Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey might be the one to beat but a crop of competitors is starting to materialise

Reporting from fall film festivals used to be a more streamlined process – what’s good, what’s bad, what’s being sold, what has Oscars chances – but with each year, the season arrives with larger, more existential questions.

The 2025 run, from Venice to Telluride to Toronto, was notably underwhelming and took place months after Sinners went from box-office hit to legitimate contender and at the same time as One Battle After Another skipped festivals and went on to win best picture. The pipeline that had once birthed winners such as Birdman, Spotlight, 12 Years a Slave and The King’s Speech had no longer played as big of a part with Covid-affected Nomadland being the last fall festival film to win the top prize. Even without an awards hat on, there has been a more general lack of buzz, an excitement of something new that much harder to find as more films of considerably lower quality took up underserved space. If the trades are to be believed, a lot of it is down to studios choosing against the risk of bad buzz and potential embarrassment to A-listers because for every The Shape of Water or Poor Things, there’s a White Noise or Joker: Folie à Deux. So while this season might see new films starring Tom Cruise, Timothée Chalamet, Anne Hathaway, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Ben Affleck and Mikey Madison, none of them are braving a festival premiere.

Rhonda believes Ned ruins woks. He reckons he has famous chefs on his side. You decide whose argument is in flames

• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

He whacks the heat right up, which stains our wok and makes it really hard to wash up

The person doing the cooking is in charge of the temperature – plus a wok is supposed to blacken

Endless pursuit of wealth and power by western leaders led us here. What strikes me most is how many saw what was coming

The symptoms of decline are everywhere you look. On Sunday, Germany’s far right won another state election, taking nearly 40% of the vote in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. France is preparing a €54bn fiscal squeeze, which could turn the screw still further on a foundering so-called European social model. At the UN general assembly, Donald Trump once again threatened to “annihilate” Iran, even as the fourth failed western war on a Muslim nation this century has added more than $100bn to Americans’ fuel bills.

There is little dispute over the symptoms. The great fight of our age is over the diagnosis, and the right has been winning it for years. Its story is simple and, as the latest German state election underlines, effective: the west is dying because of migrants, Muslims, trans people, “woke” and the “deep state”. So when I told friends I was writing a book called The Fall of the West: How They Really Lost It, they worried I had shape-shifted into Liz Truss, who, after being outlasted in office by a lettuce, produced Ten Years to Save the West.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist. His latest book, The Fall of the West: How They Really Lost It, is published on 1 October. Order your copy at the Guardian bookshop

The new prime minister has declared he wants to end 40 years of neoliberalism. But is he really prepared to be that radical?

In May 2025, when Keir Starmer was still prime minister, Labour politicians, campaigners and journalists gathered at the Ministry of Sound in London to watch a series of panel talks and presentations illuminated by the lucid glow of club lights. The day-long event was organised by a campaign group called Compass, and the subjects included child poverty, the Murdoch-owned media and the rise of the radical right.

“We felt as though the Labour government was failing, and needed to be pulled into the 21st century,” Neal Lawson, the founder of Compass, told me. The Starmer government’s support for the Conservatives’ two-child benefit cap, its equivocating stance on Gaza and its emulation of far-right rhetoric – crystallised in a speech on immigration, during which the prime minister suggested Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers” – were causing Labour supporters to rapidly desert their party. “The Starmer project was so obviously intellectually bankrupt. He was personally so disinterested in ideas and big thinking that I thought, this is never going to fly,” Lawson said.

Furnace Brook in East Sussex was home to carp, tench, bream, roach and trout – and 15 trailer-loads had to be buried. The mystery led to a neighbouring farm, and a story of waste, pollution and dirty rivers that reveals a lot about Britain today

When Alistair and Diane Gould bought Furnace Brook in 2013, they had big plans. It was an idyllic spot: a stream-fed fishing lake nestled in a secluded valley in the High Weald, East Sussex, surrounded by woodland and fields. “People loved to come fishing here because it’s so beautiful,” says Diane. “Some of them had been coming for so many years that they got to know the individual fish.”

Diane moved here from Kent in 2000, when Furnace Brook was owned by a distant relative. Her two younger sons, then 10 and 14, flourished. They would chat to the anglers about the fish they were catching and throwing back in, and sell them bacon sandwiches. Her elder son, Simon, moved from London to join them in 2006 and became a keen angler himself, and then the fishing manager, or bailiff, looking after the fish and the landscape around the lake.

A conflict that began with tanks and then artillery is now pivoting around a new generation of drones focused on military, industrial, economic and civilian targets

Finally, in the dead of night, the threat above has passed. The rain has eased and the Ukrainian drones are ready, prepared by a ground crew shrouded in hard-to-detect green and red lights. A small succession of Ukrainian Fire Point FP-2 craft, miniature monoplanes with a 6-metre wingspan and more than 100kg of explosive, line up for an attack mission into occupied Luhansk, over 200 miles away.

The drone’s main piston engine is a familiar scooter’s buzz, but its launch booster is something else. The jet sound reverberates, almost painfully. A burst of fire lurches into the distance, the last of which signifies it is time for Ukraine’s 413 Raid drone regiment to pack and go.

The launch of an FP-2 drone during the mission into occupied Luhansk

Xi arrived at the White House on Thursday morning ahead of major talks, which are expected to cover trade, AI, Taiwan and more

In the first row in front of the leaders sit US vice-president JD Vance and his wife Usha Vance, Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her daughter Arabella, US secretary of state Marco Rubio, treasury secretary Scott Bessent, defence secretary Pete Hegseth and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick.

Donald Trump is speaking now. He notes that Xi is the first Chinese leader to make a second formal visit to the White House, and says the two have “forged a truly great friendship” since Trump was first elected in 2016.

Longtime president of Palestinian Authority gave his speech via a pre-recorded video for the second year in a row

The Russian foreign minister Sergei ⁠Lavrov has been spotted speaking to officials on the sidelines of the general assembly. He has already spoken to the US secretary of state Marco Rubio and is scheduled to address the general assembly on Saturday. Meanwhile his country has continued bombing Ukraine, where at least seven people were killed and a further 12 people injured in a Russian strike on a farm in the north-eastern region of Kharkiv. My colleague Jakub Krupa has the latest over on our Europe live blog here.

To follow Donald Trump’s movements today, including his talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, my colleague Chris Hippensteel has the latest over on our US politics live blog here:

Mick Ferris was crushed to death when the 130kg pane fell 26 storeys from the Corniche housing development

Two companies have been fined a total of £1.3m over health and safety breaches after a coach driver was killed by a falling window pane.

Mick Ferris, 53, was crushed when a window fell 26 storeys from the Corniche, a luxury development in Vauxhall, London, on 2 October 2018.

Polling suggests Andy Burnham is attracting progressives back to Labour, motivated by desire to stop Nigel Farage

• How Labour’s majority depends on five progressive voter types – in charts

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Progressive voters could push Reform UK into fourth place and put Labour within touching distance of a majority if tactical voting is widespread at the next election, a major poll has found.

Andy Burnham is beginning to attract a significant number of left-leaning voters back to Labour, motivated by a desire to stop Nigel Farage, the results suggest.