“You’re my hero,” Ben Stiller told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy today on a visit to Kyiv. “You gave up a great acting career for this,” the Severance filmmaker joked with the former Servant of the People star.
02.06.2022 - 21:23 / metroweekly.com
Ukrainian soldiers are wearing their pride on their chest with a unicorn patch as an act of defiance against Russia and the country’s attempted erasure of LGBTQ+ people.Out LGBTQ soldiers currently fighting for Ukraine’s sovereignty from Russia have been donning unicorn patches to signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Russia as a whole, that they won’t be silenced. Back in 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. During that invasion, there was an overwhelming push by the Russian military to remove anyone from its ranks who identified as a part of the LGBTQ community.The Crimean Peninsula has historically been one of the few safe spots in Eastern Europe to be LGBTQ.
But advocates worry that if Russia is successful in its most recent invasion, anti-LGBTQ laws will be imposed in the seized territories.Same-sex marriage is banned in Russia, and the country adopted a law in 2013 banning so-called “gay propaganda” — defined as any information that presents homosexuality as a normal occurrence in nature, or presents LGBTQ relationships or identity in a positive or even neutral light. The law applies to all ages, though proponents claim they adopted it in order to “protect minors” from being exposed to such information. Russia’s government has also failed to take action to stop human rights violations in Chechnya, an autonomous Muslim-majority region within the country where LGBTQ people, primarily gay and bisexual men, have been arrested and detained against their will, tortured, and in some cases, even killed.As Ukrainian soldiers fight back against the Russian incursion, the Ukrainian army has given out unicorn patches to LGBTQ soldiers as a symbol of solidarity with the community.
“You’re my hero,” Ben Stiller told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy today on a visit to Kyiv. “You gave up a great acting career for this,” the Severance filmmaker joked with the former Servant of the People star.
Naman Ramachandran Ahead of World Refugee Day on June 20, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency has released “Uprooted,” a powerful short film featuring and made by Ukrainian refugees now living in Germany. The film shows loud noises – a door slamming, the sirens of an ambulance, the bangs of a firework display – and how they can trigger terrifying memories of war.
John Cena has met a Ukrainian teenager with Down's syndrome who used him as inspiration while fleeing the country. The WWE legend travelled to the Netherlands to meet 19-year-old fan Misha Rohozhyn, who fled from Mariupol in March with his family amid the Russian invasion. During their journey, Misha's mother Liana motivated her son with a "motivational fantasy" that the Hollywood star would greet them at the end of their travels, and he was upset Cena wasn't there when they arrived in May.
Christopher Vourlias Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa’s latest documentary, “The Natural History of Destruction,” bows May 23 in the Cannes Premiere section of the Cannes Film Festival. The director returns to the Croisette one year after his last feature, “Babi Yar.