For its 77th edition this August, the Locarno Film Festival will partner with Letterboxd, the international social network for cinephiles, on an award given to a new feature film showing on the Piazza Grande.

Musicals, noir films, westerns, screwball comedies, war movies. Locarno77 celebrates 100 years of Columbia Pictures, boasting a tribute both to beloved classics and unheralded gems produced at the Hollywood studio between the dawn of sound and the late 1950s.

The Locarno Film Festival’s Pardo d’Onore Manor, the award for outstanding achievement in cinema, will be given to Jane Campion, the internationally acclaimed filmmaker from New Zealand, on the evening of Friday 16 August. The 77th edition of the Festival will feature screenings of two of her celebrated titles selected by the director herself: An Angel at My Table (1990) and The Piano (1993), the latter presented in a new 4K restoration that will make its debut on the Piazza Grande. The audience will…

Giona Nazzaro, the Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival, and Piero Spila, film critic and editor, bid farewell to one of the defining film critics, historians, programmers, and thinkers about cinema of the past 50 years - Adriano Aprà. You can also read the tribute on the Locarno Film Festival website in Italian or English.

Imagine this: you’re in your 20s, you’ve never worked in or studied film when suddenly you find yourself producing an indisputably brilliant generational movie. Marianne Slot has now worked as Lars von Trier’s production partner since the 1990s. Over the decades her production company, Slot Machine, has been a cathedral for independent cinema. If producers were gatekeepers, Slot is the person you want holding the keys.

Tractors, madness, creative freedom and the heavy burden of judging art. We sit down with the prolific French actor Lambert Wilson, who is also the President of the Jury for the Locarno Film Festival, to talk about his new film, why he sees acting as a tool to extend life and ask that one crucial question: above all, is it great cinema?

"By unanimous - and I repeat unanimous - decision, the Jury is honoured to award a film that has collectively electrified us. A film that is as immersive and defiant as it is compassionate and tender. With inventive and disciplined photography and extraordinary sound design, the director draws authentic and audacious performances in spite of an oppressive and dangerous reality. This film is a 99 minute scream in the name of rebellion and freedom." - Jury President Lambert Wilson

We can't believe it - it's the last day of the 2023 Locarno Film Festival! In only a few hours, we'll know which film has been awarded the prestigious Pardo d'oro by our Jury. Who do you think it going to win?

On its penultimate day, the Locarno Film Festival shows no signs of slowing down. Audiences are in for a treat, with Rainer Sarnet's Nähtamatu võitlus, a kung-fu comedy set in an Orthodox monastery in the Soviet Union during the 70s. Need we say more?