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.
Isabella Fogliazza, better known by her stage name of Isabella Ferrari, is an Italian television, stage and film actress. She is best known for her role as Commissioner Giovanna Scalise, the main character in the police drama series Distretto di Polizia and Distretto di Polizia 2, which was televised on Mediaset's Canale 5 from 2000 to 2001. At the 1995 Venice Film Festival she won a Volpi Cup award for Best Supporting Actress in the film Romanzo di un giovane povero.
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.
Gitanjali Rao is an Indian theatre actress, animator and film maker.
Eliza Hittman is an American screenwriter, film director, and producer from New York City. She has won multiple awards for her film Never Rarely Sometimes Always, which include the New York Film Critics Circle Award and the National Society of Film Critics Award—both for best screenplay.
Kamal Aljafari - also written Kamal Jafari is a Palestinian artist, film director and producer.
Divya Prabha is an Indian actress who predominantly appears in Malayalam films. She gained wider attention for her roles in the films Take Off and Thamaasha. In 2015, she won Kerala State Television Award for Best Second Actress for her performance in the TV serial Eswaran Sakshiyayi. She was nominated for Best Actress at the 2022 Locarno Film Festival in the international competition section for the movie Ariyippu directed by Mahesh Narayanan. The film premiered in the Concorso internazionale of the 75th Locarno Film Festival on 4 August 2022, where it was nominated for Golden Leopard. The film had a worldwide release on Netflix on 16 December 2022. Her upcoming movie All We Imagine as Light directed by Payal Kapadia (filmmaker) has been selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, which premiered May 2024. She is one of the main lead in the film.
The 69th Festival del film Locarno was held 3–13 August 2016 in Locarno, Switzerland. Carlo Chatrian was the festival's Artistic Director.
The 72nd annual Locarno Festival was held from 7 August to 17 August 2019. The debut feature by Italian director-producer Ginevra Elkann's Magari opened the festival, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's To the Ends of the Earth was screened as closing film.
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.
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 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.
I Have Electric Dreams is a 2022 coming-of-age drama film directed by Valentina Maurel, starring Reinaldo Amien Gutiérrez, Daniela Marín Navarro, Vivian Rodriguez, Adriana Castro García and Jose Pablo Segreda Johanning. The film produced by Gregoire Debailly and Benoit Roland is a co-production of Costa Rica, Belgium and France. It revolves around a young girl Eva, who lives with her mother, her little sister and their cat. The film captures the thin line between love and hate, in a world where aggression and rage intertwined with the vertigo of female sexual awakening. It premiered at the 75th Locarno Film Festival on 8 August 2022, where it won the Pardo for Best Direction, Pardo for Best Actress and Pardo for Best Actor.
The 76th annual Locarno Festival was held from 2 August to 12 August 2023 in Locarno, Switzerland.
By the Stream is a 2024 South Korean drama film written and directed by Hong Sang-soo. In August 2024, the film was selected to compete for the Golden Leopard at the 77th Locarno Film Festival, where Kim Min-hee won Pardo for Best Performance Award.
Kurdwin Ayub is an Iraqi-Austrian filmmaker. Her feature film debut Sonne (Son) was awarded the Best First Film Award at the 2022 Berlin International Film Festival.
The Pardo for Best Performance is an award given at the Locarno International Film Festival. It was first awarded in 2023. In 2022, the Locarno Film Festival announced that the two acting categories would be retired and replaced with one gender neutral category, with both Best Actor and Best Actress merging into two Pardo Awards for the Best Performances category.
Laurynas Bareiša is a Lithuanian filmmaker. After beginning his career as a cinematographer, he directed a series of short films followed by the feature films Pilgrims and Drowning Dry.
Saulė Bliuvaitė is a Lithuanian film director and screenwriter. For her feature film debut Toxic (2024), she won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival.
