summer recess which is expected on 16 July.

Two members of NEC confirm to the Guardian that Burnham can be prime minister by the following day – 17 July – though it could be the following Monday when parliament is in recess.

If there is a contest, all bets are off – but Starmer said he expects that to conclude by September.

Here is video of Keir Starmer announcing his resignation.

What Starmer said about his achievements as PM

In his speech, just before he got to the passage where he announced his resignation, Keir Starmer talked about his achievements in government. Here is that passage.

And look at what we’ve achieved in just two years.

An economy that is stronger, going faster than our peers, wages rising faster than inflation in every single month since we came to power.

Investment secured, infrastructure being built, an end to austerity with the fastest fall in NHS waiting lists for 17 years, the biggest improvement in rights for workers and renters in a generation.

The biggest uplift in defence spending since the cold war.

Small boat crossings falling, asylum hotels closing, protecting young people from social media and half a million children being lifted out of poverty because of the choices that I made.

Our reputation in the world restored, with Britain once again standing up for decency, respect and the rule of law, securing trade deals, standing with Ukraine, standing up for our values and rebuilding our relationship with our allies in Europe.

Change promised by a Labour government. Change fought for by a Labour government. Change delivered by a Labour government.

In the end it was rapid and efficient, but nonetheless emotional.

The particular part of Downing Street where I was standing meant I was watching Keir Starmer directly in from of me but I could also see his cabinet and advisers – and his wife, Victoria – behind him. Many, particularly Victoria, were very obviously emotional as the soon-to-depart PM spoke.

The earlier part of the speech, where Starmer set out his achievements in office, was almost drowned out by Ode to Joy blasting from the vast speaker owned by the professional protester Steve Bray just outside the speech.

But suddenly – perhaps a kindly passer-by pulled out a lead – it went quiet. Starmer set out his plans to leave and how, and became emotional himself as he thanked his colleagues, then also Victoria and his two teenage children.

Anyone who has spoken to Starmer in private knows how much he talks about his family, and with such clear pride. They will be a comfort in the most difficult moment of his political career.

Starmer ends speech saying he will leave ‘biggest job in country’ to spend more time on ‘most important job’, as dad and husband

The end of Keir Starmer ’s speech was particularly moving, and he sounded close to tears at the end.

I will also give my successor my full and unequivocal support, knowing that they will inherit a Britain that is far stronger and fairer than the one I inherited two years ago, better prepared for the challenges ahead and better able to ensure the Labour party secures a second term in office.

I want to thank all of those friends and colleagues who have been at my side for these past six years or so for their incredible commitment, service and support.

I want to thank the brilliant No 10 staff and our country’s extraordinary civil service, who dedicate their lives to public service.

And when I leave the biggest job in the country, I shall spend more time on the most important job, being the best husband I can to my fantastic wife Vic, who has been a rock by my side through good times and bad, and being the best dad I can to my beautiful children who are my pride and my joy.

Thank you very much.

Starmer says new PM to take over mid July if Burnham unopposed, or by end of August if there’s election

Starmer sets out the timetable for his departure.

I will ask the national executive committee of the Labour party to set out a timetable, with nominations opening on the 9th of July and completed by the summer recess.

In the case of a contest, this will ensure a new leader is in place before parliament returns in September.

I will remain in post as prime minister until the contest is complete, and I will do everything I can to ensure an orderly handover of power.

The Commons summer recess is due to start on 16 July and so, if Andy Burnham is unopposed (as seems increasingly likely – despite Wes Streeting previously saying he would definitely stand as a candidate), he will become PM in the middle of next month.

If there is a contest, the new PM will be in post by the end of August. The Commons returns after the summer recess on 1 September.

Starmer says he accepts ‘with good grace’ that he is not best person to lead Labour into next election

Starmer says he accepts the decision he has to go with good grace.

The question being asked now is not who was best placed to change the Labour party, to take us into power and to begin the vital work of improving lives for millions of people. Those questions have been answered.

The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election.

I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace.

Every decision I’ve taken has been about putting the country I love first. That is why I will resign as leader of the Labour party.

I have spoken to His Majesty the King this morning to inform him of my decision.

Starmer confirms he is resigning

Starmer confirms he is resigning. He has spoken to the king, he says.

Starmer says he proved his critics wrong

Starmer says he proved his critics wrong.

We proved those people wrong because we changed our party, ripping out the poison of antisemitism, restoring trust on the economy, defence and national security, and becoming a party that once again stood proudly with, not against, our national flag.

The hard work of change was with a singular purpose, not power for power’s sake, but to change Britain for the better, to build a fairer country with dignity and respect, where everyone is seen, everyone is valued, wealth and opportunity for all, not just the privileged few.

Starmer says becoming PM two years ago proudest moment of his life

Starmer says walking up this street two years ago was the proudest moment of his life.

A new Labour government, the first in 14 years.

A page in our country’s history turned after years of disappointment and despair, the chance to change the lives of millions of people for the better.

That’s what I came into politics for.

The journey to that point was not easy.

Six years ago, I inherited a Labour party that was politically, financially and morally bankrupt.

I was told time and time again that my party was finished, that we were consigned to history, that a majority at the general election, let alone a landslide majority, was impossible.

Keir Starmer is coming out.

There is loud applause from his staff and supporters.

He looks miserable.

Keyword – Film
Trefwoorden – Film, Documentary films, Chile, Gold, Mining, Americas, Commodities, Culture, Environment, World news
Title – The Fabulous Gold Harvesting Machine review – scavenger’s story reveals a rich seam to mine | Film | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/phuong-le
Link – The Fabulous Gold Harvesting Machine review – scavenger’s story reveals a rich seam to mine | Film | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-22T06:00:53.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/22/the-fabulous-gold-harvesting-machine-review-documentary

O ut on the remote archipelago of Tierra del Fuego in Chile , Toto Gesell holds on to a profession that hails from bygone times: gold prospecting. Every day, come rain or shine, he puts on his rubber boots and heads to a local creek, where he searches for specks of gold the old-fashioned way: with a pan, a shovel and a homemade sluice. His daily routines are documented with great tenderness in Alfredo Pourailly De La Plaza’s absorbing documentary, shot over nearly a decade. The camera often lingers on Toto’s wrinkled hands, as he carefully handles tiny flecks of the precious metal, or writes down his hopes and dreams in a neatly kept diary. Despite his contentment with this simple way of life, his body is etched with the physical toil of the demanding work.

When Jorge, Toto’s worried son, decides to build a trommel from scratch to help automate his father’s work, the film acquires the fervour of a monumental quest. This colossal undertaking ends up taking years; through riveting editing, the documentary oscillates between two competing timelines: one of the trommel’s gradual completion, and another of Toto’s declining health, as the juxtaposition accentuates the urgency of Jorge’s mission. When Toto suffers a serious health crisis while prospecting, the preciousness of time feels as tangible as the gold dust that slips through his fingers.

Occasionally, the film shifts its focus away from these intimate, domestic moments to take in the beauty of the Tierra del Fuego landscape. And in the end, the trommel stands not just for filial piety, but also for the love of a whole community. Rich with meticulous detail, De La Plaza’s documentary also doubles as an act of visual scavenging; among these lush fields of grass and snowcapped mountain peaks, the film-maker has also struck gold.

The Fabulous Gold Harvesting Machine is on True Story from 26 June.

Keyword – Music
Trefwoorden – Music, Pop and rock, Gorillaz, Damon Albarn, Culture
Title – Gorillaz review – a staggering hi-tech mini-festival from the magpie mind of Damon Albarn | Music | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/iangittins
Link – Gorillaz review – a staggering hi-tech mini-festival from the magpie mind of Damon Albarn | Music | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T10:00:46.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/jun/21/gorillaz-review-damon-albarn-spurs-stadium

G orillaz’s first stadium show is quite the event. It’s a staggering hi-tech spectacle, a two-and-a-half hour mini-festival with a seemingly endless stream of high-profile guest stars, and its audacious ambition and military precision all stem from the fecund imagination and magpie mind of one man.

Damon Albarn has never come across a genre of music that he doesn’t want to turn inside-out to see how it works. In recent years, he has turned Gorillaz from the mildly gimmicky virtual band he co-conceived with graphic artist Jamie Hewlett into a sprawling expression of his own musical curiosity and rampant eclecticism.

The days of holograms of 2-D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel being projected on stage are gone. Instead, Hewlett’s striking graphics play on giant screens over a stage on which Albarn, bearded in a combat jacket and beanie hat, plays the grinning ringmaster and MC of this dazzling circus.

There are a stream of virtuoso Indian musicians, reflecting a motif of Gorillaz’s recent, ninth album, The Mountain, from Anoushka Shankar’s fluid sitar patterns to Ajay Prasanna’s skittering flute. Yet Albarn also skilfully infiltrates the falsetto, rococo pop of tonight’s support act, Sparks, into the pulsing, melodic The Happy Dictator.

For The Moon Cave, veteran cosmic-pop diva Asha Puthli, in a silver cape, shimmers alongside The Roots’s loquacious Black Thought. Then Little Dragons singer Yukimi, splendid in a blue ballgown, gives way to twerking, helium-voiced soul star Moonchild Sanelly and, on the thrumming Casablanca, a prowling Johnny Marr and Paul Simonon.

Mortality and loss are major themes of The Mountain, and on Delirium the guttural bark of the late Mark E Smith bounces around a stadium full of both greying first-generation Blur fans and their excited kids. Both generations get off on effervescent Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara’s keening harmonies and gorgeous traditional attire.

There’s a strong rap presence, from the urgent Yasiin Bey (trading rhymes with Syrian icon Omar Souleyman) to Bootie Brown appearing on the verge of self-combustion and Little Simz spitting words like bullets. When the focus shifts back to India, singer Zanai Bhosle fills the shoes of her grandmother, Asha, who recently passed away.

For the encore, Gogglebox’s own Shaun Ryder materialises to growl through Dare before the charismatic Posdnuos from De La Soul ignites the giddy delirium of Feel Good Inc. The night ends as Gorillaz began, 25 years ago, with the sly, loping melodies of their insouciant debut single, Clint Eastwood.

The evening has been an extraordinary triumph and you can be sure that, as soon as he got backstage, Damon Albarn will have been planning what he will do next.

Keyword – Food
Trefwoorden – Food, Snacks, Film, Life and style
Title – Superfood or sweet treat? 17 delicious ways with popcorn – from snack bars and choux buns to salads and soups | Food | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/timdowling
Link – Superfood or sweet treat? 17 delicious ways with popcorn – from snack bars and choux buns to salads and soups | Food | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T09:00:26.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/food/2026/jun/21/superfood-or-sweet-treat-17-delicious-ways-with-popcorn-from-snack-bars-and-choux-buns-to-salads-and-soups

P opcorn became indelibly associated with cinema-going during the Great Depression (it was cheap and hugely profitable), but it also has an established reputation as a superfood – recently given a boost by longevity expert Dan Buettner, who described popcorn as the best snack to eat if you want to live to 100. “It’s very high in fibre, it’s very high in complex carbohydrates, and it even has more polyphenols than a lot of vegetables,” he said.

Popping corn has been consumed by humans for at least 4,000 years, but its widespread popularity as a snack probably dates to a single event : the Columbian Exposition of 1893, also known as the World’s Fair, held in Chicago.

It was there that inventor Charles Cretors introduced the first mobile, steam-powered popcorn machine, which enabled street vendors to travel to fairgrounds, baseball games and political rallies. At this same exposition, two brothers started selling their own proprietary mix of sweet molasses-coated popcorn and peanuts. Later packaged and sold under the name Cracker Jack, it is often considered to be America’s first junk food.

So popcorn can be good for you or bad for you, depending on how much salt, sugar and fat you add to it. Here are 17 recipes running the entire spectrum, from healthy to indulgent to potentially life-threatening – offered without prejudice.

First up, a spiced popcorn brought to you by the British Heart Foundation. It requires nothing more than a half-teaspoon of smoked paprika and a quarter-teaspoon of ground cumin per 50g of popcorn kernels (this doesn’t seem like enough to me; I’ve never used a quarter-teaspoon of anything). Put everything into a pan with a tight-fitting lid, along with a couple of teaspoons of sunflower oil, and pop.

For a slightly more complex – and saltier – variation, Guardian reader Rachel Kelly offers popcorn with a spiced salt that includes chilli and lime as well as paprika and cumin. Nigel Slater suggests fennel seed and pancetta popcorn in which the corn is popped in a mixture of butter and bacon fat.

The choice between salted and sweetened popcorn divides opinion, although I generally reserve my ire for people who mix the two. It requires no small leap of faith, then, for me to recommend Yotam Ottolenghi’s spicy popcorn , which features a caramel made from butter, sugar, salt, chilli and dried shrimp. The coated popcorn is baked for an hour until it loses its stickiness, then mixed in a two-to-one ratio with plain popcorn.

For a more straightforward toffee popcorn , you can’t go far wrong with a recipe containing only butter and muscovado sugar. Susanna Booth, meanwhile, has a dairy-free toffee popcorn that can be adapted to produce two flavours: margarita (lime and salt) and coffee .

Liam Charles’s honey-caramel popcorn is closer to the traditional American Cracker Jack, although he claims it’s the result of a serendipitous cinema collision between toffee popcorn and honey-roasted nuts. If you’re after a more dedicated recreation of the original, this homemade cracker jack from Brown Eyed Baker is a decent approximation, and even a possible improvement.

Popcorn granola snack bars come with the imprimatur of the Popcorn Board, an awareness-raising nonprofit funded by US popcorn processors, which collectively might be referred to as Big Popcorn. They would like you to eat way more popcorn, and their snack bars are an amalgam of popcorn, peanuts, granola, honey and peanut butter. For a slightly less-stuck-together version of the same idea, try Bombay popcorn mix : peanuts, popcorn, sultanas and crispy chickpeas. For an even more stuck-together version, Tom Kerridge’s popcorn bars are fused with chocolate and marshmallows.

Salted caramel and popcorn crumble choux buns , which include three kinds of sugar and a filling of toffee popcorn cream, bring us quite a long way from superfood territory. If this isn’t the Snack Least Likely to Help You Live to 100, it must surely be on the shortlist.

Popcorn’s status as a whole grain sometimes allows it to make an appearance in bread recipes. In this popcorn bread recipe from Australian Better Homes and Gardens, the popcorn is first reduced to a powder in a blender before being combined with less unusual bread ingredients, such as flour and yeast. Likewise popcorn can be deployed as part of a coating prior to frying fish, as with popcorn and mushroom-crusted tilapia (another idea from Big Popcorn).

From the wilder shores of popcorn-based culinary innovation come not one but two recipes for popcorn salad. The first is a strange but apparently quite traditional picnic dish familiar to residents of the American heartland. This popcorn salad recipe from The Kitchn combines freshly popped popcorn, grated carrots, celery, spring onions, tinned water chestnuts, grated cheddar, bacon, mayonnaise and ranch dressing. Suffice to say it’s not just the popcorn that makes it weird.

The other one – from Three Many Cooks – is a simple rocket and onion salad with a classic vinaigrette dressing, and popcorn . The idea is easier to get your head round if you think of the popcorn as a crouton alternative. Pretend you’re out of croutons.

Finally, popcorn soup. Almost all the recipes I found tell you to whiz and sieve the soup before serving – often several times – so the popcorn element is not textural, except for the few pieces sprinkled on top as a garnish. This popcorn soup recipe from A Food Lover’s Kitchen, modelled on a dish from a Seattle restaurant, also uses fresh corn on the cob. The kernels are first stripped off, and the denuded cobs used to make corn stock. Otherwise it’s popcorn, celery, carrot, onion and cream, resulting in a smooth chowder with a delicious buttery corn taste. Just don’t try to take it to the cinema with you.

Keyword – Wellness
Trefwoorden – Well actually, Swimming, Fitness, Life and style
Title – Why do you always feel like you have to pee when swimming? | Well actually | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/marlene-cimons
Link – Why do you always feel like you have to pee when swimming? | Well actually | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T16:00:07.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/global/2026/jun/16/why-swimming-makes-you-feel-like-peeing

I’m midway into my hour-long swim when it hits: I really have to pee. This always happens. It doesn’t help to curb my morning coffee or use the restroom beforehand. My bladder doesn’t care.

Why does this happen? “It’s a normal physiological response by the body to being immersed in water,” says Dr Stavros Kavouras , assistant dean, professor of nutrition and director of the Hydration Science Lab at Arizona State University. And it’s not just me: “It’s something that happens to all swimmers.”

Here’s what experts have to say about that inexplicable urge to pee when you’re surrounded by water.

What causes the urge to pee when you’re in the water?

The strong sudden need to urinate when submerged in water results from a process called immersion diuresis.

Diuresis is a medical term that refers to the increased production and excretion of urine by the kidneys. During this process, the body filters excess bodily fluid, water and waste products from the bloodstream and expels them through urination, according to Dr Scott Trappe, director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University.

Immersion diuresis is annoying, inconvenient and uncomfortable – but not usually dangerous, although sometimes it can lead to dehydration, he says.

Why does immersion diuresis occur?

Contrary to common misconception, you aren’t absorbing water from the pool through your skin while swimming.

When your body enters the water, “the relatively cooler water will cause the [blood] vessels in the skin to constrict to conserve core body temperature,” Trappe says. “This sends more fluid centrally.” (Most pools are heated to about 78-82F (25.5-27.7C), according to the US Department of Energy ; lakes and other bodies of water can be even cooler.)

After the blood moves to the chest, special cardiopulmonary receptors detect the volume increase, interpreting it as fluid overload. They signal the brain to halt production of antidiuretic hormone (ADH), a substance that tells the kidneys to retain urine, Kavouras says.

Almost simultaneously, your heart muscle cells also secrete a hormone called atrial natriuretic factor (ANF) in response to high blood volume. ANF widens blood vessels to reduce blood pressure, which then increases water excretion in an effort to restore fluid balance.

Put simply: your body thinks it has too much fluid. “The kidneys sense an increased fluid volume and balance this out by pulling some of the water from the blood – and you [then] have to pee,” says Trappe.

“Both of these factors make the kidneys produce more urine,” says Dr Michael Joyner , an anesthesiologist and researcher at the Mayo Clinic, who studies how the nervous system regulates blood pressure, heart rate and metabolism in response to stress. “This is a natural reflex that keeps the heart from getting overfilled with fluid.”

In addition to water pressure and water temperature, being prone in the water also plays a role, Kavouras says: “The blood more easily goes to your heart.”

Is that why the urge to pee happens far less often when, say, I go running? Yes, says Kavouras, but you also sweat less in the water, so you don’t lose as much fluid that way when swimming. Running causes more sweating, so the body doesn’t feel like it’s holding too much fluid.

So, is there any way to prevent immersion diuresis? “Not really,” Trappe says. “It’s all part of being a swimmer.”

So are people just peeing in the pool all the time?

When I get the urge, I am annoyed. I could quit my workout early or take a break and risk losing my pool lane while I’m gone. I could hold it, or give in to my inner toddler and pee in the pool – probably not a good idea if I want to keep swimming here. So I just hold on until my laps are done.

Other swimmers apparently have no such inhibitions. They just let go in the water. “Nobody talks about it, but everybody does it,” Trappe says.

Kavouras, a former competitive swimmer, agrees. “It’s long been part of swimming culture that swimmers pee in the pool,” he says. “But I’m not going to answer the question of whether or not I ever did it.”

Out of curiosity, I raised the issue with my son. Now in his 30s, he was a serious competitive swimmer starting at age five until he was in his 20s. I wanted to know if he had ever done it.

“Sure, all the time,” he says. “After a few laps I was always peeing on the swimmer behind me.”

The swimmer behind him could not be reached for comment.

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – World Cup 2026, Iran, Belgium, World Cup, Football, Sport
Title – Past and present World Cups collide as Beiranvand first gives Iran inspiration, then hope | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/alexander-abnos
Link – Past and present World Cups collide as Beiranvand first gives Iran inspiration, then hope | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-22T02:03:57.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/22/world-cup-iran-goalkeeper-alireza-beiranvand

As they prepared for the future, the Iran national team looked to its past.

Before Sunday’s matchup against a No 9-ranked Belgium with plenty of stars, the team was played a motivational video; a clip containing what midfielder Alireza Jahanbakhsh said were the indelible moments of Iran’s past two World Cup appearances. These included dogged defending, aggressive closing down, and the few moments of on-field triumph against world powers like Spain and Portugal that have characterized this latest generation of a proud footballing hotbed.

In and of itself, this is not an unusual tactic for teams looking for confidence ahead of a big matchup, which Sunday’s fixture certainly was. But in a coincidence Saman Ghoddos called “crazy,” this backward-looking video ended up foreshadowing the biggest moment of the 0-0 draw that puts Iran on the precipice of its best-ever performance at a World Cup.

Goalkeeper Alireza Beiranvand’s desperate, lunging save in the 59th minute seemingly left all 70,317 fans at Los Angeles Stadium with mouths agape. But in a sense it was also ordinary. Beiranvand has had a signature World Cup moment before, saving a Cristiano Ronaldo penalty in 2018. And he has had a similar impact on a goalline scramble, blocking an effort in a 1-0 win for Iran against Morocco in that same competition. This, Ghoddos said, was the moment the team had focused on in the video.

“The same situation happened now,” he said. “The unity, the fighting spirit we have for each other, for our country, for the people we try to win every game, try not to concede, and a situation like this can happen.”

Iran have been no stranger to late, decisive moments in major tournaments. They fell agonizingly close of a place in the knockout round in 2022 in a loss to the US. They succumbed to a Ricardo Quaresma trivela in 2018, and a Lionel Messi moment of magic in 2014. Beiranvand’s save, one senses, could be the first step in another direction.

“In our last tournaments, Asian Cup, World Cups, [at the] last minute we didn’t get what we deserved, now is one of those times,” said Jahanbakhsh, who added that he felt Iran could have won the game against the 10-man Belgian side. “So it’s really in our control to do what we have to do firstly for our people back home, and then for ourselves. Some of us, we’ve played more than 10, 12 years together. Hopefully we can make [our] best performance [against Egypt].”

Beiranvand’s signature moment gave this match a unique edge, but outside Los Angeles Stadium, little had changed since Iran’s previous visit, a 2-2 draw against New Zealand. There were Iranian fans donning all manner of modified kits, eager to see their team on their quest to finally advance to the second round of a World Cup for the first time.

Among the crowds that so enlivened the team’s previous game remained a large portion of protesters too, including a group of 200 or so who chanted for the removal of the Islamic Republic, saying that the team represented “terrorists” and not everyday Iranians. Others turned their ire at Fifa. Within the stadium’s outermost perimeter, a banner depicting a backpack with a tag reading 168 called attention to the 168 people who were killed in the US and Israeli strike that hit an Iranian school. “No Fifa war games,” it read.

Iran’s lion and sun flags, too, continued to be out in force. Though nominally still banned at the request of the Iranian government, attendees wore them in droves. Increased enforcement saw many more confiscated upon entry than last time, but vendors were comfortable enough to hawk tables of merch with the insignia just outside the stadium gates.

When the national anthem played, the boos and jeers that accompanied it last time were just as present. And when the game got under way, in the biggest moments the crowd heaved with each sharp Belgian attack, every desperate Iranian defense. They called loudly for Nathan Ngoy to be sent off after taking down Mehdi Taremi through on goal, and they cheered when their wish was granted.

“We know they deserve a lot, even the people who came to the stadium today with the different ideas, different ideology, different culture and from different cities in Iran,” Jahabakhsh said. “There are a couple of things that [Iranians] have in common everywhere in the world. One is Team Melli, one is ghormeh sabzi [a signature stew], and one is tahdig [crispy rice].”

The status quo of the crowd, oddly, marks a form of change. In 2022, Iran played their first game of the World Cup with frequent displays of protest in the stands with the country in the throes of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. By the time of the second game, those displays had been severely curtailed, with attendees saying they feared surveillance by regime operatives disguised as fans. Some protesters could be seen confronted and shouted down back then. This time, if there were arguments, they were once again minor and among individuals.

Iran’s performance on the field, too, remained consistent. The same dogged, if at times disorganized defending. The same scrappy ingenuity up top. Belgium knifed through with sharp edges, but lacked an effective point as Romelu Lukaku was held in check by Shoja Khalilzadeh throughout. Iran thought their moment to savor came in the first half, when Taremi finished off a cleverly worked freekick but was correctly adjudged to have been offside, but only by his backside.

Instead, that moment came in the 59th minute via Beiranvand. The Tractor goalkeeper had risen from relative obscurity on the back of his performances in Russia 2018, where his most distinctive feature were long, cannon-like throws from his own box, shaped by his time as a child throwing stones with friends across the Iranian countryside with the nomadic family he would later run away from to pursue his football teams.

“He was amazing today, and it’s been amazing for a couple of years now,” Ghoddos said of Beiranvand. “He’s the best goalkeeper in our history of our country.”