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Best-selling artiste Swift

T AYLOR Swift was 2025’s best-selling artiste of the year, the IFPI recently said, marking the sixth time she won the title from the organisation that represents the recorded music industry. The award follows the success of the megastar’s latest album The Life of a Showgirl , which according to Billboard, sold more copies in its first week than any other album in the modern era. Billboard cited data from Luminate. Swift saw worldwide engagement across streaming, physical and digital formats with the release of The Life of a Showgirl and the documentary of her tour The End of an Era , IFPI said. She was first named IFPI Global Recording Artiste of the Year in 2014 and then in 2019 and from 2022 to 2024. Swift has now won the award as many times as all other artistes combined over the past 10 years, which reflects her creative consistency and the long-term marketing strategies supporting her releases, the IFPI said in a statement. The award is calculated by looking at an artiste’s or group’s worldwide sales across streaming, download and physical music formats during the calendar year and covers their entire body of work, according to the organisation, reported Reuters. K-pop group Stray Kids took the second spot for 2025 while Canadian rapper Drake took the third place. o Singer takes top spot, followed by K-pop group Stray Kids, rapper Drake

Anime A New Dawn intertwines family with climate change JAPANESE director Yoshitoshi Shinomiya wanted his anime feature film debut A New Dawn to convey the value of preserving tradition and landscape in the face of technological progress, globalisation and industrialisation, he told journalists at the Berlin Film Festival recently. The film, the third Japanese animation to feature in the main Competition category after Spirited Away (2002) and Suzume (2023), follows a young man, Keitaro (voiced by Riku Hagiwara), as he grapples with the impending destruction of his family’s home and firework factory, once surrounded by greenery, to create space for a new highway. It intertwines personal themes such as childhood bonds and family legacy with wider topics such as the impact of climate change and urbanisation. The director said he thought the erosion of local communities and natural catastrophes such as the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011 are universal issues. The factory where Keitaro remains, holding out after his resigned father, brother and friend leave, was once close to the sea. Now it is facing an infilled bay – sharing the same fate of Shinomiya’s hometown as Japan worked to reclaim land from the waters. The animation, which alternates soft pastel colours with more vivid, mesmerising imagery – and even 3D illustrations – draws from Shinomiya’s work in the field of traditional Japanese visual art and includes physical tricks such as filming through holes in a black sheet of paper. The director said there was a component of nostalgia to that handcraft. When asked about how he expected artificial intelligence (AI) to affect the industry, Shinomiya said delays in the completion of the film made him wonder whether they should tap into the technology for backgrounds, which, however, proved to be insufficiently developed for the task. Elaborated backgrounds were key to the animation as they were evocative of the characters’ emotions, he said. Shinomiya, who has previously worked on Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name (2016) and The Garden of Words (2013), said he thought people will still find tradition and human creative work appealing, despite the rise of AI – or even because of it. – Reuters Shinomiya says he wants his film to convey the value of preserving tradition and landscape.

The award follows the success of Swift’s latest album The Life of a Showgirl. – AFPPIC

Channing Tatum draws on real-life parenting for film CHANNING Tatum recalled how he has had conversations with his daughter similar to those depicted in his role as a father in the sexual assault drama Josephine , which is competing for the Berlin Film Festival’s top prize.

The film opens with Tatum’s character Damien, going on a morning run with his eight-year-old daughter Josephine, played by newcomer Mason Reeves. Josephine runs ahead of her father and inadvertently witnesses a sexual assault, drawing her family into an uncomfortable court case while she tries to make sense of what she saw and how it fits into her budding view of the world. “I promise you, that conversation that I had with Josephine underneath the bridge is a conversation that I’ve had with my daughter,” he told journalists at a press conference. He recounted buying ice-cream for his daughter after she got into a fight at her preschool with a boy who was bullying her friend. “If someone is doing something that you are asking them not to do and they don’t listen, you have the full right to protect yourself. I will back you up forever,” he recalled telling his now 12-year-old daughter. Real-life inspiration Director Beth de Araujo said the film, which is based on her real-life experience interrupting a sexual assault with her father in San Francisco, draws on her hypervigilance as a person afraid of male aggression. “I was wanting to see what it would be like if I took it to an extreme level through the lens of an eight-year-old girl,” she said ahead

(From left) Tatum, de Araujo, Chan and Reeves (centre, front) arrive on the red carpet to attend the premiere of Josephine at the 76th Berlinale International Film Festival. – REUTERSPIC

She was a gift. She’s an incredibly talented actor who is so emotionally and intellectually intelligent for her years,” said de Araujo. Tatum and Gemma Chan, who plays Josephine’s mother Claire, said they were given time ahead of shooting to hang out and make Mason feel comfortable. “We had a little competition, didn’t we? Like who could hang on to the monkey bars the longest. Mason won,” said Chan. – Reuters

of the screening in Berlin. De Araujo said she hoped the positive reception at Berlin and Sundance, where it won a special jury prize, meant that she could make another film. “That’s always the goal,” she said. The director said that she found Mason while scouting for a girl to play Josephine at a farmers’ market in San Francisco. “Working with Mason was not a challenge.

Hagiwara voices main character Keitaro in the film. – PICS FROM BERLINALE