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Caught between rural roots and urban opportunities, familial duty, friendship and forbidden carnal desire, young San Kyi (Nandar Myat Aung) struggles to find her place in Fruit Gathering, a sensitive Myanmar-Czechia-France co-production that just won Karlovy Vary’s top prize.

That’s an impressive achievement for Burmese writer-director Aung Phyoe, making his feature debut after several shorts. His flair for blending realist drama with more poetic, painterly imagery makes for a dreamy, hypnotic viewing experience, eased along by a confident, open-hearted performance from Nandar Myat Aung in the lead role. Fruit Gathering will be ripe for picking at further festivals, especially ones specializing in Asian and/or LGBTQ+ fare, possibly followed by niche distribution.

Self-transplanted with her mother (Tin Tin Ei) and grandmother from the countryside to industry-rich Yangon, San Kyi has so far managed to resist the pressure from her mom to get married or pursue a career in something upmarket like tech. Instead, eager for a job that doesn’t demand too much thinking, San Kyi works in a massive clothing factory, sewing seams all day in a ferociously noisy, scrap-strewn environment where the supervisor gets snotty if she takes a bathroom break without seeking permission first.

Incidentally, while the factory hardly looks inviting, the conditions don’t seem to be too bad compared to those seen in older documentaries about East and South Asian sweatshops. They’re comparable to what’s on display in, say, Chinese director Wang Bing’s doc Youth but without the company-owned residential housing. At least the workers are allowed to submit petitions circulated by labor organizers requesting better pay and more safety measures, although tellingly San Kyi refuses to sign lest she might get fired for it. A union leader (Wutt Yee Kyaw) pours scorn on her for not showing more solidarity with her colleagues.

Later, after she’s injured herself by a sewing accident, San Kyi will rethink her position on workers’ rights, but industrial relations in the textile industry are not the film’s main focus. It’s all background color, as much a part of the vivid landscape as the interludes where we see San Kyi back home visiting the mango farms and spirit-dance ceremonies of her agrarian childhood.  

At least it’s at this factory that San Kyi meets Theint Theint Oo (Nandar Myint Lwin), a young co-worker around the same age as San Kyi with a radiant smile and street sense to burn. The two young women start out just hanging together during their lunch breaks but soon grow inseparable. The script suggests early on that Theint Theint may be the kind of pal who always forgets to bring enough cash for dinner. A darker interpretation might posit that she sees San Kyi as little more than a mark, but the truth probably falls somewhere in a grayer area.

Either way, by the time San Kyi is buying nearly identical blouses for the two of them to wear on strolls around town, it’s pretty clear that she’s smitten with Theint Theint. The latter is ambiguously flirtatious and keen to have languid girls’ night sleepovers in the same bed, but also open about the fact that she’s got a man in the background, who is conveniently always away working in another country. Afraid of losing her new limerent object of desire, San Kyi entertains the thought of going abroad with Theint Theint to work as housekeepers or factory workers in somewhere affluent like Singapore or Malaysia.

Clearly, things are heading for a smash up when San Kyi lends Theint Theint a substantial amount of money. Somehow the tension is heightened by the fact that Theint Theint gets closer to San Kyi’s family, even accepting a job offer that comes through the local guy whom San Kyi’s mom was trying to set San Kyi up with as a potential husband. It all serves to underscore how narrowly female relationships are usually defined in highly traditional, painfully patriarchal Myanmar society. The intense feeling between these two young women could never be openly romantic, although no one bats an eye when they walk hand and hand through the streets, much the way Queen Victoria is said to have refused to sign legislation banning lesbianism because she wouldn’t acknowledge such a thing even existed.

Aung Phyoe suggests the messy, uncontrollable nature of desire via some slightly heavy-handed imagery of flooded apartments and generally juicy, watery, somewhat soluble imagery. But the story surprisingly shifts tack halfway through and becomes less interested in the two women’s relationship and more in San Kyi’s personal development, especially after some hard knocks change how she sees the world.

Every so often, the camera will linger on a tiny detail like a vase that has some emotional significance, or the light coming in a window. There’s a tiny hint that these cinematic still life pictures are being seen through San Kyi’s eyes, like scenes in a book told through limited third-person point of view. Indeed, there’s a faintly literary quality to the filmmaking, as if inspired by romance and high-brow fiction, but Aung Phyoe’s touch is feathery soft, as gentle as the soft thud of a mango falling from a tree.

An unlikely meeting between Hunter Biden and far-right internet personality Nick Fuentes for an independent web channel reportedly veered into an argument that nearly led to a physical altercation at a Philadelphia hotel over the weekend.

According to a report published Monday by TMZ, the meeting between Biden — the son of former Democratic President Joe Biden — and the white nationalist podcast host was brokered by Andrew Callaghan, founder and host of the gonzo video news series Channel 5, and took place in a Philadelphia hotel room. The meeting of the two men, both of whom have courted controversy in recent years, was billed as a no-limits conversation where any topic was on the table.

The outlet reported, citing “sources familiar with the situation,” that the conversation was initially affable but soon grew tense as the men on opposite sides of the political spectrum moved to different topics. Eventually, the tension turned into an argument, and it grew so heated that Callaghan had to intervene before the situation escalated into violence.

The interview is set to air later this month, according to TMZ. Neither Biden, Fuentes nor Callaghan has spoken publicly about the interview and what happened between the three of them.

The Hollywood Reporter reached out to Callaghan and his public relations representative on Monday but had not received a response by publication time regarding the details of the reported altercation and what may have led the conversation to go astray. We will update this story with any further information as it is received.

Biden is the second son of former President Biden and an artist and businessman. He has been the subject of several controversies since 2019 after becoming the target of false allegations that he asked his father to have a Ukrainian prosecutor fired to protect him from legal trouble. Biden was also convicted of three weapons possession charges for owning a gun, which was purchased in 2018 during the period he was addicted to drugs; he was disbarred as a result of the felony conviction in Washington, D.C. and Connecticut. On December 1, 2024, President Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon for his son — reversing promises to the public that he would not do so.

Furentes has been a growing voice in the alt-right, ultra-nationalist space for several years. He hosts a livestreamed show called America First, where he has advanced white nationalism and an ideology of white supremacy. He and his followers, known as “Groypers,” have waged war on late activist Charlie Kirk and his Turning Point USA for being insufficiently conservative. In 2020, he founded the America First Political Action Conference.

Callaghan has been at the forefront of DIY reporting since his teens, beginning with interviews of fringe dark-web figures and protest movements. He has parleyed his esoteric interview style into leading Channel 5, which he’s quickly been growing into a small but formidable empire over the past several years.

Disney‘s live-action Moana did not make the summer splash that the studio had hoped, leading to questions about not only what might be in store at the box office for the Dwayne Johnson-led title but also the potential for developing remakes of other animated favorites.

After last year’s Lilo & Stitch had a record-breaking $183 million four-day opening weekend domestically before surpassing $1 billion in its global run, the live-action Moana appeared to represent a likely win as the summer approached. After all, the original 2016 animated movie — starring Johnson as the voice of demigod Maui who helps the titular girl (Auli’i Cravalho) save her island — has become a beloved property for families and counts as the most-watched feature on Disney+. And, of course, Moana 2 confirmed the excitement for new theatrical entries from the franchise when it hit $1 billion after its November 2024 release — although there is more to discuss with that one in a moment.

Despite Disney anticipating an opening above $60 million domestically after third-party tracking initially suggested the film could launch to as much as $75 million, the live-action Moana was left gasping at the box office. Its $43 million opening in North America puts it in dubious company as one of the weakest debuts for Disney’s remakes and is particularly tough given its $250 million production budget. Other misfires included last year’s $42.2 million opening for Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot’s Snow White and the $45.9 million bow for 2019’s Tim Burton-directed Dumbo, although both of those reimagined originals from generations prior and might have felt dated to younger audiences. Additionally, the live-action Snow White found itself caught up in the culture wars.

Starring Catherine Laga’aia in the title role, the new Moana had a few strikes against it that dinged the opening. Its 34 percent approval score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes makes it among the worst-reviewed live-action updates, although the fan response has been another story, as it earned an A- CinemaScore, including an A+ from those under 18, and is “verified hot” with a 90 percent Rotten Tomatoes audience rating.

While Lilo & Stitch had given audiences more than two decades to miss the first one — and likely had the advantage of millennial parents wanting to share the story with their children — Moana was the most recent original to get Disney’s live-action treatment. Moana 2 was initially conceived as a Disney+ series but flipped to a theatrical release for 2024, which complicated the timing for the live-action movie that began production earlier that year. Given that Johnson voiced the sequel, fans may have felt that they had already scratched their Moana itch for the time being.

It also faced competition for families from such summer titles as Disney’s own Toy Story 5 and Illumination’s Minions & Monsters. That said, the latter may have dealt with some burnout of its own in opening over the Fourth of July weekend to the lowest domestic sum for the Despicable Me franchise.

“Everything comes down to timing in this business, and it just did not work in Moana’s favor in this case,” Fandango director of analytics and Box Office Theory founder Shawn Robbins tells The Hollywood Reporter. He points out that certain titles found the sweet spot to capitalize on nostalgia, like Disney’s live-action takes on Beauty and the Beast (2017), Aladdin (2019) and The Lion King (2019), with these reimaginings of 1990s originals all opening above $90 million domestically en route to surpassing $1 billion globally. Another of last year’s successes was Universal’s live-action remake of 2010’s How to Train Your Dragon.

“It’s always a case-by-case basis,” says Robbins about which Disney’s movies could still work for live-action. Indeed, feature projects that were previously in development before seemingly stalling out have included live-action versions of Disney’s Robin Hood, Bambi, The Aristocats and The Sword in the Stone. “Who knows where Disney goes from here?”

Disney will aim to get the right recipe for Tangled, as the live-action retelling of the 2010 animated feature focusing on Rapunzel is currently in production in Spain. Weeks after Snow White’s disappointing 2025 launch, the studio opted to pause development on Tangled but resumed its progress in the fall after the out-of-this-world box office returns for Lilo & Stitch. Speaking of the latter, a live-action Lilo & Stitch sequel is also in the works, and there are certainly plenty of fans who are holding their collective breath that a live-action Frozen ends up in development.

The Moana team can take heart knowing that the live-action movie has had its share of vocal supporters. “Listen to the people who showed up, rather than the ones hating it unseen just because,” Role Models screenwriter Timothy Dowling posted over the weekend in praising the new Moana. Given the positive exit scores, Disney remains hopeful that the film can have legs, as the primary box office draw for the next two weekends will be Christopher Nolan’s R-rated The Odyssey.

As for Johnson — who was cited as a key draw for those who did check out this weekend’s film — Moana 2 was a bright spot at the box office amid the star’s recent stretch that includes commercial misfires Black Adam, Red One and The Smashing Machine. He returns to another proven franchise later this year with Sony’s Jumanji: Open World, which will hope to excite fans despite opening just a week after both Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three.

For the bigger 2026 picture, the spring was full of promise, thanks to The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Michael — which both crossed the billion-dollar mark globally — and other hits like Project Hail Mary and The Devil Wears Prada 2. The summer has seen reasons to celebrate, including Toy Story 5 appearing to head for the 10-figure club, not to mention surprise breakouts Obsession and Backrooms. But there have been wobbly recent weeks with disappointments like Supergirl, plus June’s Masters of the Universe. The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day are two behemoths waiting in the wings later this month.

“It has been a wild summer,” admits Robbins, who points out that the season’s biggest smashes are having to do some heavy lifting for the industry at large. “Now there have been a few underperformers consecutively. That just really underscores what the expectation has been for a long time, that it would be a very top-heavy summer for the most part — and maybe for the year.”