The Netherlands and Denmark have much in common: both are rich, flat, windswept, laboriously democratic and industriously agricultural. Plus: bicycles. But there is one aspect where they have diverged in the past 20 years. Denmark became an improbable global culinary mecca. The local, seasonal New Nordic movement began with René Redzepi’s Noma and ended up inspiring a generation of chefs to forage, ferment and interfere with celeriac in elaborate ways. As with haute couture, New Nordic trickled down to the high street and so Danish supermarkets turned organic and introduced the populace to new products such as spelt and wild garlic.
Meanwhile, the Dutch food landscape remained a wasteland, so much so that my family and I holidayed there last year precisely because they knew that I wouldn’t be distracted by trying to find nice things to eat. In my head, there is always a better restaurant just around the corner and it’s a notion that has tormented my family for years.
Now, though, the Danes seem to be reverting to type. Beyond a couple of dozen properly wonderful restaurants – nearly all of which are in Copenhagen – the food landscape here is becoming quite lamentable. Beyond the capital, restaurants still serve stuff that they buy frozen in bags. Judging by the products that occupy the most real estate in supermarkets, the Danes are surviving on Dr Oetker’s frozen pizza and processed pork. Fresh produce has taken a drastic dive in quality over the past couple of years: hard, sour peaches are the latest abomination to join water-filled chicken, bendy leeks and suspiciously coloured salmon fillets on the shelves. Today virtually all of the supermarkets in Denmark are low budget; independent fishmongers, grocers and butchers are effectively extinct.
“The disparity between the restaurants in Copenhagen and what you see in the supermarkets is horrible – and it’s getting worse,” TV chef Adam Aamann (the man who transformed the classic Danish open sandwich two decades ago) told me recently. “Often, I go to the supermarket and I think, ‘I need to take photos of this and post it online’.”
Adam and I pondered the reasons for the regression in Danish food culture. Has Covid numbed our tastebuds? Was inflation behind the decline in organic consumption? He blamed the supermarkets which, he pointed out, have a stranglehold over the Danish grocery market. With a captive clientele, they simply don’t need to worry about quality or diversity of produce: they compete purely on price.
But I have another theory. As with the Dutch, might there still linger a latent distrust of sensual pleasure, a Lutheran disapproval of hedonistic indulgence, deep in the Danish soul? René Redzepi once told me that his fellow Danes consider food as fuel; he believes that their attitude is rooted in their parsimonious Protestant past. I thought that he was exaggerating, or at least that things were changing for the better, but it appears that I was wrong.
Recall Karen Blixen’s short story, Babette’s Feast, set in a pious 19th-century Jutland community scandalised by a French émigré who lavishes her guests with “sinful” gourmet food. What has changed?
This is also the nation that more recently invented Wegovy, a product intended to deny its user sensual pleasure; a drug created to stop people eating. Novo Nordisk needn’t have gone to all the trouble of harnessing that vindictive little GLP-1 hormone to curb our gustatory desires: Danish supermarkets are taking care of that all by themselves.
Booth is Monocle’s Copenhagen correspondent. While the majority of supermarkets suffer, some are doing things right – here is our rundown of the world’s top five. Still hungry? Monocle’s 10-point plan details how to make them feel inviting again.
Every summer the shores of Lake Geneva come alive with the music of the Montreux Jazz Festival. Created in 1967 to put the small town of Montreux on the map, the festival has evolved into an event hosting some of the world’s best and biggest artists in an intimate, picturesque setting.
Here the festival’s director, Mathieu Jaton, shares what makes Montreux a special place for a music event; who makes up the crowd; and the performer he’s most excited to see.
You recently announced Grace Jones as an addition to this year’s line-up, joining the likes of Chaka Khan, Raye and Lionel Richie. How do you decide on the programme?
We’re not like Glastonbury or Coachella, where you could have 100,000 people a day. The Lake Stage, which has a capacity of 5,000, provides an intimate experience with big-name acts. The goal is to create a line-up that merges the festival’s DNA with American soul legends. It’s something that we have achieved this year with Chaka Khan, Lionel Richie and Diana Ross. Quincy Jones, who co-produced the festival for three years, is essentially the godfather of the event. It is important for us to have Chaka Khan make a tribute to him. That said, it’s also crucial to have a range of music, from hip hop and rock to pop. Legends such as Neil Young and Santana star alongside Benson Boone, FKA Twigs and Noah Kahan. We want to lead the audience in the discovery of artists that they might not have heard of before, especially in Switzerland.
What kind of experience are you creating for the artists?
We are not an open-air festival with 20 stages. You need to buy a ticket for every concert, so it’s important to create a story behind each set and an opportunity for the artist to do something different. Chaka wanted to do something special for Quincy and that’s exactly what we love. Another very important feature on the line-up is the double bill. It’s not like an opening act or a headliner – it’s two main acts. The pairing isn’t obvious when you see the names together but when you dig deeper into their music, you understand. Take Hermanos Gutiérrez and The Black Keys. In terms of style, they have nothing to do with one another. But when you know that Dan Auerbach [the vocalist of The Black Keys] has produced the last two Hermanos Gutiérrez albums, having both bands on the line-up makes more sense. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dan joins the brothers on stage for a song.
Are you expecting a large number of attendees from abroad?
The festival was created as a tourist tool, so attracting people from outside Switzerland has always been important. Between 30 and 40 per cent of our attendees come from abroad, which is a big number when you have a total of 250,000 visitors. It’s a significant amount for a small place like Montreux, which has about 20,000 residents. Our largest audience is from Germany, then the UK, the US and Japan. France is in fifth place, which is funny because it’s the closest country.
You would have no chance of seeing Benson Boone and Sam Fender in the UK, other than in a stadium or arena. Here you can see them on a stage with a capacity of 5,000 – it’s a unique and exclusive experience.
How important is the setting to the experience of Montreux Jazz Festival?
You’re in Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva and at the foot of the Alps, which offers beautiful sunsets. Montreux has a heritage of British architecture from the early 20th century, when all the big hotels in the town were built. You can feel the spirit of The Great Gatsby here. F Scott Fitzgerald wrote part of the novel in Montreux. Strauss lived here and so did Stravinsky. Freddie Mercury, The Rolling Stones composed and recorded at the legendary Mountain Studios.
Who are you most excited to have playing this year?
There will be one big emotional moment for me — the Raye concert. Raye opened for Janelle Monáe at the festival last year and, at the time, she was just climbing the mountain. She is part Swiss and her grandfather lives here. Her performance was so emotional: she paid tribute to her grandfather and it was the first time that he had seen her on stage. Since then, she has become so big and we felt that we had to bring her back as a headliner on the Lake Stage. We normally don’t have artists perform two years in a row but we’ve made an exception for her because of her talent and her close ties to Montreux.
Israel’s initial attack on Iran on Friday was far from the first targeted blow against senior military leadership. It wasn’t even close to being the first such operation on what is now Iranian territory. In 653 BCE, the Assyrian Empire dealt with the vexatious kingdom of Elam by beheading the Elamite monarch, King Tuemman, and hanging his head from a tree – a literal decapitation strike.
Israel’s strikes on Iran, Operation Rising Lion, are nevertheless something new, enabled by the accelerating development of drone technology. A significant cohort of Iran’s military leadership – including the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the chief of staff for Iran’s armed forces – are dead, with inevitably disruptive effects upon the country’s capacities. All things considered, it also has to be imagined that persuading anyone to replace them will be a challenge
News of Israel’s strikes arrived on the second day of this year’s Globsec Forum, held in Prague late last week. Nobody was exactly astonished. There was much discussion on the first day of reports that the US was evacuating non-essential personnel from embassies in the Middle East. I suggested to one former European national leader that this could be theatrical stakes-raising posturing ahead of the next round of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme: “I’d be very surprised,” they replied. “You don’t do that if you’re not very serious.”
On the second day of Globsec, I asked a current European minister, not notable for their political sympathies to either US president Donald Trump or Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for their thoughts: “The reality,” they said, “is that nobody likes Iran.” In these circumstances, however, it is generally assessed to be unlikely that Iran would respond favourably to Trump’s renewed offer of a deal. It would be perceived as capitulation – because that’s exactly what it would be.
“Iran is not going to give up all chances of [uranium] enrichment,” Steve Erlanger, The New York Times’ chief diplomatic correspondent for Europe, told Monocle. “They’ve made it very clear that to do so would be to surrender, and that would be harder to do now. But Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy, has been trying to be imaginative, despite the pressure from the MAGA people around the president, to phase out Iranian enrichment – this idea of a consortium building a whole new enrichment facility on an island that Iran would share with Qatar, so that Iran can say they’re still enriching and the Americans can say no, there’s no enrichment going on. But now all this seems to be, if I can use the phrase, blown out of the water.”
Though Operation Rising Lion is new in some respects (the scale and the means of Israel’s strikes against Iran), it is not a departure from Israel’s doctrine of several decades’ standing where the nuclear ambitions of its potential antagonists are concerned. It has been 44 years since the Israeli Air Force (IAF) bombed the reactor that Iraq was building near Baghdad. It has been 18 years since the IAF bombed the reactor that Syria was assembling, with North Korean assistance, in Deir ez-Zor. And the prospect of such action has always been the unacknowledged backstop to all negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Iran, like a bewildering number of Israel’s nemeses across the decades, seems to have underestimated Jerusalem’s resolve.
Mueller is a contributing editor at Monocle and host of ‘The Foreign Desk’ on Monocle Radio. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
“The sun will come out again,” says costume designer Catherine Martin in a theatrical voice, as the brief spell of summer rain subsides and the sun begins to emerge through the tall windows of her suite at the Hotel Martinez in Cannes.
The French-Australian Oscar-winning designer has spent much of her life by the beach and seems to embody the optimistic, carefree spirit of the season. “During summer, you’re costuming yourself for what you hope will happen: to find yourself in a nautical place or inside a Raoul Dufy painting,” says the designer, who is dressed in a striped marinière Miu Miu tank top and a navy blazer thrown over her shoulders. “You want to feel connected to the seaside and the warm air. Prints become much more desirable at this time of year – a dress that slips over a swimsuit, a reclaimed-cashmere jumper that you can throw on when it gets chilly at night and beach clogs that you slide on after walking on the sand. It’s all about the feeling of barefoot luxury: simple and optimistic.”
It’s no surprise that Martin can instantly paint a picture of the idyllic summer wardrobe, imagining the characters and the worlds that they inhabit. She has been designing costumes for films such as Romeo and Juliet, The Great Gatsby, Moulin Rouge and Elvis for nearly three decades.
This summer, however, she has been spending time outside the costume department, conceiving her very first off-screen capsule collection with Miu Miu (its founder, Miuccia Prada, is a longtime friend and collaborator). She built the new range, which features deadstock fabrics, around an “imaginarium”: a visual diary of a trip to the south of France in the 1920s and 1930s, complete with archival images, collages and written artefacts. The result is a collection of sharp rowing blazers, featherlight slip dresses, cotton beach trousers and striped tops that will have you embracing nautical dress codes – and maybe even planning a trip to the French Riviera. A short film accompanying the collection’s launch, dubbed Le Grand Envie, marks Martin’s directorial debut: her partner, the director Baz Luhrmann, encouraged her to take the leap. It is set in a southern château and captures the hedonism associated with the region.
“What is it about the south of France?” asks Martin. “I understand why people have been coming here since the 19th century – or even earlier. There’s a softness to the light and the landscape is beautiful. When I first came to Cannes in the 1990s, it was the place to watch and to be seen. It’s different today but there’s still [an appeal], whether you are just sitting at a café sipping an Aperol spritz or at one of the exclusive beach clubs on the Croisette.”
References to the 1920s also encourage the wearer to look back and reflect – something that the slower months of summer call for. “This was a really interesting period: the computer, the telephone and the radio were all rapidly evolving during that time,” says Martin. “It was also a period of social freedom, with women really starting to express themselves. Yet there were also these dark political forces on the horizon and a desire to return to ‘traditional values’. We now find ourselves in a very similar period. But you have to maintain a sense of joy and optimism, no matter how bleak everything seems.”
You can do that by taking cues from Martin and immersing yourself in the romance of summer and its playful dress codes. “Glamour is romance and I’m a secret romantic – I believe in joy, connection and beauty,” she says. “Getting dressed and creating a character for yourself every morning is a primal human urge. We were decorating ourselves before we painted cave walls.”
You can listen to the full conversation, recorded live in Cannes, on Monocle on Fashion below.
How do you spend your evenings when the city is baking, the air is still and it’s logistically impossible to head to the mountains or down to the coast? Do you find a shady terrace, crack open a chilled Super Bock and hope that the temperature dips below 25C before midnight? Do you crank up the AC, hydrate and stretch out on the sofa with the remote control in hand? Or do you opt for a more natural approach to cooling and open up your windows in the hope of a cool, fragrant cross breeze?
By the time I departed our Zürich office on Friday the temperature was 34C, the city was hopping with pedestrians and cyclists pouring into town, and even though public schools don’t break for another month it felt like the first official summer eve. Before leaving home I had lowered the awnings and closed most of the apartment windows, save for two left slightly ajar to allow for some airflow. On return the abode was remarkably cool (the building is a brutalist concrete affair from the late 1960s) and within a few minutes the stage had been set for a perfect Friday evening: a bottle of Oeil de Perdrix was opened and poured, curry cashews from Mercès in Barcelona in the bowl, NRJ Maroc was pumping out French beats from the radio and full prep for a barbecue was on the go in the kitchen. By the time dinner hit the table at 21.15, the mercury had dropped, a breeze had picked up and boats on the lake beyond were heading back to their docks. Over a chilled red from a lakeside vineyard we reviewed the past week (Ottawa, Toronto, Zürich, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Barcelona – all in six days) and the plan for the weeks ahead (Paris, Geneva, Copenhagen, Biarritz, Paris, London).
At 22.00, dishes were cleared, swim trunks pulled on and towels draped over shoulders. Our local bathing spot is a three-minute walk from the front door and given the warm evening I was expecting the lawn and stone walls to be filled with Zürchers knocking back rosé, chatting and canoodling. While I like the sense of community created by our little swimming set-up, I was happy to find the parkette quite empty – save for a couple who’d swum quite far out. Shirts off, we dove in, swam out and looked down the lake at Zürich twinkling in the distance. Perfection.
Back on the platform, the other pair of swimmers were drying off. We nodded and exchanged a few words of delight at the magic of such a simple pleasure. Our upcoming quality of life issue focuses on ten cities that each excel in a specific lane and though we might not have a winner in the swimmable category, it should be a focus of every city hall to ensure that citizens have access to a cool, clean body of water where people can take the edge off, clear heads and sleep well. If you don’t live in such a city, the Monocle apartment is available this July. Drop my colleague Izumi (id@monocle.com) a note if you’d like to book.
As Israeli and Iranian artillery continues to roar over the Middle East, and the world’s attention narrows in on military manoeuvres and nuclear threats, a diplomatic alternative is unfolding in the Arabian Gulf. In air-conditioned halls, behind closed doors in private majlises (sitting rooms) and through discreet backchannels, Gulf states are working overtime to contain the fallout from Israel’s strikes on Iran. At the centre of this effort is the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – a country uniquely positioned between two combatting capitals: Jerusalem and Tehran.
Israel’s initial attack triggered a wave of condemnation from regional neighbours. Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha and Muscat have all issued carefully worded statements calling for restraint and warning of the dangers of escalation. On the surface, these reactions appear to be standard diplomatic protocol but beneath the language of international law and peacebuilding lies a more pragmatic aim: self-preservation. “The Gulf is scrambling to avoid a war between Israel and Iran,” says Mahdi Jasim Ghuloom, a junior fellow in geopolitics at the Observer Research Foundation. “These public condemnations are not just about principle. They’re about protection, distancing Gulf interests from Israeli actions in the hope of avoiding retaliation from Iran.”
The concern is well-founded. Israel’s campaign, which prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described as “ongoing,” has already claimed the lives of high-ranking Iranian military officials, including the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the chief of staff for Iran’s armed forces. While the intent might be clear, the consequences are anything but predictable. “If Israel is serious about this being a longer-term operation, then the Gulf is right to worry,” Ghuloom warns. “There’s always the risk that Iran, feeling cornered, shifts into a regime-survival mindset. That’s when things become dangerous, when you start seeing unconventional retaliation, proxy activation or even nuclear miscalculations.”
In this increasingly volatile landscape, the UAE’s approach stands out. As one of the only countries in the world that is maintaining diplomatic relations with both Israel and Iran, the UAE occupies a rare position – not as a passive observer but as a potential bridge. While no formal mediation has been announced, diplomatic sources suggest that the Emiratis have been quietly keeping communication channels open with both sides, even during the peak of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
This balancing act has not been without friction. Israel’s recent decision to temporarily shutter several of its embassies in the Gulf, including in the UAE, to prevent Iranian retaliation, has raised eyebrows in the region. “It’s frustrating for Gulf leaders,” Ghuloom says. “Closing embassies signals a lack of trust in Gulf security and risks alienating countries that could be vital conduits for dialogue. If Israel wants de-escalation, the Abraham Accords can’t just be economic – they have to function diplomatically too.”
Signed in 2020 with great fanfare, the Abraham Accords promised peace dividends: trade, tourism, technology. But their true test is now. Can they deliver stability in a moment of rising danger? “The accords were never just about flights and free-trade zones,” says Ghuloom. “This is when they have to work, to channel frustration, to communicate red lines and to quietly nudge both parties toward restraint.”
Beyond the UAE, Oman condemned the strikes as “reckless” even as it remains a vital interlocutor in US-Iran nuclear talks. Should Muscat’s influence wane, Washington might turn to Abu Dhabi. “If Iran becomes unresponsive,” Ghuloom says, “the UAE could be the next best bet.” Saudi Arabia, too, is treading a thin line. Having restored diplomatic ties with Tehran in 2023, it has issued strong condemnations of Israel’s actions while signalling a more pragmatic posture – one grounded in a desire to reduce regional tensions rather than inflame them. This isn’t just diplomacy for diplomacy’s sake. The Gulf’s proximity to potential conflict zones (and its enmeshment with global markets) makes it particularly vulnerable. The largest US base in the Middle East is in Qatar, while thousands of US troops are stationed just outside Abu Dhabi. Any escalation risks pulling the Gulf directly into the fray.
Then there are the economic stakes. “Even without a full-blown war, the perception of instability will spook investors,” warns Ghuloom. The Gulf’s financial and aviation sectors depend on global confidence. If the region is seen as unstable, that flows straight through to currency pressures, trade dips and nervousness in the markets.” Airlines such as Emirates and Etihad rely on calm skies. Dubai’s booming property market is fuelled by foreign capital that thrives on certainty. Sovereign wealth funds from Abu Dhabi to Riyadh are now deeply exposed across global markets. For the Gulf, even a whiff of instability is bad for business.
In other words, it is pragmatism, not ideology, that is the guiding force behind Gulf diplomacy today. And as the region teeters on the edge of wider conflict, it might fall to the UAE, Oman and Saudi Arabia to keep it from tipping over. Not because they are neutral but because they are interconnected – and because, in a fractured region, they are among the few voices that are still speaking to both sides. For now, diplomacy remains discreet. But the stakes are anything but subtle.
What makes a good city? That’s a question that Monocle has grappled with since its launch. Why? Well, in 2007, as we surveyed the multiple city surveys that were already in existence, we were suspicious about whether the people who compiled them had ever visited the places that they scored so highly. While we all love a diminutive, wealthy city where ambulance-response times are short and the education system only churns out geniuses, what about having some unalloyed fun in the urban mix? A sense of freedom? A bit of sex too, perhaps (all rather curtailed in places where folks are in bed by 10pm).
Rather than just harrumphing about this state of affairs, we made our own survey, underpinned by hard data and including statistics for the softer elements of city life too, such as the ease with which you can expect to grab a glass of wine in a bar past midnight or buy food on a Sunday. We also had plenty of input from our correspondents, a wise but entertaining crowd. Over the years, the metrics have evolved with the times – for example, we have focused more on nightlife and the health of high-street retail since the coronavirus pandemic. But in truth, even in our survey, a relatively small set of wonderful cities has consistently triumphed as other places that we love have stumbled at the final hurdle – a city that scores highly for personal safety, say, might miss out because its public-transport system is kaput.
So, this year, we’re deviating from the old format and shaking things up. The 2025 Monocle Quality of Life Survey names not one but 10 winners: nine category champions and an overall star. The issue drops this week – it’s on newsstands from Thursday – so I won’t give the game away now. But here are five ideas that we put front and centre and how they led us to some interesting choices.
1. Safe streets
Everyone wants to live in a safe city – but at what cost? In some places where the crime rates are low, your every move is tracked by the authorities. Even your phone messages are available to prying eyes. Other cities are safe and have tight social cohesion but are terrible at making outsiders feel at home. So how come this thriving – but not the richest – European city is welcoming, multicultural, low on surveillance and super safe? I think that you’ll agree that it deserves its prize.
2. Health
Why are some cities blessed with such impressive longevity statistics? And believe me, it’s not because everyone is at the gym all day and living abstemiously. As we looked at the topic, we were led to a city where people like a drink and often smoke, yet stick around longer than their European city rivals. How? We’ll reveal all.
3. Housing
The lack of affordable housing has become a pain point in every city. Migration, tourism, local governments that have failed to invest – the issue has a long list of causes. But it’s possible to fix this. We have found a city that has stayed ahead when it comes to housing its residents.
4. Cleanliness
Again, this is something that we can all agree is a good thing (well, some people still think that graffiti is cool but they can stay out of this bit). Now, while you need the basics – regular rubbish collections, successful recycling programmes – there’s nothing that beats having engaged residents who care. In Monocle’s survey, you’ll discover a city that has almost no public bins – or dropped litter.
5. Good for start-ups
How can a city welcome entrepreneurs and create an environment where some risk-taking and experimentation are supported? And be a fun and affordable place to operate from too? Well, this plucky city, never ranked in any Monocle survey before, has taken the top spot because it has the answers.
You can read the Monocle Quality of Life Survey in our July/August issue, which is on sale from Thursday. Also make sure to visit monocle.com for a whole week of city-making debates.
A balmy evening and a picturesque setting provide the perfect backdrop to watch a film alfresco. Here we round up three upcoming cinematic events worth keeping on your radar this summer.
1.
Il Cinema Ritrovato
Bologna
Every June, Bologna becomes a must-visit destination for cinephiles as Cineteca di Bologna – a film library and foundation that plays a crucial role in the restoration and rediscovery of historic cinematic masterpieces – holds its annual film festival, Il Cinema Ritrovato.
Three open-air venues in Bologna – Piazza Maggiore, Arena Puccini and Piazzetta Pasolini – along with eight theatres will be screening a programme of 454 films spanning every era of cinema. One of the highlights of the event are the all-day “cineconcerts”, which pair silent films with live musical performances.
This year’s edition will feature works by pre-war Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse, a cinema retrospective by Austrian screenwriter Willi Forst and a selection from the Scandinavian norden noir film movement. There will also be a celebration of cherished Italian classics from Luigi Comencini.
festival.ilcinemaritrovato.it
Il Cinema Ritrovato runs between 21 and 29 June in Bologna, Italy.
2.
Film Noir au Canal
Montreal
Film Noir au Canal is a free, six-week film screening programme dedicated to cult crime classics and takes place every Sunday at 19.30 in Saint Patrick’s Square. Crowds of families, couples and lovers of old films attend to share the social experience. To ensure that the surroundings stay picture-perfect, the festival team has organised more than 60 clean-ups of the Lachine Canal area since 2008.
To maintain the noir mystery, the programme is not released until a week before the festival, which also includes musical performances and impassioned talks from genre experts.
Film Noir au Canal runs from 13 July to 17 August in Montreal, Canada.
3.
Dokufest
Prizren
For more than two decades, international documentary and short-film festival Dokufest has been one of the most significant cultural events in the Balkans. There are eight screening locations around the city, ranging from the open-air Lumbardhi cinema to the walls of Prizren’s historic fortress. A screen is even set up on the Prizren Bistrica river.
More than 200 films will be presented during the week-long event, most of which will loosely share a central idea. Though the theme is yet to be announced, you can expect the selection to include some of the best in documentary and short film. Last year, five of the screened titles were later nominated for Academy Awards. This year the programme will also include a new short-film forum for the first time, in which cinema centres in Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania will be brought together to help encourage funding and co-production opportunities in the region.
Dokufest also hosts panel discussions, masterclasses and musical performances, as well as workshops to introduce children to the art of filmmaking. “We strongly believe that the medium of documentary and short films are powerful,” executive director Linda Llulla Gashi tells Monocle. “They can change people and they can change politics.”
dokufest.com
Dokufest runs from 1 to 9 August in Prizren, Kosovo.
Another aviation accident, another three-digit coded Boeing airplane. After years of bad press dogged Boeing’s 737 line, the 787 Dreamliner now faces its first major reputational hit following the fatal crash of Air India Flight 171 on Thursday. While the exact cause of the incident won’t be known for many months, the disaster immediately resuscitated whistleblower complaints about production flaws in the wide-body aircraft – and proved that new CEO Kelly Ortberg’s turnaround efforts at the aerospace behemoth still have a long way to go.
The maiden voyage for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner took place in 2009 at Paine Field, its flagship manufacturing facility in Everett, Washington. The Dreamliner doesn’t cut as dramatic a profile as the double-decker Airbus A380 and holds fewer passengers than the Boeing 777. But as the name suggests, it provides a smoother ride than its peers for long-haul flights with more comfortable cabin pressure, higher humidity, better air filtration, dimmable windows and anti-turbulence technology.
Like many global carriers, Air India has been stocking up on Dreamliners to replace an ageing fleet of 747s. While the Queen of the Skies is a beloved aircraft, the more fuel efficient Dreamliner is an ideal workhorse for flights between secondary airports, such as Thursday’s route from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick. Just last month, Ortberg joined president Donald Trump and Qatari emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani for the signing of a $96bn (€83bn) purchase agreement that includes 130 Dreamliners – the largest order for a single model of jet in Boeing’s history.
The blockbuster deal in Doha papered over lingering concerns about the Dreamliner, concerns that the Air India accident has now propelled to the forefront. The same year as the 787’s inaugural flight, Boeing broke ground on a final assembly line in Charleston, South Carolina, that could handle wide-body aircraft – only the third such facility in the world after Everett, Washington, and Toulouse, France. The move was widely interpreted as a jab at Boeing’s unionised workforce in Washington state, as South Carolina state law prohibits compulsory union membership. The powerful machinists and engineering unions crowed that the lower-cost non-union labour in South Carolina would build inferior airplanes.
Indeed, five years ago, Boeing discovered small gaps in the joins that could weaken the fuselage and production halted for two years to correct the issue. In 2024, whistleblowers testified before a Senate committee that Boeing had taken shortcuts and was “putting out defective airplanes,” an allegation the company denied by pointing to the thorough revamping of how it makes the Dreamliner’s carbon-composite airframe. The Federal Aviation Administration, which in the past has been accused of being asleep at the switch and effectively letting Boeing certify its own aircraft, oversaw the process. Media were also invited into the Charleston plant to see the improvements first-hand.
The Dreamliner that crashed on Thursday, however, was built in Everett by union machinists and delivered in 2014 (before Charleston fully took over wide-body production). Any potential problems with the flagship wide-body jets cannot be reduced to a simple question of union or non-union labour. There are perhaps deeper structural issues facing the inordinately complex engineering of a modern aircraft such as the Dreamliner; it’s also possible that a fluke, such as a flock of birds, caused the crash, as with Jeju Air Flight 2216 in December. Boeing will, of course, dispatch a crack team to assist US and Indian authorities with the crash investigation. In the immediate aftermath, Ortberg has the toughest assignment for any aviation CEO – damage control in the wake of a fatal disaster that has shaken the confidence of the public. Whether he can pass this test with flying colours will prove the true mark of the man who has taken on one of the most daunting leadership roles in global business.
Scruggs is Monocle’s Seattle correspondent.
For about 60 years, Europe’s largest wooden building (and the second-largest in the world) served as an orphanage, providing a home to thousands of children. In the further six decades since it closed, however, it has lain empty and is slowly falling apart. Now the Greek orphanage on Büyükada, the largest of the Princes’ Islands just off the coast of Istanbul, is set to be converted into a hotel. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, who owns the building, made the decision after years of trying to raise funds to restore it as a monument.
This raises a question: when historic buildings fall out of use and into disrepair, what is the best way to save them? Ideally, they would be preserved and then opened to the public. But that isn’t always possible. So is privatisation an acceptable alternative? The orphanage is one of the last surviving examples of the Princes’ Islands’ traditional architecture. Its new life as a hotel will preserve not only the building but also a style that’s on the brink of extinction.
The islands were originally home to members of Istanbul’s Greek (or “Rum”) community but since the 1950s there has been an influx of newcomers from across Anatolia and most of these intricately decorated wooden houses have not been properly looked after. On Büyükada, famous as the place where Leon Trotsky lived for three years in exile from Bolshevik Russia, many of the grand wooden mansions have been torn down and replaced by boxy modern apartment blocks – including Trotsky’s house. If conversion and privatisation help to save these buildings from concrete-loving developers, surely that is a better fate?
This is also relevant in Istanbul, a city where too many architectural marvels have been lost. The Haydarpaşa railway station, located on the Asian side of Istanbul, is a controversial landmark due to an ongoing debate over its future and potential redevelopment. Most of the building, which closed following a major fire in 2010, remains intact. Initially, there were plans to turn it into a hotel but they were abandoned as a result of local opposition. In 2015 the government announced that Haydarpaşa would be brought back into use as the terminal for a new high-speed train line connecting Istanbul and Ankara. That hasn’t happened. Today the terminal’s future remains uncertain.
The Peninsula Hotel, however, is a positive case study. Perched on the Bosphorus, it consists of two previously abandoned historic buildings and a faithfully reconstructed version of the old Bauhaus passenger ferry terminal. There is nothing to stop anyone from wandering in to take a look at its grand renaissance – and, judging by the crowds that often turn up without a booking for afternoon tea, it seems that people do just that.
While Istanbul has gone through a rocky period in recent years, there are green shoots of recovery: its tourism boom is reminiscent of the vibrant energy that the metropolis was so well known for in its heyday. Turning landmarks into hotels is a way to preserve architecture and create something productive. But the city should take heed from The Peninsula, a private development: no matter how exclusive a project, it should be built with the public in mind. A second life for the Haydarpaşa and the Greek orphanage on Büyükada should be part of that revival.
Hannah Lucinda Smith is Monocle’s Istanbul correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
