Festivals have a baked-in tension between the works they’re meant to showcase—marginal relative to the marketplace, hence the (sometimes pejorative) descriptor “festival film”—and the sponsorships necessary for them to operate, the larger and more corporate the better. Cracks will inevitably emerge; thus, attending Locarno with his latest, The Old Oak, socialist Ken Loach spent part of his press conference dutifully denouncing sponsors UBS Bank, prompting two Swiss journalists sitting next to an attending friend to draw their breath sharply in protest: “UBS is an ethical bank.” Another tension is between the ideal of a “festival film”—work at the boundaries of what’s […]
by Vadim Rizov on Aug 23, 2023“Have you ever seen Romanian TikToks?” It’s a torrid afternoon in Locarno and Radu Jude and I are sitting in a container repurposed as an interview booth, a couple of days after the premiere of his latest, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. Social media play a prominent role in the film, an electrifying snapshot of life in the 21st century designed to both immortalize our back-to-front digital zeitgeist and dissect its textures. A collage straddling black comedy and road movie, Do Not Expect centers on Angela (Ilinca Manolache), an overworked production assistant whose company […]
by Leonardo Goi on Aug 10, 2023The full lineup has been unveiled for the 76th Locarno International Film Festival, which will take place in the Swiss town from August 2-12. At a glance, highlights include new films from Filipino slow cinema auteur Lav Diaz, Romanian social satirist Radu Jude, zany French funnyman Quentin Dupieux and Argentine director Eduardo Williams (who actually needs three films in a trilogy, anyway?). Also featured in this year’s lineup is Family Portrait, the feature debut from Lucy Kerr, who we included on our annual 25 New Faces of Film list last year. Check out the full lineup below, and visit Locarno’s official […]
by Natalia Keogan on Jul 5, 2023