From Ghetts to Genesis, Nick Cave to Arlo Parks: autumn 2021’s essential music

From Fontaines DC to the Valkyrie, a techno Halloween to Little Simz, this is the unmissable music of the next few months

Metamorphosis review – playful spin on Kafka for the Zoom age

Gregor Samsa’s sudden bodily dislocation becomes a means of exploring digital-era dilemmas in Hijinx’s irreverent adaptation

Hay festival director quits after bullying claim upheld

Exit of Peter Florence adds to list of woes that include two years of Covid cancellations and a sex assault claim against a Gulf royal

Kristen Stewart’s Princess Diana biopic to screen at Venice film festival

Spencer, telling the story of Diana and Charles’s bitter divorce, will battle for the Golden Lion alongside the latest by Pedro Almodóvar

Petrov’s Flu review – feverish tale of a pandemic and societal breakdown

Kirill Serebrennikov’s prescient and audacious but oppressive drama is set in a post-Soviet Russia in the grip of a flu epidemic

Drive My Car review – mysterious Murakami tale of erotic and creative secrets

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi reaches a new grandeur with this engrossing adaptation about a theatre director grappling with Chekhov and his wife’s infidelity

Deception review – Arnaud Desplechin’s unbearably twee take on Philip Roth

The Cannes favourite may have worn out his charm with this insufferable story of the author’s multiple affairs

Three Floors review – Nanni Moretti melodrama lacks profundity

There are powerhouse performances and queasily effective scenes in this story of a man who suspects his neighbour of abuse, but it’s a soapy shadow of The Son’s Room

Where Is Anne Frank? review – Holocaust diary imaginatively rebooted for the YA generation

Waltz With Bashir director Ari Folman turns Frank’s imaginary friend Kitty into a ghost on the run in near-future Amsterdam

Everything Went Fine review – wonderfully observed story of assisted dying

André Dussollier and Sophie Marceau are outstanding as a father and daughter whose tricky relationship is upended when he asks for her help to die

Notes on Grief review – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie essay sketched on stage

The novelist’s article about her father’s death was expanded into a book and has now become a play but it feels limited

Between Two Worlds review – Juliette Binoche goes undercover in the gig economy

Emmanuel Carrère’s drama – based on Florence Aubenas’s bestseller Le Quai de Ouistreham – fails to probe fully the injustices faced by low-paid workers

How to avoid the summer of sport: Britain’s cultural highlights

Key figures share their top cultural tips for those seeking to escape wall-to-wall coverage

‘We won’t be bouncing back’ – the unsettling truth about the big reopening

Next week, after 14 months of closure and despair, the arts are reawakening. But the damage caused by Covid runs deep – and recovery is by no means assured

Beaches, bush and botanic gardens: Australia’s best regional writers’ festivals in 2021

From beachside poetry to desert dinners, and rare bookshops in heritage towns, there’s a smorgasbord of scenic events worth travelling for