President Trump says he wants a quick cease-fire in Ukraine. But President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia appears to be in no rush, and the blowup on Friday between Mr. Trump and Ukraine’s president may give Russia’s leader the kind of ammunition he needs to prolong the fight.

With the American alliance with Ukraine suffering a dramatic, public rupture, Mr. Putin now seems even more likely to hold out for a deal on his terms — and he could even be tempted to expand his push on the battlefield.

The extraordinary scene in Washington — in which Mr. Trump lambasted President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — was broadcast as the top story on state television in Russia on Saturday morning. It played into three years of Kremlin propaganda casting Mr. Zelensky as a foolhardy ruler who would sooner or later exhaust the patience of his Western backers.

For the Kremlin, perhaps the most important message came in later remarks by Mr. Trump, who suggested that if Ukraine did not agree to a “cease-fire now,” the war-torn country would have to “fight it out” without American help.

That could set up an outcome that Mr. Putin has long sought, at the cost of tens of thousands of Russian lives: a dominant position over Ukraine and wide-ranging concessions from the West.

In fact, Mr. Trump’s professed attempts to end the war quickly could intensify and prolong it, experts warned. If the United States is really ready to abandon Ukraine, Mr. Putin could try to seize more Ukrainian territory and end up with more leverage if and when peace talks ultimately take place.

“Russia will be willing to keep fighting for longer, and more bitterly,” said Konstantin Remchukov, a Moscow newspaper editor with Kremlin ties, describing the consequences of Mr. Trump’s public break with Mr. Zelensky. “If Zelensky says the Ukrainian people are ready to keep on fighting, Moscow will say, ‘Sure, let’s keep fighting.’”

If Friday’s angry encounter in Washington leads to a further drop in U.S. military support for Ukraine, Mr. Remchukov said in a phone interview, the consequences could be profound, possibly even encouraging Mr. Putin to return to the broader territorial aims he pursued when he began his invasion in 2022.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Moscow decided to go further, to Odesa or Mykolaiv,” Mr. Remchukov said, referring to key Black Sea ports that remain under Ukrainian control. “It could change the strategic direction of the offensive.”

Despite the striking alignment that has emerged between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin in recent weeks, many analysts have spotted a key difference in their views. While the American president says he wants to “stop the death” in Ukraine as soon as possible, the Russian leader says he wants to resolve the “root causes” of the war first.

For Mr. Putin, that terminology is code for his desire for a wider deal that would prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, limit the size of its military and grant Russia influence over its domestic politics — along with a broader pullback of the NATO alliance across Eastern and Central Europe.

Such a deal, of course, would take months to negotiate, which is why Mr. Putin has appeared resistant to the idea of a quick cease-fire. The spat in the White House on Friday appeared to play into the Kremlin’s hands because it may convince Mr. Trump that Mr. Zelensky, rather than Mr. Putin, is the more recalcitrant of the two leaders.

“You tell us, ‘I don’t want a cease-fire,’” Mr. Trump told Mr. Zelensky in the Oval Office. “I want a cease-fire because you’ll get a cease-fire faster than an agreement.”

Mr. Zelensky on Saturday reiterated his opposition to a quick cease-fire with Mr. Putin, saying that the Russian leader could not be trusted to uphold one. Instead, he said, Ukraine needed security guarantees from the West to deter future Russian attacks.

But Mr. Zelensky also signaled that he had not completely given up hope on repairing the relationship with Mr. Trump. And since the Friday meeting, he has publicly expressed thanks for American support, after Vice President JD Vance accused him of not being grateful enough.

A Moscow foreign-policy analyst who is close to the Kremlin said on Saturday that any delay to peace talks was likely to benefit Russia because there was no deal in sight at present that would satisfy Mr. Putin. The analyst insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivities in Moscow of speaking to Western journalists.

Dmitry Suslov, an international relations specialist at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, said in comments published by the Kommersant newspaper that Mr. Trump would become “even more favorable to Russia’s position on a settlement” after “the fiasco of Zelensky’s negotiations with Trump.”

Mr. Suslov also raised the possibility of Russia’s being able to grab far more than the roughly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory in the country’s south and east that Moscow now holds.

If the United States stops providing weapons and intelligence to the Ukrainian military, Mr. Suslov wrote, “the pace of Kyiv’s defeat on the battlefield will accelerate, with the prospect of a complete collapse of the front within months.”

Friday’s scene was a boon for Moscow in other ways, too. It may have helped advance, in just a matter of minutes, one of Mr. Putin’s longtime goals: the removal of Mr. Zelensky from power in Ukraine.

Immediately after the White House meeting, Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has been one of his party’s staunchest backers of Ukraine, said, “I don’t know if we can ever do business with Zelensky again.” He called the Ukrainian leader’s behavior in the Oval Office “disrespectful.”

The public dressing-down of Mr. Zelensky also accomplished another longtime goal of Mr. Putin’s: cleaving the Western military alliance led by Washington that united behind Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion. European leaders immediately came out in support of Ukraine after the meeting, setting up a possible split with the United States, their longtime security backer.

Russian officials could hardly control their glee.

Dmitri A. Medvedev, the former Russian president who is deputy chairman of the country’s security council, cheered Mr. Trump on with a post on X, piling on to denounce Mr. Zelensky as an “insolent pig.”

And Konstantin Kosachev, a senior Russian lawmaker, wrote on the Telegram social network, “Zelensky lost this round in a resounding crash,” adding, “He will have to crawl on his knees to the next one.”

Pro-Kremlin commentators who for years have been hurling invective against the United States could barely believe their change in fortune.

Igor Korotchenko, a military analyst who is a regular on Russian talk shows, wrote that he never thought he would be applauding the president of the United States.

“But tonight I applaud the 47th President of the United States Donald Trump — Zelensky was thrown out of the White House like a garbage alley cat,” Mr. Korotchenko wrote in a post on X.

Yet for all the schadenfreude in Russia, Friday’s bitter meeting in Washington did little to illuminate a pathway toward a settlement. And while Mr. Putin may want to extend the war, he could also suffer if it goes on much longer, given the country’s economic problems and steep battlefield casualties.

“The Russian leadership would like to end the war on its own terms, not just restore ties with the U.S.,” Grigorii Golosov, a professor of political science at the European University in St. Petersburg, said in a phone interview. “The prospects for that are not clearer at all despite what happened yesterday.”

For months leading into the American elections last fall, the prospect of a second Trump presidency deepened uncertainty among Ukrainians over how enduring American support would prove in a war threatening their national survival.

After President Volodymyr Zelensky’s disastrous meeting with President Trump in the White House on Friday, many Ukrainians were moving toward a conclusion that seemed perfectly clear: Mr. Trump has chosen a side, and it is not Ukraine’s.

In one jaw-dropping meeting, the once unthinkable fear that Ukraine would be forced to engage in a long war against a stronger opponent without U.S. support appeared to move exponentially closer to reality.

“For Ukraine, it is clarifying, though not in a great way,” Phillips O’Brien, an international relations professor at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said in an interview. “Ukraine can now only count on European states for the support it needs to fight.”

An immediate result was that Ukrainians, including opposition politicians, were generally supportive of Mr. Zelensky on Saturday for not bending to Mr. Trump despite tremendous pressure.

Maryna Schomak, a civilian whose son’s cancer diagnosis has been complicated by the destruction of Ukraine’s largest children’s cancer hospital by a Russian missile strike, said that Mr. Zelensky had conducted himself with dignity.

“They gathered with one goal — to pressure us and undermine our authority on the global political stage,” she said of Mr. Trump and his team.

Mr. Zelensky signaled on Saturday that he had not completely given up hope of repairing the relationship with Mr. Trump. Posting on social media, he went out of his way to thank the United States, perhaps trying to address Mr. Trump’s complaint on Friday that he was ungrateful.

“I’m thankful to President Trump, Congress for their bipartisan support, and American people,” he wrote. “Ukrainians have always appreciated this support, especially during these three years of full-scale invasion.”

At the same time, Mr. Zelensky began laying the groundwork for moving ahead with the European countries that have stood by Kyiv’s side. Ukraine announced plans on Saturday for a joint weapons venture with France that would be financed by the interest earned from frozen Russian assets.

Later in the day, Mr. Zelensky was scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, who has been a supporter of the Ukrainian president in the face of Mr. Trump’s harsh rebukes. On Sunday, Mr. Zelensky will attend a summit of European leaders hosted by Mr. Starmer.

While much of the focus was on the shocking tone and theatrics of the dressing-down delivered by the American president to a putative ally, Professor O’Brien, the St. Andrew’s scholar, said that Mr. Trump’s comments suggested that the root of the public rupture ran deeper.

“He was trying to pressure Zelensky into agreeing to a cease-fire along Putin’s lines, and Zelensky refused,” Professor O’Brien said, referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “Trump comes out and says that explicitly at the end.”

Mr. Trump had shouted at the Ukrainian leader, “You’re buried there,” and said, “Your people are dying. You’re running low on soldiers.”

As Mr. Zelensky tried to defend himself, Mr. Trump talked over him.

“No, listen,” he continued. “And then you tell us, ‘I don’t want a cease-fire. I don’t want a cease-fire.’”

The exchange, Professor O’Brien said, reflects Mr. Trump’s belief that “Ukraine should shut up and take Trump’s and Putin’s terms.”

The real affront that prompted the spectacle, many Ukrainians and analysts believe, is that Mr. Zelensky pushed back against some of Mr. Trump’s terms.

Along the front lines, some soldiers said that the realization was sinking in that Mr. Trump would probably not help Ukraine. “Trump chose his side in this war,” said Pvt. Serhiy Hnezdilov in a telephone interview from the front on Saturday.

Private Hnezdilov said that he supported Mr. Zelensky’s stance, adding that he thought the attempt to humiliate the Ukrainian leader was probably the goal of the invitation to the White House.

“The scandal we witnessed was essentially the only purpose of that meeting,” the private said. “It looked utterly absurd, considering that we, Ukrainians, have always regarded America as an example of democracy and, most importantly, of values.”

Ukrainians may have been naïve, he added.

Still, many Ukrainians were shaken by the public falling-out in Washington, and Mr. Zelensky sought to reassure his war-weary nation on Saturday.

“People in Ukraine need to know they are not alone, that their interests are represented in every country and every corner of the world,” he said in a statement.

Leaders across Europe took to social media to voice support of Ukraine, and Mr. Zelensky offered his personal thanks for every statement while reposting them.

But Mr. Zelensky did acknowledge that losing U.S. military support would be a devastating blow.

“It will be difficult for us,” he told Fox News after the White House meeting. “That’s why I’m here.”

Mr. Zelensky’s domestic standing appeared to be holding steady in the immediate aftermath of the meeting, despite a statement by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, calling for Mr. Zelensky to resign or be dismissed. “I don’t know if we can ever do business” Mr. Graham said, only days after praising the Ukrainian leader as an ideal ally.

Mr. Zelensky received a public signal of support from the speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, who would assume the presidency if Mr. Zelensky resigned. “Full support for the President of Ukraine!” Mr. Stefanchuk wrote in a social media post.

Opposition figures also backed Mr. Zelensky.

“Though I do not fully agree with President Zelensky’s policies, I must say that I am genuinely grateful to him for withstanding this pressure,” Natalia Pipa, a member of Parliament for the Holos party, said in an interview.

“Trump behaved disgustingly and condescendingly,” she added.

The path ahead for Ukraine, politicians and analysts said, was to try to repair relations with the United States, where defense contractors are one constituency with an interest in continuing American support, while trying to shore up European backing. Mr. Zelensky will also be trying to get a role in the negotiations for a peace settlement, though Mr. Trump seems intent on dealing directly with Mr. Putin.

But the anger directed at Mr. Zelensky in the Oval Office came against a tense backdrop in which Mr. Trump has increasingly aligned himself with the Kremlin in both words and actions.

Since Mr. Trump picked up the phone on Feb. 12 for a 90-minute chat with Mr. Putin, he has called Mr. Zelensky “a dictator”; falsely accused Ukraine of starting the war; and pressed the Ukrainian leader to accede to his administration’s demands, posting that he “better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”

Last week, the State Department terminated an initiative that has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to help restore Ukraine’s energy grid after attacks by the Russian military.

While pressuring Kyiv, Mr. Trump has said that he would “love” to see Russia back in the Group of 7 — a gathering of the world’s wealthiest large democracies — and that “it was a mistake to throw them out.”

He offered Mr. Putin generous concessions on NATO and Ukrainian territory even before the talks started, and repeated the Kremlin’s calls for elections in Ukraine.

The White House has also cut funding for pro-democracy programs as part of its efforts to dismantle U.S.A.I.D., a move celebrated by the Kremlin.

The Trump administration has also offered public support for far-right parties in Europe known for their support of Moscow, including the AfD in Germany.

The U.S. attorney general, Pam Bondi, has also disbanded an F.B.I. task force focused on investigating foreign influence operations, and the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has ordered that Russia be removed as a target of U.S. cybersecurity planning.

Washington also sided with Moscow in a vote at the United Nations that would have condemned Russian aggression on the third anniversary of the Ukraine invasion — breaking with allies to join a small group of nations including North Korea and Belarus.

Having endured years of loss and suffering, Ukrainians would like nothing more than to see an end to the war, but not if the price is their freedom, Mr. Zelensky has been insisting.

Natalka Sosnytska, program coordinator at a Ukrainian organization that helps children with war trauma, echoed that sentiment. “Of course, we want peace, but only after our victory,” she said. “By standing his ground, Zelensky preserved our dignity as a nation.”

Liubov Sholudko and Yurii Shyvala contributed reporting.

The pre-dawn call by U.S. border agents to their Canadian counterparts was shocking: A group of nine people, most of them children, were about to enter Canada on foot.

On Feb. 3 at 6:16 a.m., when the group was spotted, the border between Alberta and Montana was brutally uninviting, covered in snow, dark with a temperature of minus 17 degrees Fahrenheit.

Grainy night-vision images captured by Canadian border cameras showed two little girls in pink winter wear holding a woman’s hand as they trudged through the snow. More children followed in a line. Another adult dragged two suitcases.

The quick intervention by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police crew that found the group was the result of a newly beefed-up border presence across the vast frontier between the United States and Canada. At 5,525 miles, the border is the world’s longest.

Until recently, the border had been described by both nations as “unguarded,” a testament to their close friendship.

But with the return of President Trump to the White House, it has become a flashpoint in the relationship between the two neighbors.

Even before his inauguration, Mr. Trump accused Canada of allowing large numbers of unauthorized migrants to enter the United States. He has made stopping that movement a key demand as he threatens to impose crippling tariffs on Canadian exports to the United States.

After a one-month reprieve, Mr. Trump says those tariffs will now go into effect on Tuesday.

Canada has mobilized. It has deployed more staff and equipment along the border and tightened visa rules that critics say made Canada a steppingstone to enter the United States illegally.

The number of illegal crossings into the United States from Canada was relatively low to begin with, and has now plummeted, indicating that Canada’s response to Mr. Trump’s pressure is working.

But now a new dynamic is emerging at the border: Asylum seekers are fleeing north to Canada as Mr. Trump has embarked on his plan for sweeping deportations.

Border in Focus

On any given day, the Coutts-Sweetgrass border crossing in Alberta is an orderly hum of trucks, trains and civilian vehicles.

The communities on either side are close in every sense. Hit a ball hard enough on one of the two baseball diamonds in Coutts, Alberta, and chances are it will land in Sweetgrass, Montana.

The two countries’ border authorities even share a building.

“There is close day-to-day communication,” Ryan Harrison, an R.C.M.P. staff sergeant, who heads an integrated border enforcement team, said on a bitterly cold February morning as he drove along Border Road, a gravel lane snaking through plains that marks the border for several miles. “These are people we go for dinner with and attend their retirement parties.”

But Mr. Trump’s criticisms have upended the business-as-usual atmosphere at the border.

Mr. Trump has been particularly alarmed by a jump in the number of unauthorized migrants entering the United States over the past three years.

The number of people apprehended last year crossing from Canada into the United States illegally was nearly 200,000. (That still pales in comparison to crossings from Mexico: Last year, more than two million people were apprehended at the U.S. southern border, U.S. government data shows.)

Canada has directed 1.3 billion Canadian dollars ($900 million) to enhance border security, adding two Black Hawk helicopters and 60 drones equipped with thermal cameras.

It also tightened requirements for temporary visas that some visitors used to arrive in Canada legally but then enter the United States illegally.

The Canadian government says its recent measures have drastically driven down the number of unauthorized crossing into the United States: About 5,000 migrants were intercepted at the border in January, a third of the figure in January 2024, according to U.S. data.

“Whether or not some of the allegations about what is going on at the border are accurate or not, or credible or not, I don’t have the luxury not to take it seriously,” Marc Miller, Canada’s immigration minister, said in an interview on Thursday.

He was in Washington, along with other senior Canadian ministers planning to meet with Trump administration officials in a last-ditch push to avert tariffs.

Mr. Miller said he would explain the measures Canada had taken and how they were working. But he also wanted to talk to U.S. officials about the recent uptick of people arriving in Canada from the United States.

The Opposite Direction

Canada’s focus on the border, against the backdrop of Mr. Trump’s domestic crackdown on migrants, is why the nine people walking into Alberta on Feb. 3 raised alarms: It was unusual to see a group this large crossing on foot in the heart of winter. The presence of young children made it all the more troubling.

The Canadian authorities say they have been intercepting more people arriving from the United States, but because of the schedule Canada follows in releasing data, no numbers are yet available for the weeks since Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January. But government news releases suggest the numbers are rising.

In Alberta, preliminary calculations show that up to 20 people have been apprehended crossing illegally so far this year, including children as young as 2.

By contrast, only seven people were apprehended crossing the border illegally in Alberta in all of 2024.

Of the nine migrants found in Alberta on Feb. 3, seven, including three children ages 13, 10 and 7, were Venezuelans, the R.C.M.P. told The New York Times. The two others were children, 7 and 5 years old, from Colombia.

Staff Sergeant Harrison, who has worked at the border for two years, said,“It’s the first time I’ve seen Venezuelans here.”

Venezuelans fleeing the oppressive government of President Nicolás Maduro have been offered protection across the world. Nearly eight million have fled in the past decade, according to the United Nations, an extraordinary number for a nation not at war.

Under the Biden administration, 600,000 Venezuelans already living in the United States were granted temporary protection and allowed to live and work in the country. More were able to stay under smaller programs.

The Trump administration has ended all protections for Venezuelans, and most programs will expire in the coming months.

The removal of Venezuelans has emerged as a priority in Mr. Trump’s deportation push. Venezuelans described as criminals have been sent to the U.S. facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, while others been deported back to Venezuela.

The Venezuelan government has recently began arresting not just political activists, but also bystanders at protests, and it’s unclear how it will treat returned migrants.

As a result, Canada has a policy of not deporting Venezuelans.

Safe Country?

Canadian border officials declined to discuss what they did with the group of nine migrants detained in Alberta, saying they were protecting their privacy.

But a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed that the Canadian authorities had returned them to the United States, and they had been transferred to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Their status is unknown.

Canada and the United States regularly return asylum seekers crossing into each other’s territory, on the premise that both countries are equally safe for asylum seekers to lodge their claims, and that they should do so in the first of the two countries in which they arrive. The policy is formally known as the Safe Third Country Agreement.

But the Trump administration’s deportation drive and changes to asylum policies call into question whether the United States is still a safe country for asylum seekers, experts and advocates say, and if Canada should continue sending people back over the border.

“This is the latest sign that Canada is sending people and families with children back to the U.S. with the full knowledge that they are at great risk of being detained and then returned to danger,” said Ketty Nivyabandi, a leader of Amnesty International’s Canada chapter, referring to the nine migrants Canada returned to the United States.

“The Canadian government must not wait a minute longer to withdraw from the Safe Third Country Agreement,” she added.

But such a move would likely encourage more people to seek refuge in Canada, creating new pressures on the country’s already strained immigration system.

“It would almost certainly lead to a surge in unauthorized border crossings,” said Phil Triadafilopoulos, a political science professor at the University of Toronto.

Still, he added, by continuing to return asylum seekers to the United States, Canada is signaling that “it isn’t going to receive people who have lost their temporary protected status in the U.S. as hospitably as it did in the past.”

And as illustrated by the migrants who crossed in Alberta, those groups, he said, can “include small children in really dire conditions, with the full knowledge that the fate of those children and their families is highly uncertain.”

Mr. Miller, the immigration minister, insisted that Canada believes that the United States remains a safe country for asylum seekers.

“We need to have a proper, managed system at the border,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean that we’re naïve, or we’re not watching events that are currently happening in the U.S.”

Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting from Washington, and Julie Turkewitz from Metetí, Panama.

Bags of fragrant spices, crates of dates, frozen chicken and fresh produce. Food and other goods that were scarce during the war have returned to the shops and street markets of Gaza in time for the holy fasting month of Ramadan. And the Israeli bombs have fallen silent.

But the shadow of the war hangs heavy over what was once one of the most joyous seasons in the territory, and life in Gaza has not even begun to return to normal. Street vendors have refrained from playing the special songs they normally would during Ramadan and even if there is more food in the shops, many struggle to afford it.

The first phase of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas has lasted a month and a half, but it was set to elapse on Saturday, which coincides with the first day of Ramadan fasting from dawn to dusk. It could be extended but so far, there has been little progress toward doing so.

Maisa Arafa, 29, who said that her brother had been killed during the war, has been living in a tent with other relatives as they clear away rubble from their devastated home in northern Gaza in hopes of moving into one room that is still intact.

“More than anything, I wish my brother could come back. That would be the only thing to make Ramadan feel like it used to,” Ms. Arafa said as she shopped in downtown Gaza City. “This is not the Ramadan we knew, or even the life we knew.”

Before the war, Ramadan was one of the most joyful festivals in Gaza. Crowds flocked to the mosques, and streets were festooned with colorful lanterns typical of the Ramadan period.

But an enormous gap stretches between the happy holiday memories of a seemingly irrecoverable past and the desolation and grief left by the 15-month war in Gaza. Many Palestinians in the territory see little to celebrate.

Since the Israel-Hamas cease-fire went into effect in mid-January, hundreds of truckloads per day of food and other supplies have been entering Gaza, offering a degree of relief from the intense hunger many suffered during the war. The constant bombardment that haunted civilians’ lives every day for more than a year has ceased.

Farah Irshi, 21, described how the previous Ramadan felt during the fighting between Israel and Hamas. There was little food and about 25 displaced people crowded into their home amid constant bombardment, she said.

“Now there’s more food in the local market as more aid seems to be entering Gaza, but people, including us, have no money at all,” she lamented. “So it’s as if there isn’t anything in the markets, anyway.”

Abdelhalim Awad, who oversees a bakery and supermarket in central Gaza, said that prices had dropped since the worst days of the war, when a 55-pound sack of flour could cost hundreds of dollars.

Many goods — like frozen chicken and cooking gas — are now in shops and street markets, although others, like chocolate, are still scarce, he said. But they are still expensive and many people already burned through their savings during the war to buy hard-to-find, overpriced food.

“The goods are now available, but people are still only able to buy what they really need,” Mr. Awad said as he watched holiday shoppers come and go, buying what they could for communal meals to break the fast at night.

The war began after the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killed about 1,200 people and saw some 250 others taken back to Gaza as hostages. The subsequent Israeli military campaign laid waste to large swaths of the Gaza Strip.

Many residents are still displaced or have returned to their homes only to find them ruined by the fighting. Some have returned to the camps for the displaced where they spent much of the last year, while others have pitched tents on the rubble where their houses once stood.

The Israeli campaign killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, including thousands of children, according to local health officials who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The Israeli military said it had “eliminated” nearly 20,000 Hamas operatives, without providing detailed evidence to back up that claim.

This week, Gazans walked through local markets in central and northern Gaza, looking for whatever they could afford. One vendor showcased heaps of green and black olives, piles of dates and other goods.

Muhanned Hamad, an accountant from Gaza City, stood in front of a toy vendor’s stall in what was historically a major downtown market. He said he was looking for a holiday lantern to give to his neighbors, a mother and son who had lost their immediate family during the war.

“This Ramadan is nothing like the ones before,” said Mr. Hamad, 39. “The war has drained it of meaning, he added. “Even with the cease-fire, nothing here feels worthy of celebration.”

Ameera Haroudacontributed reporting.

My grandfather’s idea of an Easter egg hunt involved hiding money in colorful plastic eggs sprinkled around his house in Long Island. Most held coins, but there was always one with a crisp, new $100 bill.

My cousin, Billy-O, and I were the only players. We were usually playful partners in mayhem but as competitors, we took on every hunt with gusto, flipping over cushions, throwing open cabinets, knocking each other aside until, without fail, Billy-O found the $100.

The first time he won, I fought back tears. But after a few years of losses, I exploded.

“It’s just not fair,” I yelled.

“Life’s unfair,” my grandfather told us. “You win or you lose.”

This is what’s called zero-sum thinking — the belief that life is a battle over finite rewards where gains for one mean losses for another. And these days, that notion seems to be everywhere. It’s how we view college admissions, as a cutthroat contest for groups defined by race or privilege. It’s there in our love for “Squid Game.” It’s Silicon Valley’s winner-take-all ethos, and it’s at the core of many popular opinions: that immigrants steal jobs from Americans; that the wealthy get rich at others’ expense; that men lose power and status when women gain.

But nowhere is the rise of our zero-sum era more pronounced than on the world stage, where President Trump has been demolishing decades of collaborative foreign policy with threats of protectionist tariffs and demands for Greenland, Gaza, the Panama Canal and mineral rights in Ukraine. Since taking office, he has often channeled the age he most admires — the imperial 19th century.

And in his own past, zero-sum thinking was deeply ingrained. His biographers tell us he learned from his father that you were either a winner or loser in life, and that there was nothing worse than being a sucker. In Trumpworld, it’s kill or be killed; he who is not a hammer must be an anvil.

Mr. Trump may not be alone in this. Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China have also displayed a zero-sum view of a world in which bigger powers get to do what they want while weaker ones suffer. All three leaders, no matter what they say, often behave as if power and prosperity were in short supply, leading inexorably to competition and confrontation..

Until recently, the international order largely was built on a different idea — that interdependence and rules boost opportunities for all. It was aspirational, producing fourfold economic growth since the 1980s, and even nuclear disarmament treaties from superpowers. It was also filled with gassy promises — from places like Davos or the G20 — that rarely improved day-to-day lives.

“The reversion to zero-sum thinking now is in some ways a backlash against the positive-sum thinking of the post-Cold War era — the idea that globalization could lift all boats, that the U.S. could draft an international order in which nearly everyone could participate and become a responsible stakeholder,” said Hal Brands, a global affairs professor at Johns Hopkins University and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “The original Trump insight from 2016-17 was that this wasn’t happening.”

What we are now experiencing, especially in the United States, is effectively a rejection of the belief in abundance and cooperation. It is an uprising against the premise that many groups can gain at once — a cynical, contagious us-or-them attitude, spreading across countries, communities and families.

With kids’ games, maybe zero-summing feels like tough love. But on a national and global scale, it’s increasingly hard not to ask: What are we losing with a win-or-lose approach?

‘An Image of Limited Good’

Zero-sum thinking made a lot of sense for our evolutionary ancestors, who were forced to compete for food to survive. But the mind-set has lingered and researchers have become more interested in mapping its impact.

The most recent work in the social sciences builds on the findings of George M. Foster, an anthropologist from the University of California, Berkeley. He did his field work in Mexico’s rural communities where he was the first researcher to show that some societies hold “an image of limited good.”

In 1965, he wrote that the people he studied in the hills of Michoacán view their entire universe “as one in which all of the desired things in life such as land, wealth, health, friendship and love, manliness and honor, respect and status, power and influence, security and safety, exist in finite quantity and are always in short supply.”

Psychologists later confirmed that a sense of scarcity and feeling threatened are fundamental components of zero-sum thinking in individuals and cultures. A 2018 analysis of 43 nations, for example, found that zero-sum beliefs tend to emerge more “in hierarchical societies with an economic disparity of scarce resources.”

But zero-sum thinking is a perception, not an objective assessment. Sometimes people will see zero-sum games all around them, even though for most of us, “purely zero-sum situations are exceedingly rare,” as a paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology recently noted.

Think about two co-workers vying for the same promotion: Yes, one might get it and the other not, but over the long term, their fortunes will also rise or fall together based on how their team or company performs. Even in sports — the prototypical zero-sum contest — losing to a stronger competitor can accelerate the development of important skills — as I keep telling my son when his soccer team struggles to score in a tough, local league.

Essentially, many people slip into what Daniel V. Meegan, a psychologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, has identified as a “a zero-sum bias.” They believe they are in scenarios of cutthroat competition even when they are not.

Many zero-summers like to picture themselves as tough, hardheaded realists — and sometimes a winner-take-all approach can lead to gains or victory, at least temporarily. But the science says zero-sum thinking is rooted in fear. It mistakes Foster’s “image of limited good” for wisdom and treats potential partners as threats, creating blind spots to the potential for mutual benefit.

That’s why zero-sum thinking can be so problematic: It pinches perspective,sharpens antagonism and distracts our minds from what we can do with cooperation and creativity. People with a zero-sum mentality can easily miss a win-win.

But the far greater danger for zero-sum thinking is the lose-lose.

With Us or Against Us

The last time zero-sum thinking guided the world, Europe’s colonial powers of the 16th to 19th centuries saw wealth as finite, measured in gold, silver and land. Gains for one translated to losses for another and empires levied high tariffs to protect themselves from competitors.

Mr. Trump has romanticized the era’s tail end. “We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913,” he told reporters last month. “That’s when we were a tariff country.”

In fact, the United States is far richer now in household income and economic output. But of greater concern may be Mr. Trump’s refusal to acknowledge the historical context. Economists say the mercantilism and great-power rivalries of that imperial age hindered wealth creation, advanced inequality and often led to the most complete zero-sum game of all: war.

The 80 Years War. The 30 Years War. The Nine Years War. Trade monopolies and empire building produced decades of lose-losing that cost huge sums and caused millions of casualties.

What actually made the United States distinct, according to historians, was a greater adherence to the exuberant capitalism laid out by Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations.”

Published in 1776, the book pivoted away from the scarcity assumptions of mercantilism. Smith showed that wealth could be more than metal. It could be everything an economy does, otherwise known as gross domestic product. New riches could be created through productivity, innovation and free markets that let each country prioritize what it does best.

Nonzero-sum capitalism was pretty compelling for a young nation of striving immigrants. (The foreign-born share of the U.S. population peaked at nearly 15 percent around 1890, a fact Mr. Trump also seems to ignore.) And in a lot of ways, free markets and sharing were harder for Europe’s leaders to embrace. World War I and II were both spurred on by zero-sum approaches to international relations.

That line I included high up in this article — “he who is not a hammer must be an anvil”? It comes from a speech that Adolf Hitler gave about the Treaty of Versailles, which forced Germany to pay reparations, disarm and lose territory after World War I.

“If it’s the 1930s, you correctly understand that if countries are not firmly in your bloc, they might be completely mobilized against you,” said Daniel Immerwahr, a historian of U.S. foreign policy at Northwestern University. Only after the war ended, he added, was there an attempt to “change the rules of the game” — to make the world less zero-sum, by assuring countries that they could get rich through trade rather than by seizing land or starting wars.

The United States built and oversaw that system, mainly through organizations like the International Monetary Fund. Which is not to say that Washington’s outlook was never zero sum, or that the United States never got stuck in a lose-lose of its own.

I covered the Iraq war, after President George W. Bush told other countries they had a zero-sum choice: “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”

A few months ago, I opened a new bureau for The New York Times in Vietnam. I now live with my family in a country still dealing with the fallout of a zero-sum civil war that the United States joined because of its own zero-sum belief that any country the Communists won amounted to a major loss for America’s way of life.

The consequences were severe: a toll of three million Vietnamese lives and more than 58,000 American soldiers, plus a legacy of psychological trauma.

Maybe the world can avoid repeating such a catastrophic spiral. The global economy is more interconnected now, a potent disincentive to aggression. Many countries that have also benefited from the postwar system — especially in Europe and Asia — are seeking to protect its principle of peace through cooperative deterrence.

Maybe zero-sum thinking can even encourage restraint. In the same paper declaring that purely zero-sum situations are “exceedingly rare,” two psychology professors, Patricia Andrews Fearon, and Friedrich M. Gotz, found that “the zero sum mind-set predicts both hyper-competitiveness and anxious avoidance of competitions.”

Some zero-summers may not compete, they concluded, because they do not want to cause the pain or face the costs that they think are necessary for success. They also may avoid contests that they do not think they can win.

Mr. Trump may end up fighting and fleeing, depending on the circumstances. He views other nations in only two ways, Mr. Immerwahr said: “Either they are completely in your thrall or they are threats.”

Simplistic, yes, but many Americans also see foreign affairs in blunt, personal terms. After I wrote recently about the painful impact of U.S.A.I.D.’s demise on Vietnam’s Agent Orange victims, one reader emailed a short, telling critique: “Get real. That’s MY money.”

Change the Game

What causes this kind of zero-sum thinking?

Economic inequality fosters such a belief about success. But zero-sum Americans may not really be squabbling over taxes, college, jobs or wealth.

Jer Clifton, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania who oversees extensive surveys of primal world beliefs, told me the current backlash may be rooted in a zero-sum conviction about something deeper: importance.

Many Americans seem to fear that if some other group matters more, they matter less. “In 21st-century America, the more common, driving fear is not food or resource scarcity, but not enough meaning,” Dr. Clifton said. “We are a people desperate to matter.”

Under the old order, Americans found meaning in a belief that the United States was special. Our nation was built not on blood or soil but ideas — democracy, freedom, a chance to rise from rags to riches — and we were confident we could inspire and improve other countries.

Today, fewer Americans than ever want the United States to play a major or leading role in international affairs, according to Gallup surveys reaching back to the ’60s. They’re dissatisfied with themselves and the world, and they are wobbly on how to move forward.

Any desired revival of meaning may not come easily. Zero-sum culture breeds hostility and distrust by insisting on domination. You can hear a common response in Friedrich Merz, who is likely to be Germany’s new leader, calling for “independence” from the United States.

“One thing I’ve seen people do if they know they’re being forced into a zero-sum game is minimize investment and hold back resources,” said Michael Smithson, an emeritus professor of psychology at the Australian National University who has studied zero-sum thinking for more than a decade.

Essentially, those who resist the game shun the zero-sum player, who tends to be less happy and hard to be around. Fewer players (and resources) make the game less lucrative — but safer. With time, the “win-winners” add partners and agree to new rules. In the vein of Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” studies have found that people can be taught to see situations as nonzero sum with deliberation and guidance.

Mr. Smithson said he often told students in his classes to see him as their opponent so they would collaborate with one another, not compete.

My grandfather’s Easter egg hunt could have used a similar tilt. With a time limit, Billy-O and I would have had an incentive to cooperate, to make sure we found the $100 egg before the deadline. Instead of win or lose, it could have been “share the work, and the winnings.”

The Kurdish guerrilla group that has been fighting a long-running insurgency against Turkey declared a cease-fire on Saturday, days after a call from its jailed leader to disarm and disband the organization raised hopes of ending a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people over four decades.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., said the cease-fire would begin immediately. But it also called for Abdullah Ocalan, the P.K.K.’s founder and leader who has been in a Turkish prison for a quarter-century, to be freed so he can oversee the group’s dissolution.

If the P.K.K. does disband, it would resolve a major domestic security threat and mark a political victory for Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. If negotiations proceed with Mr. Ocalan, it could usher in a new era of peace across the region where Kurds have pursued an armed struggle in a mountainous area that intersects parts of Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

But there are still many unanswered questions.

“This is just the first sentence,” Asli Aydintasbas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said of Mr. Ocalan’s call to all groups to disarm.

It is not clear whether Turkey will cease armed operations against the P.K.K., who would monitor any truce or what would happen to fighters who do lay down their arms. There is also the question of whether the government has offered the Kurdish fighters anything in return.

But a cease-fire would allow Kurds to start internal consultations and hold local congresses to forge a democratic way forward, something Kurds in Turkey and Syria have said they want to do.

The P.K.K. announcement came two days after Mr. Ocalan said that the group had outlived its life-span and should dissolve itself, a rare message from a leader with broad influence over Kurdish fighters in Turkey, but also around the region, including in Syria and Iraq.

The P.K.K. statement, carried by Firat News Agency, a P.K.K.-linked news site, said “none of our forces will take armed action unless attacked.”

In recent years, Turkey’s military has degraded the P.K.K.’s fighting abilities, which analysts say may have contributed to its willingness to discuss an end to its fight.

Fighters of the P.K.K. revere their leader, Mr. Ocalan, and are expected to heed his call, but the group’s conditional statement suggests it will continue to use its leverage in the bargaining process.

“For these types of organizations, cease-fires are a means to buy time, overcome military setbacks and smooth over cracks among members,” said Oytun Orhan, an analyst at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies based in the Turkish capital, Ankara.

The Turkish government did not immediately comment on the P.K.K. statement or on the group’s call for Mr. Ocalan to be released.

But on Friday, Mr. Erdogan welcomed the appeal by Mr. Ocalan, which came after a series of talks that included Turkish officials; Mr. Ocalan himself; and members of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party, the People’s Equality and Democracy Party, or D.E.M.

“We have a historic opportunity to take a step toward demolishing the wall of terror” between Turks and Kurds, he said. He added that Turkish officials would follow up on working to end the conflict, without elaborating on what that would entail.

Mr. Erdogan said in January that the government had offered the P.K.K. no concessions.

The P.K.K. began as a secessionist group that sought to create an independent state for Turkey’s Kurdish minority, but more recently it has said it was seeking greater rights for Kurds inside Turkey.

Turkey, the United States and other countries classify Mr. Ocalan as a terrorist and the P.K.K. as terror group for its attacks that have killed Turkish security forces and civilians. Many Turks see Mr. Ocalan, who was convicted in 1999 of leading an armed terrorist group, as one of the country’s biggest enemies.

Turkey and the P.K.K. have tried over the years to resolve the conflict, most recently through peace talks that started in 2011. Negotiations broke down in 2015, ushering in a deadly new phase.

But last October, a powerful political ally of Mr. Erdogan made a surprising public call to Mr. Ocalan, asking him to tell his fighters to lay down their arms and end the conflict. Doing so, the politician said, could open a pathway for his life sentence to be ended.

The Catholic world is gripped with uncertainty as Pope Francis, 88, remains in a Rome hospital because of a complex lung infection and other serious ailments.

The Vatican said on Friday that the pope had suffered a bronchial spasm that resulted in him breathing in vomit, which had required him to undergo noninvasive mechanical ventilation. He responded well and remained conscious and alert at all times, the Vatican added.

On Saturday morning, the Vatican said that Francis had had a coffee and was reading the papers after a night that had “passed peacefully.”

The previous night’s potentially serious setback followed several days of improvements. On Thursday, his clinical condition had improved enough for him to move out of critical condition, though he was still not out of danger.

Here’s what we know about his condition, and about how things would go should he die.

Francis’ Condition

Francis’ initial respiratory tract infection developed into pneumonia in both lungs, and other complications have emerged during his hospital stay.

Because of an earlier respiratory crisis, he was given high flows of supplemental oxygen. On Feb. 23, the Vatican announced that he was suffering from “initial, mild kidney failure,” which was “under control.”

It had said two days earlier that Francis would not lead the annual service to open the Christian season of Lent.

He is being treated with various drugs, and his doctors have said that calibrating them has been a challenge.

Given his age and history of lung disease, doctors have been guarded about his prognosis.

Upon Death

While Francis’ fate is still unclear, what is more certain are the time-honored rituals that were drafted and refined over the centuries to ensure secrecy and an orderly transition. The carefully choreographed pageantry provides order to a church in its most dramatic moment of flux.

A pope’s death is immediately confirmed by the head of the Vatican’s health department and the cardinal chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, who becomes the Vatican’s de facto administrator. The pope’s body is dressed in a white cassock and brought to the pope’s private chapel.

The cardinal chamberlain, camerlengo in Italian, is a position now held by Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, a 77-year-old American of Irish origin. He and other officials, along with members of the pope’s family, congregate in the chapel for a ceremony. The body is placed in a coffin made of wood and lined with zinc. The pope is dressed in red, his miter and pallium placed next to him.

After the ceremony, the camerlengo drafts a document authenticating the pope’s death, affixing the doctor’s report. He secures the pontiff’s private papers and seals his apartments, which in the case of Francis are a large section of the second floor at the Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican City guesthouse used by visiting cardinals, where Francis has lived throughout his papacy.

He also arranges for the destruction of the so-called fisherman’s ring, used by the pope to seal documents, with a ceremonial hammer, to prevent forgeries.

Paying Respects

Francis has brought an unpretentious style to the church — rejecting elaborate outfits and the ornate papal apartments. His plans keep that up to the end, scaling back some of the funerary pomp and ceremony.

In rewriting the funeral rites in 2024, Francis simplified several elements. Since the 13th century, the bodies of popes have gone on public view, their embalmed bodies placed on a raised pedestal. When John Paul II died in 2005, his body was first brought to the Apostolic Palace within hours for a private viewing for cardinals, bishops and other members of the church hierarchy, as well as prominent Italian officials.

Francis has done away with that sort of viewing. Instead, a public viewing will take place directly in St. Peter’s Basilica, where thousands have thronged to pay respects to popes in the past. But his body will remain in the coffin, which will not be on a raised pedestal. “Francis decided to highlight humility over glorification,” said Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, a church historian.

The College of Cardinals decides on the day and hour that the pope’s body will be brought to St. Peter’s Basilica, in a procession led by the camerlengo, and on when the viewing will commence.

The Funeral

The funeral and burial of the pope are supposed to take place four to six days after his death, and funeral rites in various churches in Rome will last nine days.

Past popes were put in three nested coffins, one of cypress, one of zinc and one of elm. But as part of Francis’ rule change, he decreed that he would be buried in a single coffin, made of wood and lined in zinc.

The coffin is closed the night before the funeral. The pope’s face is covered by a white silk veil, and he is buried with a bag containing coins minted during his papacy and a canister with a “rogito,” or deed, briefly listing details of his life and papacy. The rogito is read aloud before the coffin is closed.

The new rules also allow for a pope to be buried in a church other than St. Peter’s Basilica. Francis has asked to be buried instead in the Basilica of St. Mary Major, a church dear to him and one he often visited to pray in front of an icon of the Virgin Mary.

The Conclave

Within 15 to 20 days of the pope’s death, the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, 91, will summon the cardinals to Rome for what is known as a conclave to elect Francis’ successor.

The period between the death of a pope and the election of a new one is called the sede vacante, or “the seat is vacant.” During that time, the College of Cardinals keeps general oversight of the church, but it is barred from making any major decisions.

When the cardinals meet, they gather in the Sistine Chapel. All cardinal electors must swear an oath of secrecy and vote by secret ballot. Only cardinals under age 80 are eligible to vote. A two-thirds majority is needed to elect a new pope, and politicking is part of the process.

Cardinals are not allowed to leave the conclave except in rare cases. The word conclave — from the Latin “with key” — refers to the isolation imposed on them, which is meant to keep the electoral process from dragging on.

During the conclave, the cardinals live in Casa Santa Marta, which was built on John Paul II’s orders to replace the improvised rooming arrangements in the papal palace that had previously housed them.

The White Smoke

The cardinals cast repeated votes until a two-thirds majority emerges. After every vote, the ballot papers are burned in a stove, along with an additive that produces a color, and the smoke is released through a chimney that can be seen from St. Peter’s Square, where crowds typically form to watch and wait. If a vote ends without a two-thirds majority, the smoke is black.

When a decision is reached, the smoke is white.

Inside the Vatican, the dean of the college asks the chosen successor whether he accepts the job. After getting the presumed yes, the dean asks him for the name he wishes to be called as pope.

In the sacristy of the chapel, the new pontiff is dressed in a white cassock. After greeting the cardinals, he proceeds to a balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, where a senior cardinal proclaims, in Latin, “Habemus papam” or “We have a pope.”

A wife, wearing a nightgown and her hair uncovered, lies down next to her husband in bed. An older man and woman, drunk on red wine, dance wildly and discuss the complexities of sex and nudity at their age. A distressed young woman navigates the sexual advances of a male employer in a job interview.

These scenes may seem to be simply ordinary life snippets on the big screen. But their existence — in three Iranian films released over the last few years — is nothing short of extraordinary, representing a new era of filmmaking in Iran’s storied cinema.

These movies, and the trend they represent, have gained recognition and accolades internationally. One of them, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” written and directed by Mohammad Rasoulof, will compete for best international feature film at the Academy Awards on Sunday.

Mr. Rasoulof, 52, is among a number of prominent Iranian directors and artists who are flouting government censorship rules enforced for nearly five decades since the 1979 Islamic revolution. These rules ban depictions of women without a hijab, the consumption of alcohol, and men and women touching and dancing; they also prevent films from tackling taboo subjects like sex.

In a collective act of civil disobedience and inspired by the 2022 women-led uprising in Iran and many women’s continued defiance of restrictive social laws, Iranian filmmakers say they have decided to finally make art that imitates real life in their country.

“The Women-Life-Freedom movement was a pivotal point in Iranian cinema,” Mr. Rasoulof said, referring to the protests that swept across the country in 2022 after a young woman died in police custody while she was detained for violating mandatory hijab rules.

“Many people, including filmmakers and artists in the cinema industry, wanted to break the chains of censorship and practice artistic freedom,” Mr. Rasoulof said in a telephone interview from Berlin, where he now lives in exile.

Mr. Rasoulof’s thriller drama follows a fictional judge for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court confronting the rebellion of his teenage daughters who turn against him as those protests erupt.

The judge’s family drama serves as a metaphor for the larger struggle that is still continuing in Iran, years after the government brutally quashed the protests. Many women still defy the hijab rule, appearing in public without covering their hair and bodies, and young people make clear — by dancing in public spaces, or through their choice of music and clothes — that their lifestyles vastly differ from those of their religiously conservative rulers.

Mr. Rasoulof made the movie without the required governmental approval and licensing, and filmed it in secret. Like all of the daring Iranian films made underground in the last few years, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” could not be released in Iran and instead was distributed internationally. It is competing in the Oscars as the nominee from Germany, which co-produced it.

Mr. Rasoulof fled Iran in May, just days before the film’s premier at the Cannes Film Festival, and after he was sentenced to eight years in prison and flogging for charges related to his political activism and art. He was previously jailed for eight months in 2022.

Iran’s Revolutionary Court has opened a new criminal case against Mr. Rasoulof, his cast and some members of his crew, charging that the film threatens Iran’s national security and spreads indecency. But he said everyone involved agreed that the risk was worthwhile.

Most of the film’s main cast members have now left Iran, except the leading actress, Soheila Golestani, who is the only one still in the country facing trial in person.

“For me it was more than acting in a movie,” Ms. Golestani, 44, said in an interview from Tehran. “Something like a social responsibility. And of course, presenting a true picture of a woman’s character which never had the opportunity to appear onscreen.”

For actresses, the risks are magnified. Simply letting their hair show in public or in front of the camera amounts to breaking the law. But a number of famous actresses have announced that they will no longer wear hijabs in films, a stand that risks limiting their casting options and incurring the wrath of the government. It has forced some into exile.

Vishka Asayesh, a 52-year-old beloved movie star, left Iran in the summer of 2023 after a run-in with intelligence agents over her support of the protests.

“Enough was enough, abiding by the rules felt like a betrayal of my fans and all the young people courageously protesting,” said Ms. Asayesh, who now resides in New York City. “This was my way of participating in the movement for change.”

The struggle between artistic expression and government control is continuing. A new hit Iranian television series, “Tasian,” set in early 1970s during the rule of the Shah, was abruptly canceled this past week and banned from streaming platforms because its female characters showed their hair (the actresses wore wigs) and danced and drank at nightclubs. The show’s director, Tina Pakravan, defied the authorities by making the entire series available on YouTube for free on Friday. She lives in Iran.

“Why should an artist who should be a mirror of his society be forced to emigrate only because he reflects the desired images of his people?” Ms. Pakravan said in a phone interview from Tehran.

The International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk, which defends artistic freedom and safety, organized a petition recently signed by more than 100 prominent figures in the global film industry for two Iranian filmmakers, a married couple, Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha, who are facing prosecution related to their critically acclaimed movie, “My Favorite Cake.”

“My Favorite Cake” explores a theme in a daring way not seen in Iranian cinema since the revolution. A man and woman, in their 70s and burdened with loneliness, spend one impromptu romantic night together. They drink wine, dance and discuss sex and their insecurities about stripping bare. In one scene the lead actress, Lili Farhadpour, sprays perfume under her skirt, anticipating sexual intimacy.

“It was time to show the real life of a large portion of Iranian society — the way they go about their days, they way they love and act,” said Ms. Moghadam, 52, in a telephone interview from Tehran.

She and her husband wrote the screenplay two years before the women-led protests that catalyzed so many other directors. Their film has since been screened around the world and has won 17 international prizes, including the jury prize at Berlin International Film Festival and the new director competition at the Chicago International Film Festival.

Like Mr. Rasoulof, they, too, face charges related to national security and spreading indecency in Revolutionary Court that could result to years in prison, and have been barred from leaving the country, working or teaching, they said. Their first trial date is on Saturday.

Mr. Sanaeeha said he hoped that the attention at the Academy Awards on Mr. Rasoulof’s film would result in more support for independent Iranian filmmakers, and that the Academy would change its rules that require international films to be nominated by the government of the country in which they were produced. The rule, he said, effectively shuts out the new wave of groundbreaking Iranian movies.

“Every filmmaker dreams of making movies in their own country,” Mr. Sanaeeha said. “We have never seen our movie on a big screen in the theater or with an audience.”

Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.