All posts tagged: Locarno

Asia Argento to Receive Locarno Film Festival Life Achievement Award

Asia Argento to Receive Locarno Film Festival Life Achievement Award

Published by Daniella Wilson

The Locarno Film Festival will celebrate the Italian actress, filmmaker, and musician Asia Argento with its Life Achievement Award during its 79th edition this August. Argento will receive the award in Piazza Grande on the evening of Aug. 13 and also present Jorge Thielen Armand’s La Muerte No Tiene Dueño (Death Has No Master), which premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes this year and which stars her. “Since making her onscreen debut as a child in Lamberto Bava’s cult sequel Demons 2 (1986) and starring in Palombella rossa (1989) by Nanni Moretti, Asia Argento, one of the most distinctive European performers of her generation, has built a singular body of work that encompasses passionately beloved genre films, auteur cinema, and intimate self-portraiture,” Locarno said. “Argento emerged as one of the most daring presences in cinema, winning two David di Donatello awards for best actress for Perdiamoci di vista (1994) by Carlo Verdone and Traveling Companion (1996) by Peter Del Monte. With her father, Dario Argento, she starred in a slew of dazzling films – starting with Trauma (1993) – that …

‘Twin Peaks,’ ‘Zidane’ Producer Sigurjón Sighvatsson in Locarno Award

‘Twin Peaks,’ ‘Zidane’ Producer Sigurjón Sighvatsson in Locarno Award

Published by Daniella Wilson

The 2026 Locarno Film Festival will honor a trailblazing Iceland-born, U.S.-based film, music video and TV producer who has been behind some of the most popular and renowned movies and series of the past decades: Sigurjón “Joni” Sighvatsson. He will be celebrated with the Raimondo Rezzonico Award in the Swiss town’s Piazza Grande on the evening of Aug. 6, with the official program screening two key films from his career: David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990) and Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon’s soccer icon documentary Zidane, A 21st Century Portrait (2006). “Whether as co-founder of Propaganda Films in 1986 – a powerhouse that once produced a third of all music videos in the United States, including early works by Zack Snyder, Spike Jonze, Gore Verbinski, Michael Bay and co-founder David Fincher – or as producer for David Lynch’s Palme d’Or winner Wild at Heart and Julian Schnabel’s groundbreaking Basquiat (1996), [he] has played a crucial role in seeking out new talent and in shaping the pop aesthetics of the modern era,” Locarno said on Tuesday. …

Locarno Open Doors 2026 Africa Projects, Producers, Directors Unveiled

Locarno Open Doors 2026 Africa Projects, Producers, Directors Unveiled

Published by Daniella Wilson

Open Doors, the Locarno Film Festival‘s co-production platform and talent development program for filmmakers from equity-seeking communities and regions where artistic expression is at risk, is gearing up for its second edition with a focus on African cinema, unveiling on Monday its selection of projects and producers for 2026. Organizers promise “a bold and diverse slate of voices from across the African continent” in an edition that brings together filmmakers whose work spans fiction, documentary and animation across more than 10 countries. Running Aug. 5-10, the Open Doors program offers hands-on training, mentoring and networking, alongside public screenings and events during the Locarno Film Festival and its industry arm Locarno Pro. The 2026 Open Doors Projects showcase features six first and second features in development — from portraits of music and memory to explorations of womanhood, urban life and the long shadows of colonialism. The Open Doors Producers program, which supports producers in building sustainable careers and cross-border networks, also assembles six participants. Finally, the Open Doors Directors selection brings together five directors for a …

Isabella Rossellini to Receive Locarno Film Festival Excellence Award

Isabella Rossellini to Receive Locarno Film Festival Excellence Award

Published by Daniella Wilson

The Locarno Film Festival will celebrate Italian-American actress, model, filmmaker and icon Isabella Rossellini with its Excellence Award at its 79th edition this summer. Rossellini will be honored on the opening night of the festival, Wednesday Aug. 5 in the picturesque Swiss town’s Piazza Grande. “An icon of contemporary cinema, television, and fashion whose name is virtually synonymous with artistic daring and technical excellence, Rossellini has long fused the technical brilliance of Hollywood with the European spirit of artistic fearlessness across an extraordinary, multi-faceted, decades-long career,” Locarno organizers highlighted. “After first making a major cultural impact as a model, Rossellini seared herself into the collective imagination as the haunting Dorothy Vallens in David Lynch’s masterpiece Blue Velvet (1986), a role that blended glamour, raw vulnerability, and unforgettable intensity.” Added the festival: “Born of cinema royalty, Rossellini has left her distinct mark on film history, forging a career featuring collaborations with filmmakers like Robert Zemeckis, David O. Russell, Taylor Hackford, Marjane Satrapi, Guy Maddin, the Taviani brothers, or of course, most memorably of all, David Lynch, …

Darren Aronofsky to Get 2026 Locarno Film Festival Honorary Leopard

Darren Aronofsky to Get 2026 Locarno Film Festival Honorary Leopard

Published by Daniella Wilson

The Locarno Film Festival will celebrate American filmmaker Darren Aronofsky with its Honorary Leopard, the Pardo d’Onore, presented by Manor, at its 79th edition this summer, organizers said on Tuesday. Lauding Aronofsky as a “visionary,” the festival said he will receive the homor on Friday, Aug. 14 on the Swiss city’s Piazza Grand. He will also present two of his films as part of the festival, namely The Fountain (2006) and Mother! (2017). “With era-defining films like π (1998), Requiem for a Dream (2000), the Venice Film Festival award winner The Wrestler (2008), Black Swan (2010), Noah (2014), and The Whale (2022), for which Brendan Fraser was deservedly awarded best actor at the Academy Awards, Darren Aronofsky has carved out a space in contemporary cinema that defies tidy categorization,” Locarno said. “By turns provocative, spiritual, and formally daring, his films have for more than a quarter century probed the outer limits of faith, desire, and obsession.” Locarno concluded that Aronofsky would receive the honor in recognition of “his singularity as an artistic force.” Said Giona …

Locarno 2026 Film Festival Poster Features Cindy Sherman Ecstatic Gaze

Locarno 2026 Film Festival Poster Features Cindy Sherman Ecstatic Gaze

Published by Daniella Wilson

U.S. photographer and artist Cindy Sherman designed the poster for the 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, which was unveiled on Wednesday. It features a character created by Sherman, rendered in stark black and white and wrapped in a yellow leopard-spotted headscarf. The leopard is the public image of the Locarno fest, which hands out the Golden Leopard as its top prize. Reinterpreting Locarno’s iconic leopard “through her signature language of masquerade and transformation,” Sherman “pays tribute to the festival’s historical image of itself,” the fest said. “A constructed character appears in stark black and white, framed by a billowing leopard‑print scarf rendered in a vivid, blazing yellow, suggesting both glamor and camouflage, revelation and disguise.” Said Maja Hoffmann, president of the Locarno Film Festival: “Cindy Sherman is one of the most influential artists of our generation. She transformed the way we perceive the world by using the camera not to document reality, but to expose how identity is staged, performed, and shaped by culture.”  Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro noted: “Sherman’s work asserts the …

Inside ‘Blue Heron,’ the Most Acclaimed Film of 2026 So Far

Inside ‘Blue Heron,’ the Most Acclaimed Film of 2026 So Far

Published by Daniella Wilson

Sophy Romvari tends to keep her expectations “tempered.” From the inception of her debut feature, Blue Heron, the Canadian native stayed focused on what she could control: the experience of making her deeply autobiographical film on her own terms. She didn’t have much hopes for a splashy acquisition out of a festival bow, much less a months-long press tour from there. “I definitely had no expectation of theatrical distribution for an independent Canadian personal drama in the year of 2026. I assumed that it would go straight to streaming,” she says. “The feedback you get from the industry as a new filmmaker is just, ‘It’s a bad time. No one’s taking risks.’”  And yet here Romvari sits on a Hollywood restaurant patio, struggling to find time for bites of her chopped salad between thoughtful answers to questions about her unlikely indie sensation. Blue Heron did not, it turns out, go straight to streaming; on the contrary, it’s being carefully rolled out on big screens across North America by the selective Janus Films. Romvari’s drama is …

“Hollywood Left and the Blacklist“ Locarno Film Festival Retrospective

“Hollywood Left and the Blacklist“ Locarno Film Festival Retrospective

Published by Daniella Wilson

The “Red Scare” and the infamous Hollywood blacklist of the McCarthy era will be the timely topics of the retrospective at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. Under the title Red & Black – Hollywood Left and the Blacklist, the Swiss festival’s Retrospettiva, once again curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht, will put the spotlight on “one of the most turbulent and politically charged periods in the history of American cinema.” Last year, the festival revisited the “Great Expectations” of British postwar cinema. This year, it focuses on a politicized time in Hollywood postwar history. During the period from 1947 to the early 1960s, Hollywood professionals suspected of communist ties faced a crackdown. Produced in partnership with the Cinémathèque Suisse and with the support of UCLA Film & Television Archive, the program will paint “a complex portrait of an era in which creatives were confronted by unprecedented abuse of state and industry power and which they met, courageously, with fierce artistic resistance,” Locarno highlighted. “As the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union swelled into a defining feature of world politics, right-wing voices in the American political system alleged …