13/08/2011

The 64th Locarno International Film Festival closed on Saturday evening with the triumph of Milagros Mumenthaler’s Back To Stay [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Milagros Mumenthaler
film profile]. Crowned with the Golden Leopard, the FIPRESCI Prize and Best Actress for its star Maria Canale, this Swiss-Argentinean co-production was, however, considered an outsider in a competition expected to be dominated by another Swiss film, Fernand Melgar’s documentary Special Flight [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. In the end, this harsh critique of the Swiss legal system, which enables the authorities to detain undocumented refugees in prison for up to two years, until they are sent back on "special flights", had to make do with a mere double honours – the Ecumenical Jury Prize and the Youth Jury Prize.

If the Golden Leopard took everyone by surprise this year, this is also because it went to a debut feature. Born in Argentina in 1977, Mumenthaler lived in Switzerland until the age of 17. She studied cinema at Buenos Aires Film School and at the Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD). It seems unlikely, however, that this connection with the event’s host country played a role in its winning the Golden Leopard: at Locarno, the screening of Back To Stay left Swiss critics rather cold and the only Swiss personality in the jury, film director Bettina Oberli, couldn’t have sealed the film’s fate alone.

The fact remains that this debut feature eclipsed all the other contenders for gongs, not least the four French films in competition – a record number. None of them made it onto the prize list, except for Mia Hansen-Love’s Goodbye First Love [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mia Hansen-Love
film profile], which left Locarno with a cautious Special Mention from the jury.

The other "strongly represented" countries at this 2011 edition did somewhat better: Romania scooped two honours (Best Director Leopard for Adrian Sitaru and his highly-anticipated Best Intentions [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Best Actor for the film’s star, Bogdan Dumitrache), Japan received a Golden Leopard Special Jury Prize (Shinji Aoyama’s Tokyo Kouen) and Israel won a Special Jury Prize (for Nadav Lapid’s Policeman, unanimously praised by critics).

But what will undoubtedly remain of this 64th edition – besides the memory of the torrential rain which ruined the first few days of the festival – is above all a revival of glamour which had become rare on the Piazza Grande in the last few years. In the space of a few days, there was a chance to bump into Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig in the winding streets of the Ticino city, watch a quietly ironic Abel Ferrara receive a Leopard of Honour in front of thousands of festival-goers who had come from Switzerland and elsewhere for the occasion, hear Gérard Depardieu speak with enormous enthusiasm about Pialat’s films or catch a glimpse of Isabelle Huppert in a VIP tent, with a smile on her lips and a glass of champagne in her hand. It may not be Cannes or Venice quite yet, but it’s already a bit more than simply Locarno.

(Translated from French)