Trauma follows us like our shadows during daylight. At night, trauma envelopes us until we feel like we are drowning.
Trauma also lives inside us like a disease. Good people in Geneva, New York, and The Hague say there is a cure, but we can’t inject their statements.
14-year-old Shorouq Thabet is the only survivor of her immediate family, who were all killed during Israel’s genocide. When I first asked her how she was, she simply responded with “nightmare”.
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Adulthood is being forced on Shorouq, and she fights it by fantasising about being a young child again, when her only worry was wondering where her doll had wandered off to.
She longs to hear her parents’ voices; even their arguments could bring some comfort. They were killed in Deir Al-Balah following an Israeli attack on 17 March 2024. It was the last time she would sleep beside her mother and feel that special warmth. It was the last time she’d play with her younger sister, Shahed.
Destruction everywhere and in everyone in Gaza
Shorouq has been in therapy for some time now in the hope of learning to resist the darkness. Until now, there has been no relief. The smell and sight of destruction that is everywhere, and in everyone, in Gaza, open up the wounds again within seconds of leaving her therapy sessions.
On the night of the Israeli strike, she told me she had a strange feeling – that danger was in the room with them. She asked her mother to turn on a flashlight and hold her closely.
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At some point, she said she managed to sleep, but when she woke, she was in a hospital. Her mother had survived the attack and was covered in blood:
She was frantically checking on me, my sister, and two brothers, Mohammed and Ahmad. I could see her but not feel her. I was going in and out of the darkness.
It was the first time she had seen her mother in such pain. Her mother’s face, covered in blood, is the last memory she has of her.
Her mother didn’t survive, nor did her father, little sister, or older brothers. The full details of her family massacre were only told to her when she was out of the hospital after seven days of urgent medical attention.
Everybody was crying. Nobody was talking.
Now she lives with her uncle Wael and his wife. I saw many people gathered at their home when Shorouq arrived. Everybody was crying. Nobody was talking.
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A few days later, Shorouq told me:
At that moment, surrounded by so many unhappy people, I felt a change. I felt myself turning into an adult, with responsibilities. Now is not the time of dolls and dreams.
Try as she did to resist the pain, it was clear that young Shorouq just wanted to say a last goodbye to her sister and play together one more time.
Her lack of closure has been explored in her therapy sessions. The therapist asks her to draw what she feels. Sometimes, an empty paper expresses everything she feels.
She told me:
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I used to love playing with dolls with Shahed. After the massacre, I lost my interest in everything. I actually still have a small piece of my doll that I found under the rubble.
In her free time, when she is not in school, she feels the pressure, and the flashbacks come back. She tells me she is consumed with uncontrollable thoughts. Now she is enrolled in an additional school. The time spent studying is an attempt to escape from her memories.
The detachment may be helping. Recently, Shorouq told me:
I hung a drawing on the door in my room. It’s a drawing of a warm home with open windows. Each morning, I look at that because it looks like peace.
Areej Alghazzawi is a junior accountancy student at the Islamic University of Gaza. She hopes to become a teacher and an accountant. She had one year left of her studies before Israel’s attack put her hopes on hold.
Alghazzawi is currently displaced but still in Gaza and, along with her family members, struggling every day to survive.
Javier Bardem gave this year’s Oscars its most explicitly political moment while presenting on stage at the awards show.
The Academy Award winner was among the A-list guests at Sunday night’s ceremony, where he made headlines before the event had even begun with his outfit on the red carpet, posing for photographers while sporting a badge with “no to war” written on it in Spanish.
“I’m wearing a pin that I first used in 2003, with the Iraq war, which was an illegal war” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “We are here, 23 years after, with another illegal war, created by Trump and Netanyahu with another lie.”
He also wore an additional badge expressing solidarity with the people of Palestine.
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Later in the evening, he and Priyanka Chopra Jonas presented the award for Best International Feature Film, but before getting to his script, Javier declared “no to war, and Free Palestine” to rapturous applause from the Oscars audience.
At the annual TV awards, where he had been nominated for his work in the Ryan Murphy anthology series Monster, Javier walked the red carpet wearing a traditional Palestinian keffiyeh, and also gave an impassioned interview with The Hollywood Reporter as he made his way into the ceremony.
Calling out those in the industry who are scared to speak out, Javier lamented: “I know what I’m doing, I know what it can bring, it’s OK. Me not getting jobs is absolutely [irrelevant] compared to what is going on [in Gaza]. It’s that easy.”
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He added: “[People’s] silence, because they are afraid, is their support to the genocide.”
While her sense of humour is perhaps not the first thing that comes to mind when most of us think of Anna Wintour, she certainly managed to raise a smile while presenting at the 2026 Oscars.
Early on in Sunday night’s ceremony, the long-time Vogue editor came on stage to present two awards with Anne Hathaway.
Anne, of course, is the star of The Devil Wears Prada and its upcoming sequel, both of which feature the character Miranda Priestly, heavily rumoured to have been inspired by Anna.
Introducing the Best Costume Design prize, the Oscar winner told the audience: “A character’s costume is key to telling a story.
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“One could argue that one’s wardrobe in real life is also key. Does it make one appear elegant and attractive on, say, the most important night in Hollywood, and say when the most important people in fashion will be judging how one looks?”
Turning to her co-host, she continued: “Anna, just curious, what do you think of my dress tonight?”
By way of response, Anna simply donned her sunglasses and declared: “And the nominees are…”
Following this, the duo then announced the winners for Best Makeup And Hairstyling, with Anna intentionally misnaming her co-presenter “Emily” in an even more explicit nod to The Devil Wears Prada.
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LOL at this Devil Wears Prada joke between Anne Hathaway and Anna Wintour while presenting at the Oscars
In the original Devil Wears Prada film and the new follow-up, Meryl Streep plays Miranda Priestly, the editor of the fictitious Runway magazine, whose look and mannerisms have sparked comparisons with Anna Wintour for two decades now.
“I think that the fashion industry was very sweetly concerned for me about the film that it was gonna paint me in some kind of difficult light.”
Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada
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Praising Meryl’s “fantastic” work in the movie, she then insisted: “I found [the film] highly enjoyable and very funny. It had a lot of humour to it, it had a lot of wit.
“I mean, [the actors are] all amazing. And in the end, I thought it was a fair shot.”
However, the icon made a rare exception for her beloved co-star, concluding the tributes with a short blast of The Way We Were’s signature song, which won the Oscar for Best Original Song back in 1974.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the house after Barbra’s performance, and that apparently includes those watching along at home…
Babs has me in pieces – best deadies section for years 💔💔💔 #oscars
Fully sobbed when Barbara Streisand came out for Robert Redford Then i pulled myself together And cried when she started singing the way we were#oscars
Before her performance, Barbra recalled: “After I read the first script of The Way We Were, I could only imagine one man in the role and that was Robert Redford. But he turned it down because he said the character had no backbone and didn’t stand for anything. And he was right.
“So, many drafts later, Bob finally agreed to do it. He was a brilliant, subtle actor, and we had a wonderful time playing off each other because we never quite knew what the other one was going to do in a scene. And I’m thrilled that The Way We Were is now considered a classic love story – but it’s also about a dark time in our history, the late 40s and early 50s, when people were informing on each other and subject to loyalty oaths.”
Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were
She continued: “Bob had real backbone – on and off the screen. He spoke up to defend freedom of the press, protect the environment and encouraged new voices at his Sundance Institute, some of whom are up for Oscars tonight, which is so great.
“He was thoughtful and bold. I called him an intellectual cowboy who blazed his own trail, and won the Academy Award for Best Director. And I miss him now more than ever, even though he loved teasing me. He’d call me ‘Babs’, and I’d say, ‘Bob, do I look like a Babs? I’m not a Babs’. But the way he said it made me laugh.
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“Many years later, we were chatting on the phone about the usual – politics, art, our favourites – and as we were hanging up, he said, ‘Babs, I love you dearly and I always will’. And in the last note I ever wrote to Bob, I ended it with, ‘I love you, too’. And I signed it ‘Babs’.”
However, on Sunday night, movie history was made when a seventh occurred.
During this year’s ceremony, Marvel star Kumail Nanjiani was welcomed to the stage to announce the winner in the Best Live Action Short category.
After opening the envelope, he revealed that two of the nominees had received the same number of votes from Academy members, meaning they’d each be awarded an Oscar.
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“It’s a tie!” he exclaimed, before assuring the audience: “I’m not joking! It’s actually a tie, so everyone calm down!”
Kumail Nanjiani reveals there’s been a tie at the #Oscars while announcing Best Live Action Short, with “The Singers” and “Two People Exchanging Saliva” sharing the award.
He then explained that he’d be announcing the winners one at a time, first welcoming the producers of The Singers to the stage before the crew behind Two People Exchanging Saliva collected theirs.
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Uncomfortably, during the latter, the Oscars team attempted to cut the team’s acceptance speech short, before the night’s host Conan O’Brien then encouraged them to continue.
The Oscars’ most famous tie came in 1969, when screen icon Katharine Hepburn and then-newcomer Barbra Streisand split the win for Best Actress for their performances in The Lion In Winter and Funny Girl.
Back in 1932, the first tie at the Oscars came during the awards show’s fifth year, when Fredric March and Wallace Beery were both named Best Actor.
Technically, the former had received one more vote than the latter, but at this time, a rule was in place meaning that anyone within three votes of the winner would also receive an award.
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So Much For So Little and A Chance To Live then split Best Documentary Short in 1950, while a similar draw occurred 37 years later when the features Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got and Down And Out In America got the same number of votes in the Best Documentary Feature category.
Trevor and Franz Kafka’s It’s A Wonderful Life were the two winners in the Best Live-Action Short category in the mid-1990s, while the latest tie was just over a decade ago, in 2013, with Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall winning Best Sound Editing.
Oscars history was made earlier this year, when Sinners became the most-nominated film since the awards show first got going almost a century ago.
Ryan Coogler’s game-changing musical vampire drama scooped 18 nominations in total, ahead of One Battle After Another’s 14 nods.
Film fans will finally find out which movie will come out on top on Sunday night, as the Academy Awards are held in California, with Hamnet, Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Bugonia and yes even KPop Demon Hunters among the other movies to score multiple nominations.
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Who were the winners of the top awards at the 2026 Oscars?
The full list of winners from the 2026 Academy Awards is as follows – and make sure you keep checking back over the course of the night, as we’ll be updating our list as more are announced over the course of the night…
Amy Madigan has gone and done the unthinkable – and actually won an Oscar for a horror movie performance.
The veteran actor well and truly stole the show in the 2025 horror film Weapons, creating an iconic and deeply sinister character in Aunt Gladys and inspiring no end of Halloween costumes in the process.
Following an awards season that’s seen Best Supporting Actress prizes going out in a variety of directions, Amy came out on top during Sunday night’s Oscars – joining a rare group of actors including Anthony Hopkins, Ruth Gordon and Kathy Bates who’ve picked up Academy Awards for their horror characters.
In the past, the Academy has been notoriously reluctant to recognise horror performances, with many undeservedly losing out on the night – and others failing to secure a nomination at all.
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As we celebrate Amy’s success, here are 13 more performances that deserved more love from the Oscars…
Demi Moore (The Substance)
From the moment we first heard about Demi Moore’s performance in the graphic body horror The Substance, we were already intrigued, and when it finally hit cinemas last year, we couldn’t shout loud enough about how good she was in it.
Over 2025′s awards season, Demi won a Golden Globe, Actor Award and Critics’ Choice Award for her work in The Substance, before finally securing her first Oscar nomination more than 40 years into her career.
In the end, Demi’s work wound up being added to the long list of incredible performances that deserved an Oscar only to miss out – but there’s no question that her nomination marked a huge win for horror recognition at the Oscars.
Ari Aster’s first ever feature film Hereditary takes you on a truly wild ride (we’re still recovering from it seven years later, to be honest with you), and at the centre of it all is Toni Collette’s unbelievable performance.
With her role as tortured matriarch Annie Graham, she brings the deeply unsettling story to life, and showcases her unparalleled versatility as an actor with a performance that takes her character through every emotion under the sun, from unsettled to heartbroken to terrified to furious. And let’s not even talk about that iconic dinner party scene.
Frankly, Toni has been snubbed at the Oscars too many times to count at this point – but it’s interesting that her only nomination to date was actually for her performance in a horror film, when she was recognised for her work in The Sixth Sense.
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Shelley Duvall and Jack Nicholson (The Shining)
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Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall’s work in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining might now be widely considered two of the finest and most unnerving performances in horror history, but they weren’t so well-received at the time.
Though the reception to the Stephen King adaptation grew warmer as the years went on, critics were pretty lukewarm on it at the time, with Shelley even earning a Worst Actress nomination at the Razzies following its release.
In 2022, this was finally rescinded by the Razzies, who apologised publicly to Shelley Duvall, after learning of director Kubrick’s alleged treatment towards her on set.
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Anthony Perkins (Psycho)
There are a few things we think of when someone mentions Psycho. Those infamous high-pitched strings during the iconic shower sequence. The image of the Bates Motel looming in the distance. And, of course, Anthony Perkins’ unsettling portrayal of serial killer Norman Bates.
While Psycho itself was nominated for a string of Oscars the year after its release – including an acting nod for Janet Leigh and Best Director recognition for Alfred Hitchcock – curiously, Anthony Perkins did not make the shortlist for his work in Psycho, despite his portrayal of the slowly unravelling Norman Bates playing such a part in what makes the movie so gripping.
Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out)
Daniel Kaluuya managed a rare feat for the lead in a horror film in 2017 and actually got nominated for an Oscar, which is a testament to the strength of both his performance and the strength of Get Out in general.
But despite getting awards love from the Golden Globes, Baftas, SAG Awards and Academy Awards, none of these translated to a win.
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Absolutely no offence to Gary Oldman, or his performance as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, but as the years go on, it’s becoming clearer which performance is most likely to stand the test of time…
Daniel did eventually pick up an Oscar of his own just three years later, though, thanks to his work in Judas And The Black Messiah.
Sissy Spacek (Carrie)
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Like Daniel, both Sissy Spacek and her on-screen mum Piper Laurie were both nominated for Oscars for their work in the horror classic Carrie.
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Neither of their nominations transferred into a win, but there’s no denying that with her performance, Sissy created an iconic movie character for the ages that we’re still talking about 50 years after the film’s original release.
Florence Pugh (Midsommar)
We’ve already touched on Toni Collette’s much-lauded performance in Hereditary, but there’s another female lead in an Ari Aster project that deserves to be shouted about, too.
In fact, Florence Pugh’s Midsommar performance could well be considered the “yin” to Toni in Hereditary’s “yang”. Both films centre around women who suffer traumatic life events, and struggle to cope as the world around them becomes increasingly more unsettling, although while the latter is shrouded in darkness and shadow, the former takes place in broad sunshine, making the unfolding horror all the more jarring.
The year after Midsommar, Florence did score an Oscar nomination for her performance in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, which probably scuppered her chances of a Best Actress nod for the horror film, which is a bit of a shame, as her emotionally-charged work in Ari Aster’s film was every bit as deserving, if not more.
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Mia Farrow (Rosemary’s Baby)
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Often cited as one of the best horror films of all time, Rosemary’s Baby landed two Oscar nominations following its release, including a Best Supporting Actress win for Ruth Gordon.
But given everything she had to do in the title role, it feels a little surprising in the present day that the Academy would go as far as celebrating Rosemary’s Baby back in 1969, without actually giving its leading star Mia Farrow a nomination.
Lupita Nyong’o (Us)
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Lupita Nyong’o in Us
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By the time Jordan Peele’s follow-up to Get Out came along, the world was ready for more from the Oscar-winning screenwriter, particularly as Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o was on double duty playing two halves of the same whole.
Now, we appreciate that audiences and critics didn’t quite take to Us in the same way they did to Get Out, but we stand by it being an excellent film, and for everything Lupita was able to do with two completely opposing characters, we still think it’s a shame she never secured her second Oscar nomination for it.
Interestingly, her peers in the Screen Actors’ Guild did nominate for her performance that year, though the Best Actress title would ultimately end up going to Renée Zellweger for Judy, as did the Oscar.
Hugh Grant (Heretic)
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Say what you want about Heretic (to be honest, we still think of it as one of our biggest cinema disappointments of 2024, after a trailer that promised so much), but there’s no arguing with Hugh Grant’s transformative performance as the chilling Mr Reed, putting his charm to work in ways we never saw in his many rom-coms of yore.
The Fly may have won an Oscar in the Best Makeup category back in 1987 (which, interestingly enough, was fellow sci-fi body horror The Substance’s only win in 2025), but its Saturn Award-winning lead performance from Jeff Goldblum did not transfer to an Oscar nomination.
We get it, a film about a half-man, half-fly was always going to be a hard sell to the Academy, but Jeff’s performance is still being talked about almost 40 years later.
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Despite his expansive career, the Wicked star has, in fact, never been nominated for an Oscar for acting, although he was nominated as the director of the short film Little Surprises in the mid-1990s.
Tilda Swinton (Suspiria)
Tilda Swinton in Suspiria
It’s been seven years, and we’re still not sure we understand exactly what went on in Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Suspiria. But what we do remember is that Tilda Swinton played about 20 different characters, disappearing into each role as flawlessly as you’d expect, and received absolutely zip the following awards season.
Despite four Golden Globe nods and three from the Baftas, Tilda has just one Oscar nomination to her name, which was the same year she won for Michael Clayton.
There are widespread fears that energy bills could skyrocket later in the year, affecting Britons’ cost of living.
“It’s moments like this that tell you what a government is about,” the prime minister is expected to say in a press conference on Monday.
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“My answer is clear. Whatever challenges lie ahead, this government will always support working people.
“That is my first instinct – my first priority – to help you with the cost of living through this crisis.”
He will outline plans to help the public using heating oil to warm their homes.
The PM is expected to address concerns that suppliers are cancelling orders and increasing prices, too.
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He is expected to say: “I will not tolerate companies trying to exploit this crisis to make money from working people.
“…if the companies have broken the law, there will be legal action.”
The government has also promised to work with international allies to try and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, as Iran continues to block the major oil shipping lane.
The prime minister will say: “We will continue to work towards a swift resolution of the situation in the Middle East.
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“Because there is no question that ending the war is the quickest way to reduce the cost of living.”
US president Donald Trump asked Britain and other allies to send warships to keep Hormuz open on Saturday.
He also claimed “we don’t need” British aircraft carriers in the region.
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In response to Trump’s latest request, a Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “As we’ve said previously, we are currently discussing with our allies and partners a range of options to ensure the security of shipping in the region.”
He also distanced the UK from Trump’s decision to ease sanctions on Russia in a bid to help the global oil trade.
“We’ve not lifted our sanctions against Russia because it is very, very important that we continue to show solidarity with the Ukrainian people,” Miliband said.
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“This was an illegal invasion launched more than four years ago. Our solidarity with the Ukrainian people has been incredibly important throughout these four years.”