Chinese director Li Hongqi scoops Golden Leopard
The 63rd Locarno Film Festival drew to a close on August 14. The major winner was Li Hongqi’s Winter Vacation, which scooped not only the Golden Leopard, but also the FIPRESCI Film Critics’ Prize and a special mention.
The International Competition jury handed its Special Prize to Marian Crisan’s French/Romanian/Hungarian film Morgen [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which also won the Ecumenical Jury Prize, the Don Quixote International Film Club Federation Award and the Youth Jury Prize.
Meanwhile, Denis Côté’s Curling (Canada) nabbed Best Director and Best Actor Leopard (for Emmanuel Bilodeau). The Best Actress Leopard went to Jasna Duricic for her performance in Oleg Novkovic’s Serbian/German/Swedish film White White World [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], which also received the Art & Essai Award.
In the Filmmakers of the Present competition, the Golden Leopard was awarded to Emmanuelle Demoris’s French film Paraboles (“Parables”); the Special Jury Prize and Best Debut Film Leopard to Verena Paravel and JP Sniadecki’s Foreign Parts (United States/France); and the First Jury Prize to Xu Xin’s Karamay (China).
In the Piazza Grande section, Eran Riklis’s The Human Resources Manager (Israel/Germany/France) picked up the Audience Award and Jalmari Helander’s Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (Finland/Norway/France/Sweden) nabbed the Variety Piazza Grande Award.
Finally, the SRG SSR idée suisse Prize, awarded to a film shown in Critics’ Week, went to Joonas Neuvonen’s Finnish documentary Reindeerspotting – Escape From Santaland.
Condensed for the first time into three days, the Industry Days was well attended by professionals and buyers with about 900 accredited visitors who watched films from the competitions and Piazza Grande section. Delegate artistic director Nadia Dresti said that “the success of Industry Days proves that our initiative has met a real need among professionals in the sector. The Industry Screenings has roused buyers’ interest in the films presented at Locarno and enabled their distribution in film networks across the world.”
The Locarno Festival’s first edition under the direction of Olivier Père, whose radical programme sparked both enthusiasm and controversy, unfortunately failed to attract as large an audience as last year (148,436 viewers compared to 157,057 in 2009). This drop in attendance is mainly due to the bad weather conditions which emptied the Piazza Grande at the end of the festival.
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