Eurofile

The one French word my Mum knew was largesse, which can be translated into English as “generosity”. But why did she, and other country children of her generation?

For pretty much his entire life, Mendes was either in style or on the verge of being back in vogue, such is the world’s enduring love of Brazilian music

Some of the best science fiction is not so much about dreaming up futuristic technologies but imagining the kinds of societies they will engender

Four generations of women inhabit a landscape of wolves, fascists and devils in the Catalan writer’s haunting novel

As his own star rises, global noir writer Nicolás Obregón is raging at the state of the world

A book that collects the dreams of Germans – Jews and gentiles alike – during the 1930s

One design house used an AI model for its latest campaign. The photographer Rankin says everyone’s at it

A new exhibition charts humanity’s long, losing battle – there’s either too much or too little, and it’s always in the wrong place

Formed at the height of punk and revered by fans like Kurt Cobain, the Raincoats are the band that refused to die

The fashion giant put its models on the Milan runway in slippers that looked eerily Kohlapuris. Could the 800-year-old tradition finally receive recognition?

Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice is a masterfully savage comedy of murder and capitalist ruin

The film-making pair have already won the Palme d’Or twice – can they win a third?

I once fled my flat at every opportunity - but oil paints have taught me about the joy of being indoors

Aronofsky can miss the mark when he over-conceptualises. But this very entertaining gangland caper is infectious

Norway’s new wave is winning awards and acclaim. But will funding problems kill off the boom just as audiences take notice?

Benjamin Markovits’s Booker-longlisted The Rest of Our Lives wants us to cheer on a tedious man’s journey of self-discovery. I loathed every moment

The controversial band defied local critics and pro-Israeli protestors at a riotous gig in Paris

Sandy Baltimore’s name has surprising links to Gaelic-speaking Ireland, colonial plantations and Caribbean migrations

From a backyard shack in Kingston, Perry reinvented the idea of the recording studio – before burning it to the ground

In an age of far right disinformation, scientist Emma Monk wages war against the prophets of rage

Wuppertal, in western Germany, is famous for having the world’s oldest suspension railway – with one very large passenger

Britta Marakatt-Labba’s embroideries transform the herdspeople’s history into a textile protest poem

Book festivals, ragebait journalism and city boys in the country get eviscerated in Natasha Brown’s brilliant Universality

The director has given another self-aggrandising interview. He should be making better films instead

‘Scarcity mindset’ marketing made the collectable dolls a Gen Z cult, but ubiquity will gradually erode Labubus’ power

New York in the 1980s was riven by disharmony, corruption and excess. Jonathan Mahler’s new book explains how the city forged a would-be dictator

Cycling across London has fundamentally reshaped my understanding of the city

The etymology of the name of the Spanish village, and thus of the island, is of considerable linguistic interest

Considering the battles that raged within her, perhaps the thing about the singer that commands most respect is not her genius, but her persistence

The German philanthropist spent big on daring art and a stunning gallery – then waited for the world to catch up