Culture

Locarno Film Festival: The live blog

This content was published on August 12, 2011 - 09:50

2 minutes

International competition:

Golden Leopard: Abrir puertas y ventanas (Back to Stay)

Best Director: Adrian Sitaru, Din Dragoste cu cele mai bune intenti (Best Intentions)

Best Actress: Maria Canale, Abrir puertas y ventanas

Best Actor: Bogdan Dumitrache, Din Dragoste cu cele mai bune intenti

Special Jury Prize: Tokyo Koen

Special Mention Award: Un amour de jeunesse (Goodbye First Love)

Other major awards:

Fipresci Best Film: Abrir puertas y ventanas

Ecumenical Prize: Vol Spécial (Special Flight)

Prix du Public UBS: Bachir Lazhar

Variety magazine’s Piazza Grande award: Bachir Lazhar

Filmmaker of Today: Alessandro Comodin’s L’Estate di Giacomo

Best First Film: Valérie Massadian’s Nana

Filmmaker of Tomorrow, Best International Short Film: Rauschgift (Addicted) by Peter Baranowski

swissinfo’s Jessica Dacey is in Locarno to count down the final hours of the Film Festival.

The 64th Locarno Film Festival ran from August 3-13.

260 works were being shown: around 200 films and around 60 short films and including around 40 world premieres. 32 works were Swiss.

20 films were in the international competition, including 14 world premieres and three first works.

4 lifetime awards: Harrison Ford, Claudia Cardinale, Claude Goretta and Bruno Ganz; 3 special awards: Leopard of Honour to Abel Ferrara, Excellence Award to Isabelle Huppert, Best Independent Producer Award (Premio Raimondo Rezzonico) to Mike Medavoy.

It’s the second festival for director Olivier Père. Before that he was managing director of the Directors’ Fortnight, a prestigious independent section of the Cannes Film Festival.

And the award goes to …

This content was published on Aug 13, 2011 Milagros Mumenthaler’s tale of three sisters dealing with the death of the grandmother who had raised them was also the Fipresci critics’ choice for Best Film. Maria Canale picked up Best Actress for her performance as one of the sisters. (See trailer) There were 20 films in the international competition and jury chair Paul Branco…

As seen by a critic

This content was published on Aug 13, 2011 Young, aka @jigsawlounge, tweeted on Saturday: “Hunches: Golden Leopard: GOODBYE FIRST LOVE. Best Director: Loktev, THE LONELIEST PLANET.” Young, sitting on the Fipresci jury of international critics, has not given any of the 20 films in the international competition more than 6/10. He told swissinfo.ch: “Overall in the competition I did not find an outstanding film that I…

Doing business

This content was published on Aug 13, 2011 The answer has been to hold three industry networking days in the middle of the festival – a new feature introduced last year – where buyers and distributors can see the best of the crop of films on offer in very short space of time. On the periphery, forums and round tables are held on…

Decision time

This content was published on Aug 13, 2011 A jury is choosing the winning Golden Leopard from among 20 documentaries and fiction features in the international competition. They will also decide on best director, actor and actress. Winners will also be picked from smaller categories like the best first feature. Everyone can be a film critic here too. All week the public have also been…

From Minnelli to Matsumoto

This content was published on Aug 12, 2011 An American in Paris is arguably the most popular of American director Vincente Minnelli’s 34 films. First released in 1951 with a George Gershwin score, the film was showing in a double bill with the international premiere of Hitoshi Matsumoto’s Saya Zamurai (Scabbard Samurai). The festival is showing all of Minnelli’s works as part of a…

Breaking out of Bollywood

This content was published on Aug 12, 2011 The diversity of new Indian talent was the focus of an Open Doors networking section at the Locarno Film Festival, where 12 film projects were promoted – chosen from among 200 submissions in 18 languages from 30 different Indian regions. Four of the films won cash prizes, with the top SFr30,000 award going to The…

Tourist magnet

This content was published on Aug 12, 2011 The Locarno region is also home to the Moon and Stars and Jazz Ascona festivals, but the film festival is a “very, very important” event for the region, according to Jeanne Gerber of the Lake Maggiore tourist office. “It gives us publicity and carries the name of Locarno to the whole world.” The first weekend…

Festival buzz

This content was published on Aug 12, 2011 Scoring all four Hollywood stars was quite a coup for Locarno. They were in town to promote the genre-bending action film Cowboys & Aliens, which had its European premiere on a sold-out Piazza Grande on August 6. It was a big night for the film’s actors too, prompting twitter comments by the director @jonfavreau who thanked the audience for showing…

Countdown to the awards

This content was published on Aug 12, 2011 It’s day ten and already in the 9am slot there are five films to choose from. In one, Barbara Streisand stars in a Vincente Minnelli work from 1970, part of this year’s retrospective into the Oscar-winning director. Or there are Swiss-Kazakh and Swiss-Tibetan productions from the filmmakers of today category, an Arabic-Hebrew piece figuring in the…

Spotting the leopard

This content was published on Aug 11, 2010 Leopard prints are always in style at the Festival del film Locarno, where the top prize is the Pardo d’oro – Italian for Golden Leopard. (Images: Susan Misicka, swissinfo.ch)

Who’s that girl?

This content was published on Feb 1, 2010 A trip through the colourful universe of the Swiss Film Archive and its celluloid treasure trove. (swissinfo.ch)

Locarno Film Festival: The live blog

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