Locarno Film Festival returns to its pre-pandemic glory for its diamond anniversary

On August 23, 1946, a few months after the first Cannes Film Festival, the first Locarno International Film Festival opened with a screening of Giacomo Gentilomo’s Italian neorealist classic. The Sole Mio.

From the beginning, the aim of the festival was to present the entire spectrum of cinema, to showcase what the festival’s current managing director, Raphael Brunschwig, calls “culture with a thousand facets”.

The 75th Locarno Festival, which takes place from August 3rd to 13th, follows these first principles. Perhaps more than any other major first-rate festival, Locarno bridges the gap between Hollywood and avant-garde experimental cinema.

Locarno 2022 will start World premiere of Brad Pitt’s action thriller Bullet train director deadpool 2 Helmer David Leitch, who returns to Locarno after the 2017 show atomic blonde. This year’s event also includes gala screenings fancy jellyfish, A British murder mystery set in the world of competitive hairdressing by British director Thomas Hardiman; Anna Guto’s road thriller Highway to Heaven in the lead role Juliette Binoche and Morgan Freeman; And Olivia Newman is highly anticipated. where the locusts sing Mystery thriller starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and David Strathairn.

Everyone will get the old European treatment in Locarno, with an open-air screening in the famous Piazza Grande, a stunning open-air square in the heart of the old town that is the most classic way to watch a movie anywhere in the world. .

Art house lovers will also like it. Most of Locarno’s discoveries and surprises this year are expected to take place in the festival’s main competition section, which will feature 17 world premieres, including the latest films by famous masters such as Alexander Sokorov (Russian-Belgian drama. A fairy tale), Patricia Mazoui (French crime drama saturn bowling), Franco-Iraqi film director Abbas Fahdel (documentary purple house tales), the Austrian Nikolaus Geirhalter (PhD in Environmental Topic is inappropriate), Ming Jin Woo (partly animated Malaysian drama stone turtleAzerbaijani director Hilal Baidarov (drama Sermon to the fish).

Among the main helmets of the Golden Leopard is the German Helena Wittmann, whose drama. human flesh flowers will appear in the competition; Carlos Conceição, with the drama of the Portuguese-Franco-Angolan war in Locarno machine guns; and the Italian Alessandro Comodini is present at the Swiss festival with a documentary-drama The Adventures of Gigi Kanon.

“Film festivals celebrate the talent of those involved in film: they create a creative hub for networking and exchange, keep the industry alive and provide career opportunities for aspiring filmmakers and producers, allow them to discover themselves and promote short films. ” says Locarno’s artistic director, Giona A. Nazzaro, who notes that “more than 3,000 films” were submitted for consideration at this year’s festival. “The main challenge is to always be fair to whoever submits your work and be as focused as possible on trying to make the best selection possible, keeping the conversation going between the selection committee members.”

This year’s Locarno Lifetime Achievement winners, including horror producer Jason Blum (go outside, All Saints Eve), the first cow s exhibition Directed by Kelly Reichardt, experimental artist-music-director Lori Anderson and political cinema pioneer Costa-Gavras (Z, lost) — reflects the fascinating spirit of the festival, which celebrates everything from cutting-edge experimental cinema to Hollywood’s most subversive films.

Nazzaro, who was formerly the delegate general of the International Film Critics Week at the Venice Film Festival and is a member of the artistic committee of the Rotterdam International Film Festival, notes that Locarno “has its own identity – [it’s] An avant-garde, avant-garde festival with a strong classical atmosphere and a lineup that guarantees discoveries and surprises.

Locarno’s idyllic location on the northern shore of picturesque Lake Maggiore and surrounded by the Swiss Alps provided little protection from the ravages of COVID-19. Like international festivals around the world, Locarno has been forced to rethink everything during the pandemic, spending most of its activities online in 2020, with few physical screenings in local cinemas.

2021 was an in-person event, but the festival provided online services for industry professionals unable to travel to attend the festival.

For this year, Locarno, which was already going through the digitization process before the pandemic, will continue in the hybrid modality. While the physical event remains essential, organizers maintain pandemic-specific digital services, including Locarno Pro Online, an online industry program designed to support art cinema.

Suitable for the international auteur film industry, Locarno Pro Online offers a variety of services for sales agents, distributors, exhibitors, producers and filmmakers, including First Look, a section that showcases films at any stage of post-production, and Heritage Online, a year-round database where streamers and potential buyers can see available titles and have direct access to rights holders.

“[Before the pandemic hit] Film festivals and markets are already exploring digital solutions and hybrid models, which could be a valuable asset in the future, but personal business remains crucial for the film industry,” says Marcus Dufner, Director of Locarno Pro. “We will maintain the Locarno Pro Online structure, allowing those who cannot come to Locarno to follow some of our activities and services. This is an opportunity to extend our reach beyond the geographic limits of Locarno and Switzerland, but also to offer some services and activities throughout the year.”

Nazzaro points out that the pandemic did not cause the current disruption in the independent industry: “The perception of cinema and the films themselves was changing drastically. [before] But somehow I felt like it could last forever,” he says. “These two years did not bring changes, they simply accelerated what was already happening. COVID-19 has dramatically accelerated the transformations in film production and release that took place throughout 2019.”

With its reputation as an avant-garde festival, Locarno strives to stay ahead of future trends. The festival’s most recent initiative, launched this year, is the Locarno Green Project, which aims to raise awareness of environmentally friendly cinema. As part, Locarno presents the inaugural WWF Green Pardo, launched in collaboration with the World Wide Fund for Nature, which will award the film in a competition that best portrays or raises awareness of an important environmental issue. There is also a Green Film Fund, created to support projects related to environmental issues, which is planned for next year..

“A cultural event like Locarno can generate, promote and spread a new perspective by encouraging films and filmmakers that respect the ecosystem and tell new stories that can raise public awareness,” says Brunschwig. “Right now, we need to rethink our approach and find new tools to face the challenges of the future.”

Locarno also targets young filmmakers trying to break into the business. The Locarno residency, launched this year, aims to help first-time directors under 40 complete their inaugural film. Ten participants, selected by Locarno’s artistic team based on the film projects submitted and their professional profiles, will be present at the 75th festival from August 4th to 7th and will discuss their artistic ideas with a jury composed of three professionals from the film industry. The jury will select three projects, two international and one Swiss, from the top 10. These three filmmakers will receive extensive training, including online and in-person sessions, over the course of a year. took place from December 5th to 18th in Venice and a second stage session that lasted the entire month of March 2023 at the Eranos Foundation in Locarno.

“Locarno has always been known as the festival where the most free and innovative is the new [filmmakers] is released. Therefore, at a time when the manufacturing landscape is undergoing major changes, it is important to support young people. [filmmakers]”, says Daniela Persico, Locarno programmer for the initiative. “Compared to other development programs, we created a project that would cater to the three candidates who will receive the final one-year fellowship. The objective will be to take them to the final stage of project elaboration and strengthen their production structure through specific meetings at the festival, interacting with our sector programs.

But for its Diamond Jubilee, Locarno hopes to return to its pre-pandemic glory and its unique balance between mainstream and independence. While the focus of the festival industry is on art cinema, Persiso points out that Locarno’s unique location offers one of the venues for studio releases. “Because we really are an audience festival,” he says. “There is no better indicator than 8,000 chairs [in the Piazza Grande] Outdoors to feel how the film works.’