The 77th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, which will unfold from 7-17 August, intends to highlight the potential of the cinematic medium, capable of involving and dialoguing with a large and curious public, but without necessarily looking for elite-level productions that flirt with pure experimentation. Always at the service of auteur cinema, as highlighted by its artistic director Giona A Nazzaro during the announcement of the full selection (read news on the Piazza Grande, Cineasti del presente and Semaine de la Critique sections), the festival, and more particularly the films of its International Competition, which includes a beautiful bouquet of well-known names, presents itself as ambitious “without ever giving up on pleasure”.

For this edition, the first with Maja Hoffmann as president, there are 225 films, almost half of which are world premieres and 5 are international premieres. 15 debut features are competing for the Swatch First Feature Award. This year, many women are honoured: great director, screenwriter and producer Jane Campion (Honorary Leopard), American producer Stacey Sher (the Raimondo Rezzonico Award), French actress Mélanie Laurent who with her compatriot Guillaume Canet will receive the Campari Excellence Award, and French-Swiss actress Irène Jacob (the Leopard Club Award). Indian actor and producer Shah Rukh Khan will instead receive the prestigious Career Leopard, and Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Amongst the European productions and co-productions in International Competition, which includes a total of 17 films, as many as 5 are French: 100,000,000,000,000, the third feature by Virgil Vernier, already selected in Locarno in 2018 in the Cineasti del presente section with Sophia Antipolis; Youth (Hard Times) by Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing, winner of the Golden Leopard in 2017 with Mrs. Fang, the second volume in his documentary series that began with Youth (Spring), presented in competition last year in Cannes; Transamazonia by South African director Pia Marais (Tiger Award at the 2007 IFFR for The Unpolished) which plunges us in the heart of the Amazonian forest where ancestral beliefs, religious fervour and economic interests coexist; the intriguing Agora, the third feature by established Tunisian filmmaker Ala Eddine Slim (Lion of the Future at Venice 2016 for The Last of Us), in which three people who were thought to have disappeared forever reappear mysteriously in a village in Tunisia; and Green Line, the first feature by Sylvie Ballyot, whose particular cinematic language, between realism and oneirism, has already been recognised at the international level.

Switzerland is instead present with two films, The Sparrow in the Chimney, an intriguing and conflictual story of two sisters, from the great Zürcher brothers (Ramon directs while Silvain produces), whose The Girl and the Spider won the Best Directing award at the 2021 Berlinale in the Encounters section; and the co-production Fire of Wind, the debut feature by Portuguese director and artist Marta Mateus. Italy and Lithuania are also present, thanks to three and two films respectively: Luce by Silvia Luzi and Luca Bellino, already known as an artistic duo; Weightless, the debut feature by Sara Fgaier, the story of an ethno-musicology professor grappling with terrible amnesia, and the co-production New Dawn Fades, the second feature by Turkish filmmaker Gürcan Keltek, which plays with the limits of human perception; and Toxic, Saulè Bliuvaitè’s debut feature, and Drowning Dry, the second feature by Laurynas Bareisa (after Pilgrims, Best Film in Orizzonti at Venice 2021), which observes the reactions of the members of a family confronted with a tragic event.

Also in attendance will be British artist and filmmaker Ben Rivers with Bogancloch, a film midway between documentary and fiction which continues to observe his character Jake Williams, a man who has been living in the middle of a forest for decades; Kurdish-Austrian director Kurdwin Ayub (Best Debut Feature at the 2022 Berlinale for Sonne) with Moon, an intriguing second feature which follows a former professional kickboxer; German director Christoph Hochhäusler with his new film after Till the End of the Night, awarded in competition at last year’s Berlinale, Death Will Come, which pays homage to the French police film genre (the so-called “polar”); and the Catalan filmmaker Mar Coll with Salve Maria, a drama about fragile maternity with touches of psychological horror. The new film by South Korean director Hong Sangsoo, By the Stream, closes the selection.

Out of competition, 10 of the 11 films are European productions or co-productions. France dominates here as well with three (co)productions: Dragon Dilatation by the always intriguing Bertrand Mandico, My Darling Family by actress and screenwriter Isild Le Besco which stars, amongst others, Jeanne Balibar, Elodie Bouchez and herself, and The Passion According to Béatrice by Belgian filmmaker Fabrice Du Welz which, between documentary and fiction, draws the portrait of explosive actress Béatrice Dalle. Representing Switzerland, meanwhile, there will be Samir and his new docu-film The Miraculous Transformation of the Working Class Into Foreigners and Belgian-Swiss filmmaker Bruno Deville with his mountain series Endangered Species. There are also two Romanian films out of competition, both signed Radu Jude: Eight Postcards from Utopia, a documentary assembled exclusively from ads from post-socialist Romania co-directed with Christian Ferecz-Flatz, and Sleep #2, a kind of remake of Andy Warhol’s Sleep, as described by the filmmaker himself. Also out of competition, veteran filmmaker Marco Tullio Giordana, who presents his film The Life Apart, adapted from the homonymous novel by Maria Pia Veladiano. Finally, as for European (co)productions, we also find Telepathic Letters by Portuguese director and filmmaker Edgar Pêra and Fréwaka, a horror film by Belfast-based filmmaker Aislinn Clarke.

The selected films:

International Competition

Moon – Kurdwin Ayub (Austria)
Green Line – Sylvie Ballyot (France/Lebanon/Qatar)
Drowing Dry – Laurynas Bareisa (Lithuania/Latvia)
Toxic – Saulé Bliuvaité (Lithuania)
Salve Maria – Mar Coll (Spain)
Weightless – Sara Fgaier (Italy)
Death Will Come – Christoph Hochhäusler (Germany/Luxembourg/Belgium)
New Dawn Fades – Gürcan Keltek (Turkey/Italy/Germany/Norway/Netherlands)
Luce – Silvia Luzi, Luca Bellino (Italy)
Transamazonia – Pia Marais (France/Germany/Switzerland/Taiwan/Brazil)
Fire of Wind – Marta Mateus (Portugal/Switzerland/France)
Bogancloch – Ben Rivers (UK/Germany/Iceland)
By the Stream – Hong Sangsoo (South Korea)
Agora – Ala Eddine Slim (Tunisia/France/Saudi Arabia)
100,000,000,000,000 – Virgil Vernier (France)
The Sparrow in the Chimney – Roman Zürcher (Switzerland)
Youth (Hard Times) – Wang Bing (France/Luxembourg/Netherlands)

Out of Competition

Fréwaka – Aislinn Clarke (Ireland)
Endangered Species – Bruno Deville (Switzerland)
The Passion According to Béatrice – Fabrice Du Welz (France/Belgium)
Bang Bang – Vincent Grashaw (USA)
Sleep #2 – Radu Jude (Romania)
Eight Postcards from Utopia – Radu Jude, Christian Ferencz-Flatz (Romania)
My Darling Family – Isild Le Besco (France)
Dragon Dilatation – Bertrand Mandico (France)
Telepathic Letters – Edgar Pêra (Portugal)
The Miraculous Transformation of the Working Class Into Foreigners – Samir (Switzerland/Italy)
The Life Apart – Marco Tullio Giordana (Italy)