Alfonso Cuarón had the audience of the Marrakech Film Festival in stitches during a wide-ranging conversation in which he revealed that he had never read a Harry Potter book before shooting “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” He also recalled turning down an offer to shoot a James Bond movie after having dinner with filmmaker Joel Coen.

Asked by Moroccan directors Alaa Eddine Aljem and Talal Selhami how he managed to put his personal stamp on the third “Harry Potter” film which, the moderators noted, is considered by many fans the best installment in the franchise, Cuarón replied that he basically had to pay the bills.  

“I had written ‘Children of Men’ that nobody wanted to do. I was unemployed. I was going to have a child,” Cuarón explained. “This film was offered to me, and I didn’t want to do it because I didn’t know anything about Harry Potter.”

Then, once Cuarón read the books, he said to himself: “There is something good here! I will give it a try.”

Cuarón noted that “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” turned out to be “the best experience making a film I ever had. I learned like crazy. It was a crash course in visual effects. It was a really pleasant experience.” And another great consequence of that experience is that right after “Harry Potter,” Warner Bros. then wanted to do “Children of Men.” 

Cuarón added that “Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban” also gave him the visual effects tools to solve problems that he had never been able to solve before.

But the thrill of making that blockbuster didn’t prevent him from turning down another similar opportunity.

“Ages ago I was offered a Bond film,” he revealed. “And I said, ‘Yeah, cool. Maybe Bond. I am going to do one.’ And then when the process started and I was going to shoot all the dialogue and stuff, there was a [separate] team doing all the action scenes. It kind of felt very weird.”

The reason he didn’t do it? “I was troubled about the idea of doing it,” Cuarón explained. “I had dinner with Joel Coen, and I said, ‘Joel, what do you think of Bond?’ And he said, ‘Oh cool, I enjoy Bond.’ I said, ‘Would you do a Bond film?’” According to Cuarón, Coen replied: “It probably falls into the category of a film I want to watch but not do.”

Cuarón continued, “There I learned the lesson that some films I prefer to watch and not do.”  

Facing condemnation from the United States and defiance from his own president, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze praised police on Sunday for cracking down on protesters who he said were acting on foreign orders to undermine the state.

Georgia, a country of 3.7 million people that was once part of the Soviet Union, has been plunged into crisis since the governing Georgian Dream party said on Thursday it was halting European Union accession talks for the next four years.

The EU and the United States are alarmed by what they see as Georgia’s shift away from a pro-Western path and back towards Russia’s orbit. Big anti-government protests have taken place in the capital Tbilisi for the past three nights, and police have fired water cannon and tear gas into the crowds.

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More protests are planned in Tbilisi for Sunday night, and local media reported demonstrations were taking place in towns and cities throughout the country.

Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday that an attempted revolution was taking place in Georgia. The former Russian president said on Telegram that Georgia was “moving rapidly along the Ukrainian path, into the dark abyss. Usually this sort of thing ends very badly”.

Medvedev, once seen as a modernising reformer, has reinvented himself as an aggressive hawk since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, often hurling dire warnings at Kyiv and its Western supporters.

The Kremlin has yet to comment on the latest events in Georgia, but it has long accused the West of fomenting revolutions in post-Soviet countries that Moscow still regards as part of its sphere of influence.

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‘Foreign Instructors’

Georgian Prime Minister Kobakhidze dismissed criticism by the United States, which has condemned the use of “excessive force” against demonstrators.

“Despite the heaviest systematic violence applied yesterday by the violent groups and their foreign instructors, the police acted at a higher standard than the American and European ones and successfully protected the state from another attempt to violate the constitutional order,” he told a press conference, without providing evidence of foreign involvement.

Kobakhidze also shrugged off Washington’s announcement on Saturday that it was suspending its strategic partnership with Georgia. He said this was a “temporary event”, and Georgia would talk to the new administration of President-elect Donald Trump when it takes office in January.

Deepening the constitutional crisis in the country, outgoing President Salome Zourabichvili – a critic of the government and a strong advocate of Georgian membership of the EU – said on Saturday that she would refuse to step down when her term ends later this month.

Zourabichvili said she would stay in office because the new parliament – chosen in October in elections that the opposition says were rigged – was illegitimate and had no authority to name her successor.

Kobakhidze said he understood Zourabichvili’s “emotional state”.

“But of course on December 29 she will have to leave her residence and surrender this building to a legitimately elected president,” he said.

Georgian Dream has nominated Mikheil Kavelashvili, a former soccer star with a record of hardline, anti-Western statements, as its candidate for president. The head of state will be chosen on Dec. 14 by an electoral college consisting of members of parliament and local government representatives.

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‘Foreign Agents’

For much of the period since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia has leaned strongly towards the West and tried to loosen the influence of Russia, to which it lost a brief war in 2008. It has been promised eventual NATO membership, and became an official candidate for EU entry last year.

But domestic opponents and Western governments have become alarmed by what they see as increasingly authoritarian and pro-Russian tendencies by the Georgian Dream government.

In June, it enacted a law obliging NGOs to register as “foreign agents” if they received more than 20% of their funding from abroad. In September, parliament approved a law curbing LGBT rights.

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The government says it is acting to protect the country from foreign interference and avoid suffering the fate of Ukraine by being dragged into a new war with Russia.

New EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas voiced solidarity on Sunday with the demonstrators.

“We stand with the Georgian people and their choice for a European future,” she posted on X.

“We condemn the violence against protesters & regret signals from ruling party not to pursue Georgia’s path to EU and democratic backsliding of the country. This will have direct consequences from EU side.”

With all the votes tallied on Sunday, the Social Democratic Alliance had won 15 seats in the 63-seat parliament, the Althingi — more than doubling its total — and secured almost 21% of votes, according to national broadcaster RUV.

The conservative Independence Party, which led the outgoing government, had 14 seats and a 19.4% vote share, and the centrist Liberal Reform Party 11 seats and about 16% of votes.

Three other parties also won seats. Social Democrat leader Kristrún Mjöll Frostadóttir, 36, will likely try to seek coalition partners to command a parliamentary majority.

Icelanders voted Saturday after disagreements over immigration, energy policy and the economy forced Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson to pull the plug on his coalition government and call an early election.

Counting was delayed in some areas by snowstorms that blocked roads and slowed delivery of ballot boxes to count centres.

Since the 2008 financial crisis devastated the economy and ushered in a new era of political instability, Iceland has been governed by multi-party coalitions of various hues.

Like many Western countries, Iceland has been buffeted by the rising cost of living and immigration pressures, and voters are taking it out on incumbent governments. Benediktsson’s Independence Party and its coalition partners in the outgoing government, the Progressive Party and the Left Greens, all saw their vote share and seat count decline, with the Left Greens losing all eight of its parliamentary seats.

Iceland, a volcanic island nation tucked below the Arctic Circle with a population of less than 400,000, is proud of its democratic traditions. The Althingi, founded in 930 by Viking settlers, is arguably the world’s oldest legislature.

Election turnout was high by international standards, with 80% of registered voters casting ballots.