It’s now Locarno Intl. Film Festival (August 2nd to the 12th) Artistic Director Giona A. Nazzaro’s turn to launch us back into major film festival mode with the unveiling of the 76th edition. Last year it’s the Brazilian drama Rule 34 by Julia Murat that won the Golden Leopard (Pardo d’oro) and this year’s competition section has what we think are a bunch of gems (many were on our most anticipated films list for 2023. The Concorso internazionale section has a mix of new voices and established filmmakers such as Romanian Radu Jude who brings Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Nina Hoss doesn’t topline, but she is among the cast) a film that is dubbed as a two-part film starts as a road movie following an overworked assistant on assignment for a multinational corporation; the second follows the making of a corporate film. Lav Diaz returns to the fest with Essential Truths of the Lake (which could be the new title for Henrico’s Farm). Just before launching in France, Quentin Dupieux will premiere what was called a guerilla shoot of a project in Yannick. Several sophomore features are also in this mix: we find Maryna Vroda‘s Stepne, Ena Sendijarević’s Sweet Dreams and Sofia Exarchou’s Animal. We also find the highly anticipated directorial debut The Permanent Picture by Laura Ferrés and a third feature film by Annarita Zambrano in Rosso Speranza.
Among the highlights in the Piazza Grande programme which takes up that infamous outdoor square space, we have the world premieres for Laura Luchetti‘s La Bella Estate (Deva Cassell’s debut role), Victoria Musiedlak‘s Première Affaire (formerly titled La vie sauvage) starring Anders Danielsen Lie, Noée Abita and François Morel with while Ken Loach’s The Old Oak and Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall receive some post-Cannes attention.
The Concorso Cineasti del presente section will offer a look at a slew of mostly new talents (first and second features) (among them Romain de Saint-Blanquat with La morsure and Lucy Kerr with Family Portrait) while Fuori concorso has a load of films we’ve been tracking for more than a year now. France items in Émilie Deleuze‘s Cinq hectares (Lambert Wilson, Marina Hands) and Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel‘s Best Secret Place (perhaps a different project as Eat the Night) are lumped in with Denis Côté‘s Mademoiselle Kenopsia and Ran Huang‘s What Remains starring Andrea Riseborough and Stellan Skarsgård. Here is the four sections selections:
Concorso internazionale Animal– Sofia Exarchou Baan – Leonor Teles El Auge Del Humano 3 – Eduardo Williams Essential Truths of the Lake – Lav Diaz The Permanent Picture – Laura Ferrés Lousy Carter– Bob Byington Manga D’Terra – Basil Da Cunha Mantagheye Bohrani (Critical Zone) – Ali Ahmadzadeh The Invisible Fight – Rainer Sarnet Nuit Obscure – Au Revoir Ici N’Importe Où– Sylvain George Patagonia – Simone Bozzelli Rossosperanza – Annarita Zambrano Stepne – Maryna Vroda Sweet Dreams – Ena Sendijarević The Vanishing Soldier – Dani Rosenberg Yannick – Quentin Dupieux
Piazza Grande Anatomy of a Fall – Justine Triet Guardians of the Formula – Dragan Bjelogrlić Dammi – Yann Mounir Demange Falling Stars – Richard Karpala, Gabriel Bienczycki Étoile filante – Fiona Gordon, Dominique Abel La Bella Estate – Laura Luchetti City of Women – Federico Fellini – 1980 La Paloma – Daniel Schmid – 1974 La Voie royale – Frédéric Mermoud Smugglers – RYOO Seung-wan NON SONO QUELLO CHE SONO – THE TRAGEDY OF OTHELLO BY W. SHAKESPEARE – Edoardo Leo Première Affaire – Victoria Musiedlak Shayda – Noora Niasari The Old Oak – Ken Loach Theater Camp – Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman
Concorso Cineasti del presente Camping du lac – Eléonore Saintagnan Ein schöner Ort – Katharina Huber Excursion – Una Gunjak Family Portrait – Lucy Kerr Dreaming & Dying – Nelson Yeo La morsure – Romain de Saint-Blanquat Negu Hurbilak – Colectivo Negu On the Go – María Gisèle Royo, Julia de Castro Rimdogittanga – Dominic Sangma Rivière – Hugues Hariche Todos Los Incendios (All The Fires) – Mauricio Calderón Rico Touched – Claudia Rorarius Und dass man ohne Täuschung zu leben vermag – Katharina Lüdin Whispers of Fire and Water – Lubdhak Chatterjee West Border – Yan Luo
Fuori concorso 5 Hectares – Émilie Deleuze Best Secret Place – Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel Bonjour la langue – Paul Vecchiali Conann – Bertrand Mandico Lovano Supreme – Franco Maresco Mademoiselle Kenopsia – Denis Côté Mimì – Il principe delle tenebre – Brando De Sica Nous les barbares – Bertrand Mandico Procida // Leonardo Di Costanzo Ricardo et la peinture – Barbet Schroeder Topakk – Richard V. Somes What Remains – Ran Huang
Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).
