09/12/2025

LYFE TUESDAY | DEC 9, 2025

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Dealing with loss, family conflict

O SCAR-WINNING actor Kate Winslet makes her directorial debut with Goodbye June , a holiday season-set drama about a family faced with loss coming together. Winslet, who also stars in the film, directs from a screenplay by her son Joe Anders. The story was partly inspired by their personal experience of losing Winslet’s mother, Anders’ grandmother, to cancer in 2017. “I just wanted to make a film that felt authentic and real. “I also didn’t want to make a story that was about someone who dies because it’s really not. It’s actually about the life that is given to the people who are left behind,” said Winslet, premiering the movie with Anders and the cast in London. Winslet said she wanted to set the movie in Britain’s National Health Service space because it is “massively undervalued”. o Kate Winslet teams up with son for directorial debut psychological well-being, with operators saying it can achieve results more quickly than traditional therapy sessions. Inside a white tent pitched on a sandy patch of ground in Al-Zawayda, in central Gaza, excited chatter swelled as five boys roamed around a virtual world. The youngsters, one in a wheelchair and the others on plastic seats, turned their heads, exploring the new surroundings inside their goggles: a land of green gardens, tranquil beaches and safe cities. One boy reached out and clapped his hands together, as if swatting a fly. Another, smiling, with his hand held up in front of his face, reached out to touch the scenery. One said a dog was running towards him and beckoned to it, calling out: “Come! Come!” “I see birds,” the boy in the wheelchair told an operator, looking around. One of the operators delicately put the blue TechMed Gaza headset on 15-year-old Salah Abu Rukab, who sustained a head injury during the war, asking if he could see the VR properly as he adjusted the buckles. “We feel comfortable in it, we enjoy it, and through it, we enter a garden, we enter spaces with animals and similar experiences,” the teenager said. Asked by the operator what he saw, he replied: “It’s all trees. Nothing but trees, grass and flowers.” ‘Positive results’ Mental health supervisor Abdalla Abu Shamale explained there was more to the VR headsets than

“And we need to give credit and honour the people who do that incredible work, especially our palliative care workers,” she said. “It’s entirely fictional. I think it just emotionally came from that place of sending my grandmother off,” added Anders. Anders, whose father is filmmaker Sam Mendes, wrote the script when he was 19, and showed it to Winslet for feedback. “I didn’t even know if I could write a screenplay. I just really wanted to give it my best shot. And the fact that it’s been made into a movie is insane,” Anders, now 21, said. Winslet, who has three children, said she had thought about stepping behind the camera over the years but raising a family kept her busy. “There just wouldn’t have been that space in my life, I think, emotionally and just energetically. I couldn’t possibly have added anything else into the juggle of it all. But this felt like the right moment, and I felt really ready to do it,” she said. In the film, family matriarch June (Helen Mirren) is hospitalised

Winslet attends the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 16th Governors Awards in Los Angeles. – REUTERSPIC

shortly before Christmas. Her husband (Timothy Spall), son (Johnny Flynn) and three daughters, played by Winslet, Andrea Riseborough and Toni Collette, and their offspring rush to

her bedside, bringing with them conflict and personal struggles, but also joy and care. “It’s such an honest look at the transition from life into the next. And it’s about family, the mess and

the beauty of the dysfunctional family system,” said Collette. Goodbye June will be released in select UK cinemas this Friday and starts streaming on Netflix on Dec 24. – Reuters

Mr Men Little Miss headed to big screen

VR headsets take children to world away from Gaza CHILDREN scarred by the war in Gaza are undergoing a therapy programme using virtual reality (VR) headsets that transport the youngsters to a world far away from the destruction around them. The VR therapy is aimed at improving the children’s

THE popular Mr Men and Little Miss cartoons will be brought to the big screen for the first time, after French production company Studiocanal announced a film adaptation. Studiocanal, behind the Paddington films, British production firm Heyday Films – which steered the Harry Potter movies – and Mister Men Limited announced the development of a “ Mr Men Little Miss feature film”. “The film brings the ambition, humour and world creation of Mr Men Little Miss to the big screen for the very first time,” Studiocanal said in a press release. The lovable, misfit Mr Men and Little Miss characters were created by British author Roger Hargreaves in 1971 and 1981 respectively, and his children’s book series soon became a worldwide hit. Mr Tickle, Mr Bump, Little Miss Naughty, Little Miss Sunshine and others have since been reproduced in several spin-off

television shows, cartoon strips and songs. A recent spin-off involved the colourful characters retelling British writer Agatha Christie’s detective stories. “Blending a rich heritage with fresh storytelling, the film will honour the humour, personality and warmth that made the original characters iconic,” Studiocanal said. The Mr Men Little Miss franchise was acquired by Japanese entertainment company and Hello Kitty-owner Sanrio in 2011. “It’s an amazing thought to think that the Mr Men and Little Miss are going to feature in their own film, it’s very exciting news. “My father would have been thrilled and I can’t say how proud I am of his creation that it merits an appearance on the big screen. It’s a big step up for Mr Small,” said Hargreaves’s son Adam, who wrote and illustrated new stories for the franchise after his father’s death. – AFP

Palestinian children wearing goggles and holding a joystick experience VR as a medical technology support team launches an initiative in the city of Al-Zawayda, in the central Gaza Strip, featuring therapy sessions using VR technology. – AFPPIC simply escape.

other words, “all children in the Gaza Strip, are in need of mental health and psychosocial support after two years of horrendous war”. The VR sessions rely on programmes specifically designed for traumatised children, taking into account their physical and psychological condition, and help them rebuild positive perceptions of the world. Abdalla said the children were “treated and accompanied through VR sessions, and when we integrated them into these techniques, they showed a very, very strong response and extremely positive results. “The speed of treatment, recovery and reaching stability using VR techniques was faster than in regular sessions. In regular sessions without VR, we usually need about 10 to 12 sessions, while with VR we can achieve results in just five to seven sessions,” he said. – AFP

“Through programmers, we are able to design games with therapeutic, preventive and developmental goals that help prepare the child or enable them to cope and manage their life more effectively. This method has proven its effectiveness over a full year of working with many children, including war-amputee children, injured children and those exposed to extremely traumatic events,” he said. A fragile ceasefire in the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas has held since Oct 10. The World Health Organisation says conflict-related injuries carry a mental health toll, and survivors struggle with trauma, loss and daily survival, while psychosocial services remain scarce in Gaza. Jonathan Crickx, spokesman for the UN children’s agency Unicef, said around one million children, or in

Mr Men and Little Miss is a popular children’s media franchise. – PIC FROM MR MEN LITTLE MISS