The 79th Locarno Film Festival gets underway
The 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival opens in southern Switzerland with a film musical accompaniment to the silent film The General by Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman.
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening:
The 79th Locarno Film Festival gets underway
This evening, the Italian actress Isabella Rossellini will receive an award in Piazza Grande.
The usual film concert, in collaboration with the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana (OSI), conducted by Philippe Béran, will take place at 3.30pm at Palexpo FEVI.
More
Changing everything, changing nothing: Locarno Festival keeps offbeat at 79
Also making its debut from 2pm is the retrospective dedicated to the blacklist and the Hollywood left during the McCarthy era.
Government minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider will also be present at the official opening this evening.
As the sun sets, all eyes will be on the big screen in Piazza Grande, where the film Les yeux verts by the French directing duo Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh will be screened at 9.30pm. The film tells the story of an Iraqi girl living in France with her family. Her brother falls into a deep sleep when they are told they are to be deported.
The screening will be preceded by the presentation of the Excellence Award to the Italian actress and director Isabella Rossellini.
17 films compete for Pardo d’Oro
Over the 11 days of the festival, 233 films will be screened – an increase on previous years, thanks to a record 7,759 submissions. There will be 103 world premieres. The programme features 28 Swiss films, plus eight co-productions.
Seventeen films are in the running for the Pardo d’Oro, the festival’s most coveted award. Among them is a Swiss co-production, O Jacaré by the Swiss-Portuguese director Basil Da Cunha.
It is the final instalment of a trilogy dedicated to life in the Reboleira neighbourhood on the outskirts of Lisbon, which has since disappeared. Da Cunha had previously presented the first and second films in the trilogy, O fim do mundo (2019) and Manga D’Terra (2023), in the International Competition.
The jury for the International Competition is chaired by Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz. The Locarno Film Festival runs until August 15.
More
Locarno Film Festival director refutes ‘elitist’ cinema label
+ How we produce English news
Translated from Italian, reviewed by an English Department journalist.
External Content
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.