Maja Hoffmann appointed next president of Locarno Film Festival

Maja Hoffmann takes over the presidency of the Locarno Film Festival from Marco Solari, who has held the position for 23 years. Keystone / Samuel Golay

Billionaire art collector and patron Maja Hoffmann has been elected as the next president of the Locarno Film Festival. She has been appointed to replace Marco Solari, who has held the position for 23 years.

An extraordinary general meeting of the film festival elected Maja Hoffmann as the new president on Wednesday. 

A well-known figure in the visual arts world, Hoffmann, 67, founder of the LUMA Foundation in Arles, France, will be the first woman to take on the role. Outgoing president Marco Solari will accompany her during a transition phase in the coming months.

Solari presented his successor with a white rose to symbolises transparency and courage. 

As the new president, Hoffmann said she was ready to take risks and support the Locarno Film Festival in its next development phase.

+ Maja Hoffmann named next president of Locarno Film Festival

Following her designation in July, critical voices became louder, particularly from Ticino, questioning how often the versatile Hoffmann, who lives in Basel, Zurich and Arles, would be in Locarno.

Hoffmann, vice president of the collection of the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation in Basel, said after her election that she was a cosmopolitan and a “person of the south” and wouldn’t just be able to be in Locarno.

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She is well connected in the art world and began collecting art in the 1980s. She studied film in New York and has co-directed documentaries, for example about Marina Abramovic or Peggy Guggenheim.

In 2004 she founded the LUMA Foundation, which supports artistic and interdisciplinary work in the fields of visual arts, education and the environment. The branch in Arles was added in 2013.

The extraordinary general meeting of the Locarno Film Festival also decided to reduce the size of the Board of Directors from 27 to 7 members. It also introduced two new advisory bodies: the policy advisory board, designed to provide support at cultural, economic and institutional levels, and the industry advisory board, which will bring together the various competencies of the film industry.