05/08/2025 - The artistic director of the Swiss gathering talked to us about this year’s programme and about the importance of building an offering that adequately reflects the complexity of this historical moment

(© Locarno Film Festival/Ti-Press)

In the run-up to the upcoming edition of the Locarno Film Festival (6-16 August), artistic director Giona A Nazzaro told us about the vision that has guided the selection. From the International Competition to the Cineasti del presente section, up to the Piazza Grande and the Honorary Leopards, we find work that valorises risk, narrative responsibility and a radical opening towards the various forms of contemporary cinema. The discussion revolves around reflections on the world landscape, the political function of storytelling and Locarno’s role in the global festival system.

Cineuropa: Firstly, let’s focus on the International Competition. What particular tendencies, themes and geographies have emerged?
Giona A Nazzaro: No particular theme, tendency or geography has emerged. We’ve tried to build a programme that could reflect in an adequate manner the complexities of this historical moment, that would be able to reflect this complexity in the autonomy of filmmaking. We’ve therefore evaluated, as always, each film. I’ve always greatly mistrusted the search for themes, also because I believe cinema should assert itself by what it does, what it wants to say. On the other hand, I’ve also always mistrusted the comparison of content. That said, of course the programme carries in a certain way the fears and anxieties that we unfortunately experience every day.

At the time at which we were putting it together, there were more than fifty wars going on around the world, which we barely ever talk about. The world hasn’t been in such a dramatic situation in many years. Therefore, while always strongly reflecting on the value of each individual film within the context of the programme, we also asked ourselves about the meaning of what we were doing. If someone were to look back at Locarno fifteen years from now, we would like for there to emerge the impression that whoever put this programme together did confront themselves, in one way or another, with these important questions. 

Now let’s talk about Cineasti del presente. What kind of work did you do for this section?
Cineasti del presente is a place where two challenges face each other. On the one hand, we have to present a section of such strength that it can be considered a place where the best of the new energies of European and world cinema meet; on the other hand, we have to present filmmakers who can hope to have a larger future. If the section was at one time considered to be more of a gymnasium, now I believe it has reached a much more precise formal and linguistic maturity. This is interesting because the International Competition, which presents many films from established filmmakers, demonstrates instead a renewed enjoyment for risk.

This assumption of responsibility in narration is important, because today, the dominating narratives are linked to the immediate–and thus to the dissemination of news–or to so-called intellectual properties, franchises and sequels. I find the fact that there are filmmakers who confront themselves with the problem of the responsibility of storytelling extremely intriguing. 

Do you have titles in particular that embody this drive towards risk and experimentation?
We chose the films we did over a year, working from September. We immersed ourselves into an enormous number of submissions and we also did active research work, especially when it comes to the female directors, the percentage of which remains too small. Titles such as Balearic, the comedy Folichonneries, or the sci-fi film The Fin are, for me, the sign that the selection has reached maturity. Another very remarkable example is Olivia, which demonstrates how young cinema is capable of taking on extremely interesting risks. Thanks to their production autonomy, these films also present themselves as credible interlocutors for the market. 

Piazza Grande and the Out of Competition sections remain two strong poles of the offering. What kind of approach did you adopt for these sections?
With the Out of Competition section, we attempted to create a space for an extremely diverse, vital cinema, which carries a lot of energy. For example, titles such as the fantasy films Deathstalker or the new film by Pippo Delbono, Bobò, aren’t there for the sake of generic eclecticism: we focused on cinematic expressions capable of dialoguing with the audience following a curiosity without prejudice. As for the Piazza Grande selection, we tried to build it like the crowning glory of the festival day, often preceded by an event. We didn't worry solely about the general public, but rather about strong narrative propositions capable of bringing together as many people as possible. 

This year, you are presenting two titles by Jean-Stéphane Bron, amongst which is The Deal [+see also:
series review
series profile], a thriller series about negotiations around the Iranian nuclear programme in 2015. What convinced you to select it?
It’s very simple: I saw the series all at once during a trip and it immediately struck me. I’d thought about projecting all six episodes at once, but it was a little inconvenient. So we decided to create a sample of two episodes on Piazza Grande–the same duration as a film–and to then show the remaining four episodes in cinemas. It isn’t the first time that we screen a series in Locarno. I like this mode of hybrid use. Moreover, I was surprised by the fact that Bron, a documentarian, was making his fiction debut with such an interesting series.

And what about the Honorary Leopards and the other awarded guests?
The Honorary Leopards and the other awards are the expression of a desire to widen the festival’s family. Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu, Emma Thompson, Milena Canonero, Alexander Payne and the Lebanese production company Abbout represent for me the essence of a contemporary cinema in the present tense. I am glad all these figures can converge towards the Piazza Grande. 

Finally, how would you describe Locarno today in the context of the festival landscape?
Today, Locarno is an indispensable observatory to understand where contemporary cinema is at. I like to think of Locarno as an extension of what was done between the second half of the 1980s and the 1990s: a beacon of cinematic curiosity and modernism anchored in the present but looking firmly towards the future.

(Translated from Italian)