Japanese film Tabi to Hibi wins Golden Leopard at Locarno

Writer-director Sho Miyake's film is made up of two independent plots, each based on a manga by cartoonist Yoshiharu Tsuge. Keystone-SDA

The Japanese film Tabi to Hibi by director Sho Miyake won the Golden Leopard, the top prize in the international competition, on Saturday, the final day of the Locarno Festival.

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Writer-director Sho Miyake’s film is made up of two independent plots, each based on a manga by cartoonist Yoshiharu Tsuge. The first story takes viewers to the seaside in summer, where a sensual encounter between the characters Nagisa and Natsuo takes place.

The second part of the film takes viewers to a snowy village in winter. Here screenwriter Li meets Benzo, who runs a guest house. While the first encounter is silent and sensual, the second prompts Li to reflect on her life.

By winning the Golden Leopard, Tabi to Hibi beat out 17 other films in the international competition at the 78th Locarno Film Festival. The prize for best director went to the Iraqi-French director Abbas Fahdel for his film Tales of the Wounded Land, about daily life in southern Lebanon during and after the war.

Double award for White Snail

The best-performance prizes went to Manuela Martelli, a Chilean national, and Ana Marija Veselcic, a Croatian, for the film God Will Not Help, and to Marya Imbro and Mikhail Senkov, both Belarusian, in White Snail, an Austrian-German co-production. This drama also won the Special Jury Prize.

In White Snail, Marya Imbro plays a young, suicidal Belarusian woman who dreams of a career as a model. While in hospital, she observes Misha, played by Mikhail Senkov, who works in the morgue.

His work, which is so close to death, fascinates her. These marginal characters, with a veil of sadness hanging over them, eventually come to love each other.

Special mention

The two Swiss co-productions in the international competition were honoured in other categories. Le Lac by Neuchâtel director Fabrice Aragno won a special mention in the Ecumenical Jury Prize. The first film by this former accomplice of Jean-Luc Godard follows the duo of Clothilde Courau and Swiss yachtsman Bernard Stamm in a race lasting several days on Lake Geneva.

It also won first prize in the Junior Jury Awards, while Valentina and Nicole Bertani’s Les moustiques (The Mosquitoes), the second Swiss film in international competition, received a special mention.

Award-winning actor in a Swiss film

In the Filmmakers of the Present section, the first feature film by Zurich director Jacqueline Zünd, Don’t Let The Sun, may not have won the Golden Leopard, but it did win the prize for best performance. This went to Georgian actor Levan Gelbakhiani, who plays father to nine-year-old Nika at her mother’s request.

Translated from French with DeepL/gw

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