The Testament of Ann Lee is a bonkers musical fantasia about an obscure religious sect. Its star and writer-director Mona Fastvold talk fear, bonding – and not needing an Oscar

Not many actors take an interest in the audience’s aftercare. When it comes to The Testament of Ann Lee, however, Amanda Seyfried is hands-on. “Did you watch it with someone you could talk to?” she asks, tilting her head sympathetically, then dipping her full-beam headlight eyes and giving a worried look when I admit that I saw it alone. “It’s nice to process it with somebody else.”

Her concern is understandable. Whatever feelings the film provokes, indifference will not be among them. Heady and rapturous, this is an all-round odd duck of a movie, the sort of go-for-broke phantasmagoria – an 18th-century musical biopic complete with feverish visions and levitating – that was once typical of Lars von Trier or Bruno Dumont. I confess I didn’t know exactly what to make of it, but I knew I had been through a singular experience. Its director, Mona Fastvold, seated beside Seyfried on a sofa in a London hotel room, looks delighted. “That’s my favourite sort of feeling,” she says.

What could be better than working at the Friendship Inn with my best friend, Ned? Almost anything else, as it turned out

I adored pubs. They were my natural home. And now, thanks to my best friend, Ned, I’d got a job at the Friendship Inn in Prestwich. It was the mid-1980s, and I was in my early 20s, preparing for the first shift. What could be better than working in a pub called the Friendship alongside my bezzy? And I understood drink – you left Guinness to stand, aimed for half an inch of head on a pint of bitter, and if someone asked for water with a whisky you didn’t fill the glass. Easy-peasy.

As soon as I got behind the bar I panicked. There were perhaps half a dozen people waiting to order, but it looked like a sea of thousands. The bar was particularly tricky because it was shaped like the bow of a ship. Every time I went to one side, customers started calling from the other. I couldn’t remember the faces. Nor the drinks they ordered. I took a funny turn. The faces became twisted, distorted, ghoulish, cackling manically or cursing my incompetence. I felt like Mia Farrow confronting the neighbours’ coven in Rosemary’s Baby, only thankfully I didn’t have a knife.

I poured Guinness for people who had ordered a glass of red, Budweiser for those who wanted a Boddingtons. There wasn’t a thing I didn’t get wrong. And then I broke my first glass. The crowd staring at me got more Rosemary’s Baby by the second. My bitter was headless; my lager all head. I broke another glass. I was getting dizzy, struggling to breathe. My legs were collapsing.

Seeing them separated for the first time felt like a miracle

I was already a mother of three when I lay back for my 10-week ultrasound in 2019. At first, seeing the gel on my stomach and the flickering black and white image on screen was familiar and soothing. Then I saw the look on the sonographer’s face.

She dropped the probe and ran out of the room without a word. I tried not to panic, but by the time she sprinted back in with a doctor, who looked at the screen and said, “Oh my goodness”, I was terrified.

Conservationists hail the ‘desperately needed’ measures and urge greater protection after up to 11% of endangered Tapanuli orangutans wiped out

The floods and landslides that tore through Indonesia’s fragile Batang Toru ecosystem in November 2024 – killing up to 11% of the world’s Tapanuli orangutan population – prompted widespread scrutiny of the extractive companies operating in the area at the time of the ecological catastrophe.

For weeks, investigators searched for evidence that the companies may have damaged the Batang Toru and Garoga watersheds before the disaster, which washed torrents of mud and logs into villages, claiming the lives of more than 1,100 people.

The Box, Plymouth
Roof-felters, bawdy boozers, off-duty sailors, whip-wielding dominatrixes … this 100th birthday show in Cook’s home town is an exuberant celebration of working-class frivolity

Generally, you get two versions of England in art: it’s either bucolic vistas, rolling hills, babbling brooks and gambolling sheep – or it’s downtrodden, browbeaten, grim poverty and misery. But Beryl Cook saw something else in all the drizzle and grey of this damp old country: she saw joy.

The thing is, joy doesn’t carry the same critical, conceptual heft in art circles as more serious subjects, so Cook has always been a bit brushed off by the art crowd. They saw her as postcards and posters for the unwashed, uncultured masses, not high art for the high-minded. But she didn’t care: she succeeded as a self-taught documenter of English life despite any disdain she might have encountered. And now, on what would have been her 100th birthday, her home town of Plymouth is throwing her a big celebratory bash.

Friday’s meeting in Abu Dhabi comes after talks between Russian president Vladimir Putin, US envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner

Ukraine, Russia and the US are set to hold three-way talks in Abu Dhabi on Friday, marking the first time that the three countries have sat down together since Russia invaded in 2022.

The meeting was confirmed in the early hours of Friday morning after talks at the Kremlin between the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the US envoy Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kremlin diplomatic adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters those talks were “useful in every respect”, adding that it was “agreed that the first meeting of a trilateral working group on security issues will take place today in Abu Dhabi”.

• Ryan Coogler’s ghost story breaks records

• One Battle After Another in second with 13 nods

• Marty Supreme, Sentimental Value and Frankenstein score nine apiece

• Mescal, Clooney, Paltrow and Wicked snubbed

• Full list of nominees

Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s critically and commercially acclaimed supernatural thriller, has become the first film to be nominated for 16 Academy Awards.

The film starring Michael B Jordan as twin brothers setting up a blues club in 1930s Mississippi while battling racism and vampires has so far taken $368m worldwide. It is nominated for trophies including best picture, director, leading actor, supporting actor (for the British actor Delroy Lindo), supporting actress (for British-Nigerian actor Wunmi Mosaku) and the Academy’s inaugural casting prize.

Incident outside Opera House that left two people in critical condition is not being investigated as terrorism, police say

Six people have been injured after a knife attack at a demonstration in Belgium on Thursday evening, police said.

Two of the victims were in a critical condition in hospital after the incident in the port city of Antwerp near the Operaplein (Opera Square), police spokesperson Wouter Bruyns said.

Speculation has spread over whether Burnham will attempt to return to pursue a Labour leadership bid

Keir Starmer’s allies have launched a “Stop Andy Burnham” campaign to prevent the Labour mayor from returning to parliament after the resignation of a Manchester MP triggered a byelection.

Multiple members of the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) predicted it would be impossible for Burnham to make it through the selection process given the number of Starmer loyalists on the body desperate to avoid a leadership challenge.

Search-and-rescue teams worked through the night at the campground, but there had been no progress in finding missing people, officials say

New Zealand is ‘full of grief”, the prime minister has said, after landslides tore through a house and busy campground, leaving two dead and at least six victims still missing.

Police said emergency crews were still searching for at least six people, including two teenagers, believed missing beneath the debris of a landslide, which struck a Mount Maunganui campsite on Thursday morning. Police were attempting to contact another three people. Families enjoying the summer school holiday were among the campers. Recreational vehicles and at least one structure were crushed, images showed.