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Rebecca Lenkiewicz on Moving From Writing to Directing With ‘Hot Milk’: ‘I’d Been Feeling a Sadness in Giving Scripts Away’
There are numerous first time directors at this year’s Berlinale, but few come with the sort of indie film credits on Rebecca Lenkiewicz‘s resume.
The British playwright and screenwriter had worked on the script for Pawel Pawlikowski’s Oscar-winning “Ida” alongside the director, on “Disobedience” with Sebastián Lelio and on “Colette” with Wash Westmoreland, before going it alone to turn Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s book about their industry-shaking Harvey Weinstein expose into the script that would become Maria Schrader’s “She Said” in 2022.
But with “Hot Milk,” which bowed at the Palaste on Friday, she moved closer to the camera and made it her directorial debut. Adapted (by Lenkiewicz) from Deborah Levy’s book and shot in Greece, the story is set under the hot Spanish summer and follows Sofia, a young woman (Emma Mackey) in a co-dependent relationship with her wheelchair-bound mother Rose (Fiona Shaw) as the two travel to a sun-soaked seaside town to meet an enigmatic healer (Vincent Perez) who may just have a miracle cure. But while there, Sofia meets the free-spirited yet damaged Ingrid (Vicky Krieps) and find herself falling wildly in love. “It’s incredibly intense,” notes Lenkiewicz. “And then she goes to Greece to see her father, who she hasn’t seen for years and it all just kind of explodes.”
Speaking to Variety, the writer-turned-writer/director discusses why it felt like the right time to make the leap and being “blessed” with a “triptych of women” on screen.
Am I right in thinking that you were originally asked to adapt the book ‘Hot Milk’ before you came on board as director as well?
Actually, I went into the meeting and, I hadn’t really planned to say this, but I said I would adapt it if I could direct it. Christine Langan took that in. I’d been feeling for a long time a sadness in giving scripts away. And especially with this book, it felt incredibly female. I could see it. I could feel it. So I just really wanted to do it. I left that with Christine and she came back to me and said: ‘Yeah, let’s try.’
Was it something particular about ‘Hot Milk’ or simply that it was the time to direct?
I think it was both. But I think it was also how fragile and robust the female heroine was — and I felt I could relay that well. I connected to each of the characters. I could also see the casting. So I just felt very strongly that I wanted it to stay with me.
And it wasn’t anything to that you got to shoot in the sunshine in Greece?
No. Ha! Greece was amazing, but it was 45 degrees (113F). The Greek team sort of said to us, you can’t shoot in August, it’s crazy. And we thought, perhaps they’re being a bit dramatic. And we went there and there was wildfires. But it was the most incredible time and the most incredible place to shoot.
Were you hands on with the casting? You’ve got a mighty trio in Emma Mackey, Vicky Kreips and Fiona Shaw.
With that triptych of women I’m so blessed. They’re just amazing actresses and incredible women on set. And each of them are quite different actresses. So it was interesting to see the different processes coming together.
So how was your first experience directing?
It was wonderful. I loved it. But only because everyone around me was so incredibly supportive. Technically, they helped me. I had a brilliant relationship with Christopher Blauvelt, the cinematographer. The producers guided me beforehand — Christine Langan and Kate Glover were amazing. I just had this body of artists and crew who were just so encouraging and supportive. I knew what I wanted to make and I could see it and feel it and hear it. So everyone was on board with that.
Did it give you any newfound respect for directing? I spoken to a lot of actors who have gone behind the camera and a lot of them said that they came of it realising just how much the director has on their plate.
It did. Just the amount of responsibility, that you’re carrying from day one to the end, is huge. Vincent Perez is a brilliant director and an actor in our film. On the last day of the shoot, I said ‘We’re finished.’ And he said, ‘No, you haven’t finished.’ But it’s true — there’s so many processes of the edit. And now we’ve got the birth to come.
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday granted a preliminary injunction to stop the U.S. Department of Labor from shutting down Job Corps, a residential program for low-income youth, until a lawsuit against the move is resolved.
The injunction bolsters a temporary restraining order U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter issued earlier this month, when he directed the Labor Department to cease removing Job Corps students from housing, terminating jobs or otherwise suspending the nationwide program without congressional approval.
Founded in 1964, Job Corps aims to help teenagers and young adults who struggled to finish traditional high school and find jobs. The program provides tuition-free housing at residential centers, training, meals and health care.
“Once Congress has passed legislation stating that a program like the Job Corps must exist, and set aside funding for that program, the DOL is not free to do as it pleases; it is required to enforce the law as intended by Congress,” Carter wrote in the ruling.
Department of Labor spokesperson Aaron Britt said said the department was working closely with the Department of Justice to evaluate the injunction.
“We remain confident that our actions are consistent with the law,” Britt wrote in an email to The Associated Press.
The Labor Department said in late May that it would pause operations at all contractor-operated Job Corps centers by the end of June. It said the publicly funded program yielded poor results for its participants at a high cost to taxpayers, citing low student graduation rates and growing budget deficits.
The judge rejected the department’s claims that it did not need to follow a congressionally mandated protocol for closing down Job Corps centers because it wasn’t closing the centers, only pausing their activities.
“The way that the DOL is shuttering operations and the context in which the shuttering is taking place make it clear that the DOL is actually attempting to close the centers,” Carter wrote.
The harm faced by some of the students served by the privately run Job Corps centers is compelling, the judge said. Carter noted that one of the students named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit lives at a center in New York, where he is based.
If the Job Corps program is eliminated, she would lose all the progress she’s made toward earning a culinary arts certificate and “will immediately be plunged into homelessness,” the judge wrote. That’s far from the “minor upheaval” described by government lawyers, he said.
As the centers prepared to close, many students were left floundering. Some moved out of the centers and into shelters that house homeless people.
“Many of these young people live in uncertainty, so it takes time to get housing and restore a lot of those supports you need when you’ve been away from your community for so long,” said Edward DeJesus, CEO of Social Capital Builders, a Maryland-based educational consultancy which provides training on relationship-building at several Job Corps sites. “So the abrupt closure of these sites is really harmful for the welfare of young adults who are trying to make a change in their lives.”
The National Job Corps Association, a nonprofit trade organization comprised of business, labor, volunteer and academic organizations, sued to block the suspension of services, alleging it would displace tens of thousands of vulnerable young people and force mass layoffs.
The attorneys general of 20 U.S. states filed an amicus brief supporting the group’s motion for a preliminary injunction in the case.
Monet Campbell learned about the Job Corps’ center in New Haven, Connecticut, while living in a homeless shelter a year ago. The 21-year-old has since earned her certified nursing assistant license and phlebotomy and electrocardiogram certifications through Job Corps, and works at a local nursing home.
“I always got told all my life, ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do that.’ But Job Corps really opened my eyes to, ‘I can do this,’” said Campbell, who plans to start studying nursing at Central Connecticut State University in August.
The program has been life-changing in other ways, she said. Along with shelter and job training, Campbell received food, mental health counseling, medical treatment and clothing to wear to job interviews.
“I hadn’t been to the doctor’s in a while,” she said. “I was able to do that, going to checkups for my teeth, dental, all that. So they really just helped me with that.”
Campbell said she and other Job Corps participants in New Haven feel like they’re in limbo, given the program’s possible closure. They recently had to move out for a week when the federal cuts were initially imposed, and Campbell stayed with a friend.
There are 123 Jobs Corps centers in the U.S., the majority of them operated by private organizations under agreements with the Department of Labor. Those private jobs corps centers serve more than 20,000 students across the U.S., according to the lawsuit.
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Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut and Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho contributed to this report.
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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced on Wednesday that he plans to run for re-election when his term ends in 2027, in spite of the corruption scandals embroiling his Socialist party.
“I am determined to run in the next general election in 2027,” Sanchez told reporters on Wednesday.
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In the latest in a series of scandals, Sanchez is currently under investigation for alleged graft in his Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). While Sanchez — who has served as prime minister since 2018 — has not been directly implicated, the country’s opposition has called on him to resign, according to BBC News.
Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón arrives at Huis ten Bosch Palace for a dinner hosted by the King and Queen of The Netherlands during the NATO Summit 2025 on June 24, 2025, in The Hague, Netherlands. (Patrick van Katwijk/Getty Images)
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Earlier this month, Sanchez issued an apology after audio was released that seemingly showed PSOE secretary Santos Cerdan discussing improperly awarding public contracts in exchange for commissions, BBC News reported.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who is also a leader of the Socialist ruling party (PSOE), holds a press conference after a Socialist Party meeting following a senior official’s alleged graft case at headquarters in Madrid, Spain June 16, 2025. (REUTERS/Nacho Doce)
Shortly after the news broke, Cerdan resigned from the PSOE and stepped down as a member of parliament. On Friday, police entered the party’s headquarters to copy Cerdan’s emails, according to Reuters.
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A Spanish flag is seen on the street in Krakow, Poland, on March 6, 2025. (Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
On June 12, the Spanish prime minister said he would not call new elections before the end of his current term.
Cerdan, who is slated to appear before the Supreme Court on June 25, says he has never committed a crime or been implicit in one, Reuters reported.
Sanchez is one of Europe’s longest-serving socialist leaders. His wife, Begona Gomez, is under investigation for possible business irregularities. His brother, David Sanchez, is due to go on trial for alleged influence peddling, according to BBC News.
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The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog visited the Elysee Palace in the French capital, Paris, on Wednesday to meet with President Emmanuel Macron.
The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, and Macron did not address media inside the meeting room.
The meeting comes after Macron attended the annual NATO leaders’ summit – taking place this year in The Hague – where the 32 heads of states of the alliance endorsed a proposal to increase defence expenditure from 2% of GDP to 5% by 2035.
The summit took place against a backdrop of global crisis, with Russia’s more than three-year full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues to rage and tensions in the Middle East continue to soar.
Just a few days before the summit, US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, marking an end to their 12-days of cross border aerial attacks.
Israel started the war with Iran as it launched a surprise offensive – dubbed ‘Operation Rising Lion’ – where they targeted a slew of Iranian military targets, and most importantly, sought to dismantle their nuclear programme.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Tehran – whose nuclear programme has been rapidly advancing in recent years – would be capable of developing a nuclear warhead within a “very short amount of time”, adding that the country possesses an alarming stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
Tensions spiked after US President Donald Trump announced that Washington had directly attacked Iran’s nuclear sites on 21 June. Trump claimed to have “obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear project with a series of attacks on its three main facilities of Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
The 47th US president said Washington carried out a precise operation involving their top-grade B-2 stealth bombers which unloaded fourteen of the US’ mighty 30,000 pound (13,600 kg) bunker buster bombs.
A report released by the US Defence Intelligence Agency on Tuesday however suggested that Washington’s attacks had only delivered a minor setback in Iran’s nuclear programme, adding that Iran could fully rebuild within months.
The White House has slammed the report as “flat out wrong” and stressed that its findings are a “clear attempt to demean (president) Trump”.
At the summit, Macron told reporters he would discuss his assessment of damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities, after the strikes by the US and Israel, with Grossi during the meeting.
In a post on X, the French president reiterated Paris’ commitment to the UN’s nuclear watchdog, as he urged Iran to allow the IAEA to resume its mission in the country. The Iranian parliament had approved a bill recently to suspend all cooperation with the agency.
The pair also reportedly addressed ways to strengthen compliance with international non-proliferation standards.
Grossi thanked the French leader for his continued support in a post on X after Macron reaffirmed his support for IAEA in its efforts to ensure nuclear safety and security worldwide.
Additional sources • AP
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