‘Barbie’ Banned In Lebanon For ‘Promoting Homosexuality’

Anghami, the Arab world’s answer to Spotify, is eyeing further expansion following a fresh $5 million investment by SRMG Ventures.

still having issues communicating. In this exclusive clip from Sunday's new episode of, the couple go on a romantic getaway in the Philippines before he has to leave to go back to America, but David is disheartened due to Sheila not progressing much when it comes to learning sign language.David was born deaf and Sheila also has trouble hearing due to a childhood accident, which is how they connected online. Although David's trip to the Philippines to meet Sheila was completely turned upside down after her mother unexpectedly died, their relationship has progressed to the point where David wants to propose.

Refresh for latest…: It’s been another very busy weekend at the international box office with milestones and great holds, as well as a new entry and local-language movies adding to the mix. 

With Tuesday’s grosses, Illumination/Nintendo/Universal’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie has crossed the $100M (13.74B yen) mark in Japan. In doing so, it becomes Universal’s top title ever there. In local currency, Mario overtakes Top Gun: Maverick as the No. 6 Hollywood film of all time in Japan, and is the No. 1 studio picture since the beginning of the pandemic.

Barbie has been banned in multiple countries following its release.Starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, the fantasy comedy has become the second highest-grossing film of 2023 worldwide behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie, passing the $1billion mark earlier this month at the box office.The film’s success also crossed another milestone, becoming the highest-grossing live-action movie solely directed by a woman.Ahead of its release in July, Barbie was banned in Vietnam due to a scene featuring a map depicting China’s contested territorial claims in the South China Sea.As reported by Reuters, the scene shows “an offending image” of the “nine-dash line”, which is used on Chinese maps to illustrate its claims over large areas of the South China Sea, which is contested by Vietnam.A number of films have recently been banned in the country for the same reason, including Sony’s Uncharted and Dreamworks’ animated film Abominable.Kuwait subsequently banned Barbie after the film promoted “ideas and beliefs that are alien to the Kuwaiti society and public order”, according to Lafy Al-Subei’e, an under secretary of the Ministry for Press and Publication in the country (via the New York Times).Around the same time (August 9), Lebanon’s culture minister, Mohammad Mortada, made moves to ban Barbie, saying that the film was found to “promote homosexuality and sexual transformation”.

Ellise Shafer “Barbie” has been banned in Algeria in its third week of release, according to Reuters. In a statement to the news site, an unnamed “official source” said that the film “promotes homosexuality and other Western deviances” and “does not comply with Algeria’s religious and cultural beliefs.” The news was first reported by local site 24H Algerie on Monday, which wrote that the North African country’s Ministry of Culture and Arts had asked theaters showing the film to immediately remove it from their schedules.

Algerian authorities have pulled runaway box office hit Barbie from local cinemas over its “damaging morals”.

CMU’s sister media ThreeWeeks is currently covering the Edinburgh Festival, the world’s biggest cultural event, which takes over the Scottish capital for three weeks with a packed programme of comedy, theatre, music, musicals, dance, cabaret, spoken word and a whole lot more.Here in the CMU Daily we’ll pick out some of the highlights of this year’s coverage, including interviews with people who are performing there this year. Today Victor Esses, who is performing a show called ‘The Death & Life Of All Of Us’.“When I was nineteen, I interviewed my great aunt, Marcelle, in Rome, after she lost touch with the family for 30 years”, he explains.

David Byrne and Fat Boy Slim’s historical musical Here Lies Love is currently running on Broadway in New York and, last month, NME attended an exclusive preview of the show.Based on the duo’s album of the same name – which was released in 2010 and featured a host of guest vocalists, including Florence + The Machine’s Florence Welch, Santigold, and Tori Amos – Here Lies Love tells the sensational and true story of Imelda Marcos.Marcos was the wife of dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the country’s “first lady” from 1965 to 1986. An all-Filipino cast, quickly shifting immersive stage design (stagehands in pink jumpsuits directed the crowd as the catwalk took on different configurations during the show) and state-of-the-art sound technology help bring the biography to life.The Broadway Theatre, where the musical has been running in previews since June 17 before opening on July 20, has been transformed into a retro club, with the orchestra converted into a standing-room-only nightclub (all 900 of the seats that are typically housed there have been removed) under a towering mirror ball and fuschia neon lights in homage to Studio 54.

After another weekend at the top of the box office, rumours are emerging that a “Barbie” sequel is in the works.

Brent Lang Executive Editor “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” sank without a trace over its opening weekend, going to a watery grave with just $6.5 million. The period horror film, which centers on one chapter of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” namely the bit where his coffin gets transported from Transylvania to England, was distributed by Universal. It’s the studio’s second stab at reviving the world’s most famous vampire, with last spring’s “Renfield,” a campy take on the bloodsucker, also collapsing at the box office.

Vanna White will not be on screen for five upcoming episodes of "Wheel of Fortune," but her absence is not permanent. White was sick during a day of taping the show's "Teachers Week," Fox News Digital has learned.The taping of the episodes couldn't be rescheduled due to the academic school year starting. In sticking to the theme of the episodes, Bridgette Donald-Blue, the 2023 California Teacher of the Year, filled in for White while she recovered from an illness.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International The Venice Film Festival is rolling out a juried impact award that will mark the first time a major film festival has awarded a prize focused solely on impact. Impact campaigns are crafted around documentaries and some narrative films that have strong social or political messages that can inspire action among audiences and the industry at large.

Barbie movie has been banned in Kuwait and now faces calls for a ban in Lebanon amid complaints in the Arab nations about the film’s social values.Kuwait’s state news agency said that the nation acted to protect the country’s “public ethics”, while Lebanon’s culture minister accused the film of “promoting homosexuality”.The film is however still being shown in other conservative parts of the region, including Saudi Arabia.Barbie, which is directed by Greta Gerwig and stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, has grossed more than $1bn (£784m) worldwide within weeks of its release.Lafi al-Subaiei, the head of Kuwait’s board of film classification, said that the board usually asks for movie scenes to be cut if they are deemed to flout the country’s culture. But when a film promotes behaviour the state considers unacceptable, it is banned outright.The film “promulgate[s] ideas and beliefs that are alien to Kuwaiti society and public order”, a spokesman for the Kuwaiti Ministry of Information said (via BBC News).On Wednesday, the Lebanese Culture Minister Mohammad Mortada asked the interior ministry to “take all necessary measures to ban” Barbie.He said the film “promotes homosexuality and transsexuality… supports rejecting a father’s guardianship, undermines and ridicules the role of the mother, and questions the necessity of marriage and having a family”.Meanwhile, in the US, comedian and actor Marc Maron recently hit out at the film’s conservative critics, describing them as “insecure babies”.“The fact that certain men took offence to the point where they, you know, tried to build a grift around it in terms of their narrative as right wing [expletive] is so embarrassing for them.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Lebanon, once thought of as among the most liberal parts of the Middle East, is poised to ban global hit movie “Barbie.” More conservative Kuwait said Wednesday that it had gone ahead with a ban due to its promotion of homosexuality. Lebanon’s culture minister Mohammad Mortada said on Wednesday that the Warner Bros. film was found to “promote homosexuality and sexual transformation” and “contradicts values of faith and morality” by diminishing the importance of the family unit.

topped $1 billion in global ticket sales, some countries still aren’t on board.The bubblegum pink flick won’t see a premiere in Kuwait to protect “public ethics and social traditions,” Reuters reported.Lafi Al-Subaie, chairman of the film censorship committee in Kuwait, has accused “Barbie” of “carrying ideas that encourage unacceptable behavior and distort society’s values,” according to the Hollywood Reporter, which cited local media reports. And in Lebanon, per Reuters, the film has been accused of “promoting homosexuality.”Minister Mohammad Mortada, who is supported by the powerful political party and militant group Hezbollah, said the movie was found to “promote homosexuality and sexual transformation” and “contradicts values of faith and morality,” as it lessens the “importance of the family unit.”Because of Mortada’s statements, Lebanon’s interior minister, Bassam Mawlawi, has asked the General Security’s censorship committee to review the film and give its recommendation, according to Reuters.The Post reached out to Warner Bros.

The Barbie movie isn’t going to be found in Lebanon anytime soon.

Deadline has confirmed that Warner Bros’ billion-dollar grossing Barbie won’t be getting a release in Kuwait, and it’s skating on thin ice in Lebanon.

, Sheila says she needs David's help financially as she has no job, but is embarrassed to ask him and doesn't want him to think she's only dating him for money.Sheila and David connected online and they are both hard of hearing. While Sheila lost her hearing after an accident in her childhood and uses a hearing aid and can speak, David was born deaf and is mute. David traveled to the Philippines to meet Sheila, but apart from the two having trouble communicating because she doesn't know sign language, they were also rocked by a tragedy when Sheila's mother died unexpectedly just one day after meeting him after she fell down the stairs in Sheila's family's rundown house.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Ryu Seung-wan’s female-led crime caper “Smugglers” topped the South Korean box office for a second weekend, ahead of new release title “Ransomed.” “Smugglers” enjoyed a strong hold in its second weekend of release and commanded 42% market share. It delivered $7.09 million, a drop of only 20% on its opening weekend, giving a 12-day cumulative of $26.2 million, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic).