This multigenerational saga of an Iranian family fleeing to the US during the 1979 revolution is both funny and poignant

“She’d grown pale, her eyes frozen, like she’d seen her own ghost. But aren’t we all exactly that? Each the ghost of an unchosen path,” writes Sanam Mahloudji in her debut, a multigenerational story of five Iranian women from the prestigious Valiat family, separated by personal and political revolutions, and each struggling to accept the path not taken.

The narrative is shared between the five voices, as it shifts back and forth across 80 years. There is Elizabeth, the matriarch, who – not blessed with the perfect features of her sisters – becomes fixated on her looks (“this is the story of a nose”, she tells us). Eventually she falls in love with a boy who loves her back; unfortunately, that boy is the son of her family’s chauffeur: not an ideal situation in 1940s Tehran. Bowing to pressure from her father, Elizabeth eventually marries someone of her own class; frail and elderly by the time the 1979 revolution begins, she decides to remain with her husband in Iran. However, because the family is rich and high profile, and descendants of Babak Ali Khan Valiat, the heroic “Great Warrior”, as the revolution takes hold she insists that her two daughters flee the country for their own safety. Like many thousands of Iranians at the time, they choose to travel to the United States, the land of opportunity.

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Her dreams came true when she went from indie land to lauded pop star. But Self Esteem – aka Rebecca Lucy Taylor – only ended up feeling ‘miserable, depressed and crazy’. Now she’s back with a new look and her best album yet

Three years ago, Rebecca Lucy Taylor, also known as the pop star Self Esteem, released her second album, Prioritise Pleasure . It delivered her dreams on a glittering platter. It topped end-of-year lists, was named the Guardian’s album of the year, got nominated for a Brit award and the Mercury music prize, put her on high-profile radio playlists, sent her to the West End, where she starred in Cabaret, and secured her appearances on TV shows that she’d always dreamed of doing. At the end of it all, she headlined a stadium, in her home town of Sheffield. And then?

“I got so fucking pissed off and miserable and depressed and crazy.”

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This docuseries doesn’t just show the tale of the YouTubers who created content out of adopting a child – until they gave him up. It’s also a valuable indictment of our obsession with living online

Everywhere you look on the internet, people are doing things for attention that most of us might reasonably term “buck wild”. There are people eating the entire McDonald’s menu in one sitting, people willingly uploading slickly edited videos of childbirth (“My Labour Journey PART ONE OF SEVEN”), people making TikToks at funerals. All of life is in your phone – even, and in fact especially, the bits we used to keep to ourselves.

This online attention economy sets the scene for An Update on Our Family , director Rachel Mason ’s HBO documentary (Thursday 30 January, 9pm, Sky Documentaries), which centres on former YouTubers James and Myka Stauffer. The Stauffers were “family vloggers” – that is, they filmed and posted the minutiae of their lives with their children, from cleaning the car to newborn reveals. In May 2020, the couple shared a video reporting that they had “rehomed” Huxley, the son they had adopted from China three years previously, and who is autistic. Outrage, of course, ensued, as other creators on the platform mobilised to rage against the decision, which became the subject of wider online discourse for weeks.

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The Grammy-winning artists are celebrated in Frank Marshall’s lovely documentary. Plus: Atsuko Okatsuka is the comedian you need to know. Here’s everything to watch this evening

8.35pm, BBC Two

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Brady Corbet’s Oscar-tipped period drama mingles war and architecture, while the art-popster aims for sensual wellness with her new album

The Brutalist
Out now
Architect László Toth (Adrien Brody) flees postwar Europe and sets up in Pennsylvania, where he attempts to piece his life back together. Guy Pearce plays the rich industrialist who recognises Toth’s talent; Felicity Jones is his estranged wife. Hotly tipped epic, directed by Brady Corbet (Childhood of a Leader, Vox Lux).

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Exclusive: Scott McDonald is looking at budget cuts and axing the organisation’s presence in up to 40 countries

• Why the financial crisis at the British Council matters as UK pushes soft power

The British Council could “disappear” within a decade, harming the UK’s global status and leaving an international vacuum to be filled by Russia and China, unless the government acts to save it, according to the council’s leader.

Scott McDonald, the British Council’s chief executive, said he was looking at £250m in budget cuts, losing hundreds of staff and axing the council’s presence in up to 40 countries.

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Labour’s recognition of soft power’s intangible value should take in the crucial work of the British Council

• British Council could disappear within a decade, says chief executive

Something is jarring when the foreign secretary, David Lammy, regards UK soft power as so important he establishes a council to promote the country globally, while one of the longstanding British institutions devoted to bolstering that power is on the verge of a form of bankruptcy.

The financial plight of the British Council, and the collapse of its income from English language teaching during the pandemic, has hardly been hidden from view, so much so the organisation was chosen as one of the subjects of inquiry by the Commons foreign affairs select committee. The chief executive of the British Council, Scott McDonald, told MPs that the UK international cultural and educational organisation was at risk of disappearing in two years.

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Work that made its creator a superstar then mysteriously disappeared is mesmerising art lovers once more

It was commissioned by a Greek king, made its creator a superstar and in his native Denmark attracted crowds like no other painting before. Then it mysteriously disappeared.

Now, nearly nine decades after it was last seen gracing the stairwell of the royal palace that would become the Athens parliament, Carl Bloch’s masterpiece, Prometheus Unbound, has found fame again in Greece.

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Sundance film festival: The Past Lives and September 5 actor leads a beautifully made, if slightly too withholding, road-trip drama

Omaha, Cole Webley’s debut film from a screenplay by Robert Machoian (The Killing of Two Lovers), is very much a product of the Sundance film festival, both literally – the duo first connected here – and, for better and occasionally for worse, in tone. Spare, elegiac, quiet but affecting, this John Magaro-led character study is, fittingly, filmed and mostly set in the festival’s home state (for now) of Utah. It’s a tense family drama that mostly keeps its cards close to the chest and an ode, at least visually, to the liminal, fragile states one can enter on the road in the American west.

The bedsheets are still warm and the dawn light still pale when Ella, played by remarkable newcomer Molly Belle Wright, and her younger brother Charlie (a charming Wyatt Solis) pile into the car at the behest of their tight-lipped father (Magaro). He refuses to say where they’re going beyond a “trip”, but from the way Magaro hunches his shoulders and shifts his gaze, you can assume it’s not for pleasure.

Omaha is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution

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