Pedro Costa is a Portuguese film director. He is best known for his sequence of films set in Lisbon, which focuses on the lives of the impoverished residents of a slum in the Fontainhas neighbourhood.
Hong Sang-soo is a South Korean film director and screenwriter. An acclaimed and prolific filmmaker, Hong is known for his slow-paced films about love affairs and everyday dilemmas in contemporary South Korea.
The Locarno Film Festival is a major international film festival, held annually in Locarno, Switzerland. Founded in 1946, the festival screens films in various competitive and non-competitive sections, including feature-length narrative, documentary, short, avant-garde, and retrospective programs. The Piazza Grande section is held in an open-air venue that seats 8,000 spectators.
Michael Koch is a Swiss film director and screenwriter.
Andrea Štaka is a Swiss film director and screenwriter, best known for winning the Golden Leopard at the 59th Locarno International Film Festival in 2006 for her film, Das Fräulein.
The Golden Leopard is the top prize at the Locarno International Film Festival, an international film festival held annually in Locarno, Switzerland since 1946. Directors in the process of getting an international reputation are allowed to be entered in the competitive selection. The winning films are chosen by a jury. The award went under many names until it was named the Golden Leopard in 1968. The festival was not held in 1951 and the prize was not awarded in 1956 and 1982. As of 2024 René Clair is the only director to have won the award twice, winning in the first two years of the festival.
Denis Côté is a Canadian independent filmmaker and producer living in Quebec, of Brayon origin. His experimental films have been shown at major film festivals around the world.
Thomas Imbach is an independent filmmaker based in Zürich, Switzerland. With his production company Bachim Films, Imbach produced his own work until 2007. He then founded Okofilm Productions with director/producer Andrea Staka. All of his films have been theatrically released and Imbach has won numerous awards for his work, both in Switzerland and abroad. With Well Done (1994) and Ghetto (1997) Imbach established his trademark audio-visual style, which is based on a combination of cinema- verité camerawork and fast-paced editing. His fiction features Happiness is a Warm Gun, as well as Lenz (2006), I Was a Swiss Banker (2007) and the fictive autobiography Day is Done (2011) all premiered at the Berlinale. His latest feature film Mary Queen of Scots celebrated its premiere in Locarno and at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013. His latest documentary Nemesis celebrated its international premiere at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2020, where it received the Prize for Best Cinematography. Thomas Imbach is currently considered one of the most unconventional and consistent Swiss filmmakers.
Sina Ataeian Dena is an Iranian-German film director, screenwriter and film producer and artist.
Vitalina Varela is a 2019 Portuguese drama directed by acclaimed director Pedro Costa. It won the Golden Leopard and Best Actress Award at the 2019 Locarno Film Festival. The film follows Vitalina Varela, a character who previously appeared in Pedro Costa's Horse Money.
Filmmakers of the Present - Golden Leopard is an award at the Locarno International Film Festival, presented by the Jury to the best film of the section “Filmmakers of the Present". It was first awarded in 2006. It is dedicated to emerging directors from all over the world and devoted to first, second and third features.
Vitalina Varela is a Cape Verdean actress.
The 78th annual Venice International Film Festival was held from 1 to 11 September 2021.
The 74th annual Locarno Festival was held from 4 August to 14 August 2021 in Locarno, Switzerland. The opening film of the festival was Beckett by Ferdinando Cito Filomarino, which had its world premiere on 4 August. The 74th edition of Locarno Film Festival hosted 14 films including 7 world premieres in Piazza Grande among which half were European productions. More than 75,000 spectators attended the festival. 50% less than the attendance rate in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 79th annual Venice International Film Festival was held from 31 August to 10 September 2022. Noah Baumbach's White Noise was the festival's opening film, and Francesco Carrozzini's The Hanging Sun was the closing film.
The 75th annual Locarno Festival opened on 3 August 2022 in Locarno, Switzerland with film Bullet Train by David Leitch. The 75th edition of Locarno Film Festival celebrated as diamond jubilee edition screened 226 films including 105 world premieres and 3 international premieres. It hosted retrospective screenings of Douglas Sirk's films in its Retrospettiva section.
The 76th annual Locarno Festival was held from 2 August to 12 August 2023 in Locarno, Switzerland.
Stefano Knuchel is a Swiss documentary film director, screenwriter, and producer.
The 77th Locarno Film Festival will be held from 7 August to 17 August, 2024. The Crowd by King Vidor, accompanied by live music from the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, will screen the night before the festival begins, and The Flood by Gianluca Jodice will open the festival.
