The 78th Locarno Film Festival opens today
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The 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival opens this afternoon with the traditional concert and the screening of Armenian director Tamara Stepanyan’s film on the Piazza Grande.
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The usual film concert in collaboration with the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana (OSI), conducted by Philippe Béran, will take place at 3:30 p.m. at the Palexpo FEVI. The orchestra will accompany the silent film The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) by Henry King.
The screen on the Piazza Grande will light up at 21:30 with Le Pays d’Arto, the first fiction film by Armenian filmmaker Tamara Stepanyan, who lives in France. In the film, French actress Camille Cottin plays the role of Céline who is on a journey through Armenia where she discovers the truth about her husband’s death, but also a country scarred by conflict and war.
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Locarno Festival counters the somber mood of the world with art and comedy
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The Swiss film festival kicks off with a program reflecting the current pulse of the planet – and offers a roster of comedies celebrating art.
Once again this year in Locarno there will be big international names, such as star Jackie Chan, who will receive the Honorary Leopard for lifetime achievement (Pardo alla Carriera) on Saturday on the Piazza Grande, and British actress, screenwriter and producer Emma Thompson, who will receive the Leopard Club Award on Friday.
18 candidates for the Golden Leopard
This year 222 films will be screened, 100 of them world premieres. There are 18 films competing for the Golden Leopard (Pardo d’Oro), the festival’s most coveted award. In addition to the 17 films announced at the press conference in early July, Japanese director Naomi Kawase’s latest work Yakushima’s illusion starring Luxembourgian actress Vicky Krieps has been added, the organisers announced last week.
Two Swiss co-productions are also eligible for the main prize: Le Lac by the Neuchâtel director Fabrice Aragno and Le bambine by the Italian sisters Valentina and Nicole Bertani, co-produced by the Lugano-based Cinédokké.
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Locarno Festival sheds light on an under-appreciated era of British cinema
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Films restored by the British and the Swiss film archives illuminate a period of national reconstruction and cultural transformation.
Other films in the running for the Golden Leopard include the return of British director Ben Rivers, already in the International Competition last year with Bogancloch, who will bring his new film Mare’s Nest to Locarno. Surprising the international press was the selection in competition of the last part of a trilogy on youth in the 1990s, Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due by French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche. The second part Mektoub My Love: Intermezzo, which was presented at Cannes in 2019, had raised a fuss because of very explicit sex scenes.
The jury of the International Competition is chaired by French-Cambodian director Rithy Panh. “Locarno78” runs until August 16.
Adapted from Italian by DeepL/ac
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