The Plaza Prizes offered 10 awards in 2025 but some judges say they were not paid, while a number of winners hit back over AI accusations
A competition for new writers that promised a £20,000 prize fund appears to have shut down, leaving winners and judges, including a Booker prize-winning novelist, out of pocket.
Established in 2022, the Plaza Prizes last year offered 10 awards that were judged by the “finest poets and writers in the world”.
Continue reading...Paul Thomas Anderson’s revolutionary epic took home six awards while Sinners scored four including for best actor
Paul Thomas Anderson’s counter-culture caper One Battle After Another has won the Oscars war, taking home six awards after a hotly contested season.
The big-budget comedy thriller, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, was named best picture and also won director, supporting actor for Sean Penn, adapted screenplay, editing and the first ever Oscar for casting, a category long-petitioned for within the industry.
Continue reading...Primary school teacher Pavel Talankin’s record of the indoctrination of his pupils to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine beats contenders
Mr Nobody Against Putin, a primary school teacher’s record of the indoctrination of his pupils to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has won the Oscar for best documentary.
Pavel Talankin, who is now in exile in Europe, picked up the award alongside the film’s US co-director, David Borenstein. It beat favourite The Perfect Neighbor to take the prize, along with other contenders The Alabama Solution, Come See Me in the Good Light and Cutting Through Rocks.
Continue reading...The actor and singer remembered her co-star in 1973’s The Way We Were, who died in September
Barbra Streisand has paid tribute to her friend and former co-star Robert Redford at the 98th Academy Awards in Los Angeles.
The actor and singer, 83, sang a portion of the title song from their 1973 romantic drama The Way We Were, directed by Sydney Pollack, after remembering the pair’s respect and affection for one another.
Continue reading...Grenade-throwing contests replaced PE and ‘denazification’ speeches became homework. Pavel Talankin’s undercover film about his school’s indoctrination drive won a Bafta and is tipped for an Oscar, but has left him in exile
In order to watch the Oscar-nominated documentary in which many of them have starring roles, pupils at Karabash School No 1 have had to source bootlegged copies, viewing the film in private, on their phones or their laptops.
Last week’s Bafta best documentary win for Mr Nobody Against Putin has been studiously ignored by Russian state media, and the prize the film won at Sundance last year was also met with silence. Staff at the school and government officials in the Kremlin seem united in their desire to pretend that they know nothing about the film.
Continue reading...Olivia Dean tops the winners list with four, while Sam Fender bags two – see all the category winners here
• News: Olivia Dean sweeps the board at 2026 Brit awards, winning four including artist, song and album of the year
• Alexis Petridis: This year’s Brit awards found a flicker of chaos – but the winners were never in doubt
Olivia Dean
Continue reading...A shout of ‘racist’ could also be heard during the segment at France’s version of the Oscars
A tribute to Brigitte Bardot at the Césars, France’s version of the Oscars, on Thursday was greeted with boos. In a video clip posted on social media, boos can clearly be heard among the applause as the tributes, and a shout of “racist!” is also audible.
Bardot, who died in December aged 91, became arguably the most celebrated figure in postwar French cinema for films such as And God Created Woman and Contempt, but after quitting acting in the early 1970s her later years were marred by increasing political activity on the far right, resulting in a string of convictions for inciting racial hatred.
Continue reading...Hannah Doran’s The Meat Kings! (Inc) of Brooklyn Heights and Ro Reddick’s Cold War Choir Practice declared joint winners of award for female, transgender and non-binary writers
The Susan Smith Blackburn prize for female, transgender and non-binary playwrights has been awarded to joint winners, both for their debut plays.
Hannah Doran’s The Meat Kings! (Inc) of Brooklyn Heights and Ro Reddick’s Cold War Choir Practice beat the other eight finalists to the 48th annual award. Doran and Reddick each receive a cash prize of $25,000 (£18,500) and a signed print by the artist Willem de Kooning.
Continue reading...True to his irreverent style, author of The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) thanks his psychiatrist, his gastrointestinal doctors and his drug dealers
Rabih Alameddine has won the National book award for fiction for The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), a darkly comic saga spanning six decades in the life of a Lebanese family.
The novel, which traverses a sprawling history of Lebanon including its civil war and economic collapse, is told through the eyes of its titular protagonist: a gay 63-year-old philosophy teacher confronting his past and his relationship with his mother and his homeland.
Continue reading...Rapper receives nominations in all top categories while Lady Gaga, Bad Bunny, Sabrina Carpenter and Leon Thomas are also major nominees
The Grammys’ love continues for Kendrick Lamar. The rapper, who took home the most trophies at the 2025 music awards with five, leads the nominees for the 2026 awards.
Lamar is up for nine awards, including album of the year (for his most recent album, GNX), best rap album, record of the year and song of the year. He faces competition for the night’s top award – album of the year – from Bad Bunny, Justin Bieber, Sabrina Carpenter, Lady Gaga, Leon Thomas, Tyler, the Creator and Clipse, Pusha T & Malice.
Continue reading...Akinola Davies Jr’s Nigeria-set drama has 12 nominations, including best film and besr director
Nigeria-set drama My Father’s Shadow is the leading contender at this year’s British independent film awards (Bifas), after it scooped 12 nominations, including best British independent film, best director for Akinola Davies Jr, and best screenplay for Davies’s brother Wale. The film came out ahead of Pillion, adapted from Adam Mars-Jones’s coming-of-age relationship story, which got 10 nominations, and biopic I Swear, which got nine.
My Father’s Shadow, which stars Sope Dirisu and is Davies’s debut feature as a director, premiered at the Cannes film festival to admiring reviews. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw described it as “a transparently personal project and a coming-of-age film in its (traumatised) way, a moving account of how, just for one day, two young boys glimpse the real life and real history of their father who has been mostly absent for much of their lives”. The film is yet to be released in the UK, but has already come out in Nigeria.
Continue reading...Geordie singer-songwriter’s album reached No 1 on the UK album chart and led to a series of stadium-sized concerts this summer
Sam Fender is the winner of the 2025 Mercury prize, for his chart-topping album People Watching.
Announcing the award, Sian Eleri, BBC radio DJ and one of the judges on the judging panel, said the album was characterised by “cohesion, character and ambition. It felt like a classic album, one that will take pride of place in record collections for years to come.”
Continue reading...The £10,000 award, whose judges include Mark Haddon and Megan Nolan, recognises ‘mould-breaking’ fiction
Sarah Hall, Charlie Porter and Yrsa Daley-Ward are among the writers shortlisted for this year’s Goldsmiths prize.
The £10,000 award recognises fiction that “breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form”.
Continue reading...The Normal People author can no longer safely enter the UK without potentially facing arrest, according to a statement read out by her publisher at the prize ceremony
Irish author Sally Rooney could not travel to collect a literary prize this week over concerns that she may be arrested if she enters the UK, given her support of banned group Palestine Action.
Rooney won the Sky Arts award for literature for her fourth novel, Intermezzo. At a ceremony on Tuesday, audiences were told that Rooney “couldn’t be here”, before her editor, Faber publisher Alex Bowler, collected the award on her behalf.
Continue reading...Miki Zohar says he will cancel funding for the Ophir awards after The Sea, about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy who is denied entry to Tel Aviv, wins best picture
Israel’s culture minister, Miki Zohar, has announced that funding for the Ophirs, the country’s national film awards, would be cancelled after The Sea, a film about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, won the best feature film prize.
In a statement on X, translated by Israeli news media, Zohar said: “There is no greater slap in the face of Israeli citizens than the embarrassing and detached annual Ophir awards ceremony. Starting with the 2026 budget, this pathetic ceremony will no longer be funded by taxpayers’ money. Under my watch, Israeli citizens will not pay from their pockets for a ceremony that spits in the faces of our heroic soldiers.”
Continue reading...The Voice of Hind Rajab, a harrowing account of a Palestinian child’s death in Gaza, won the runner-up Silver Lion
US indie director Jim Jarmusch unexpectedly won the coveted Golden Lion at the Venice film festival on Saturday with Father Mother Sister Brother, a three-part meditation on the uneasy tie between parents and their adult children.
Although his gentle comedy received largely positive reviews, it had not been a favourite for the top prize, with many critics instead tipping the Voice of Hind Rajab, a harrowing true-life account of the killing of a five-year-old Palestinian girl during the Gaza war. In the end, the film directed by Tunisia’s Kaouther Ben Hania took the runner-up Silver Lion.
Continue reading...Gender-critical novelist urges writers to re-enter prize they boycotted and may ask judges not to shortlist his novella
The gender-critical Irish novelist John Boyne has said he has been brought “very close to the edge” by the backlash to his inclusion on the longlist for a literary prize for LGBTQ+ authors.
Ten authors and two judges withdrew from the Polari prize and more than 800 writers and publishing industry workers signed a petition calling on Polari to remove Boyne’s novella Earth from its longlist.
Continue reading...Warnindhilyagwa singer also wins film clip of the year, while Malyangapa Barkindji rapper Barkaa wins album of the year
Emily Wurramara expressed solidarity with the people of Palestine and “all Indigenous peoples around the world” experiencing oppression as she accepted the artist of the year award at the 21st National Indigenous Music awards at the Nimas in Garramilla/Darwin on Saturday night.
“There’s nothing like coming back home and being here and playing for mob and playing for the people,” the Garramilla-born Warnindhilyagwa singer said. “Because the music is about the people. The music is freedom. Free Palestine, free Congo and free all Indigenous peoples around the world from their oppressors. It always was, always will be Indigenous land.”
Continue reading...Actor and book prize judge’s production company in process of developing novel by Claire Adam
An apparent conflict of interest has emerged over the Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker’s judging of this year’s Booker prize.
A production company run by the actor is reportedly in the process of developing a book written by Claire Adam, whose second novel, Love Forms, appears on this year’s longlist, announced on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Judges praised the Sudanese author for centring Muslim women, describing her writing as “a balm, a shelter, and an inspiration”
Leila Aboulela has won this year’s PEN Pinter prize for her writing on migration, faith and the lives of women.
The prize is awarded to a writer who, in the words of the late British playwright Harold Pinter, casts an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze on the world, and shows a “fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies”.
Continue reading...