Construction Maison

T he young men on powerful motorbikes had been coming and going for months, the throbbing sound of Kawasaki engines and the scattering of stones on the track leading to their country house in Alcanar, eastern Spain, announcing their arrival. Neighbours doubted the men, mostly young-looking and all seemingly of north African origin , had rented the house as a holiday home – despite the views out across the sparkling Mediterranean from this ramshackle estate of properties surrounded by scrub, pines and small olive groves . But they knew that Banco Popular had repossessed it and, having lived through a destructive, loan- fuelled property crash , Spaniards tend not to feel much concern when such properties are squatted. “Perhaps someone should have called the police,” said Carmen Circiumaru, who lives a few doors away. “But they never did anything that seemed especially suspicious.” Indeed, the young men, and at least one older, bearded man who sometimes appeared here, were quiet and respe...

The Safdie Brothers Are Classic New York Hustlers And their movies might make them legends. Before deciding he wanted to make a Safdie Brothers movie , the erstwhile heartthrob Robert Pattinson hadn ’t actually seen a Safdie Brothers movie . It was one still image — of the lead actress from their 2014 addiction drama Heaven Knows What — that led him to pick up the phone. “He said, ‘I wanna be on a movie set that had the energy that I imagine this had,’” Benny, 31, says. “Little did he know, there was no movie set,” Josh, 33, laughs. Adapted from the street life of its star, Arielle Holmes, Heaven Knows What is a breathless, booming piece of work — somehow both a plotless character study built on mumbly dialogue and stolen shots, and a punch to the face. “We were just this weird little crew making this movie in a very serious fashion.” For over a decade, that’s been the mission statement. The Safdies split a schizophrenic childhood on either side of the East River, with a dutifu...

Regeni was undeterred. Proficient in five languages, he was insatiably curious and exuded a low-intensity charm that attracted a wide circle of friends. From 12 to 14, he served as youth mayor of his hometown, Fiumicello. He prided himself on his ability to navigate different cultures, and he relished Cairo ’s unruly street life : the smoky cafes, the endless hustle, the candy- colored party boats that plied the Nile at night. He registered as a visiting scholar at American University in Cairo and found a room in Dokki, a traffic-choked neighborhood between the Pyramids and the Nile, where he shared an apartment with two young professionals : Juliane Schoki, who taught German, and Mohamed El Sayad , a lawyer at one of Cairo’s oldest law firms . Dokki was an unfashionable address, but it was just two subway stops from downtown Cairo with its maze of cheap hotels, dive bars and crumbling apartment blocks encircling Tahrir Square . Regeni soon befriended writers and artists and practi...