Locarno Film Festival opens with 225 screenings, 104 world premieres

Seventeen films are competing for the Golden Leopard. Keystone / Valentin Flauraud

The 77th edition of the Locarno Film Festival opens today, marking the beginning of the Maja Hoffmann era. Situated on the shores of Lake Maggiore, the eagerly awaited festival features a packed programme: 225 screenings over 10 days, including 104 world premieres.

Locarno77 will showcase prominent international figures, such as multi-award-winning New Zealand director Jane Campion (The Piano; The Power of the Dog), who will receive the Pardo d’Onore on August 16, and acclaimed Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan, a Bollywood star.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

This year, the festival gives unprecedented attention to Swiss productions, with 41 Swiss films selected. Among them is Reinas, directed by Klaudia Reynicke, a Peruvian director based in Ticino, and Electric Child, a science fiction film by Zurich-born Simon Jaquemet, both of which will be screened on the Piazza Grande.

+Future of Locarno Film Festival lies in discreet charm of new president

Out of competition, the TV series Espèce menace, produced entirely in Switzerland by Bruno Deville and Léo Maillard, will be shown for the first time, with the first two episodes screened on different dates in Locarno.

The festival kicks off this evening with a screening of La Déluge, directed by Gianluca Jodice and starring Guillaume Canet (Asterix and Obelix – The Middle Kingdom) and Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds). The opening film, presented on the Piazza Grande, features Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as they await their trial in the Tour du Temple, a grim Parisian fortress.

+The Grand Hotel Locarno – where it all began

Seventeen films are competing for the Golden Leopard, including Der Spatz im Kamin by Swiss director Ramon Zürcher. The International Competition also features British experimental artist Ben Rivers (Bogancloch) and South Korean screenwriter Hong Sangsoo (By the Stream).

+The vanishing art of celluloid film projection endures in Locarno

Female directors are well-represented, with entries from Lithuania’s Saule Bliuvaite (Toxic), France’s Sylvie Ballyot (Green Line), and Italy’s Sara Fgaier (On Light Earth), bringing the female quota among competing directors to 47%. This edition is the first without Marco Solari, who led the festival for over 20 years. The new president, Maja Hoffmann, appointed last year, will welcome the many guests and fans.

Adapted from German by DeepL/amva

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].