The Film Verdict: Locarno Film Festival 2023

LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2023

LOCARNO REVIEW DAILY

FUORI CONCORSO

Giona A. Nazzaro

Locarno’s artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro on Hollywood, Locarno and Diversifying the Lineup

CONANN

VERDICT: French director Bertrand Mandico's lurid saga of genderqueer decadence and visceral vioence is a ravishing sensory feast for viewers with strong stomachs. Stephen Dalton, August 1, 2013

A legendary warrior queen looks back on a decadent life of blood-soaked barbarism and romantic tragedy in Conann, the third full-length feature from prolific shorts director Bertrand Mandico.

Following The Wild Boys (2017) and After Blue (2021), the uncompromising French auteur’s latest phantasmagorical long-form experiment features many of his regular players and stylistic

tropes: heavily theatrical setting, heightened poetic dialogue, and overt nods to Fassbinder and Burroughs, all performed by a mostly female cast in both male and female roles. Launched in Cannes, this gender-fluid queerpunk fantasia screens at Locarno Film Festival later this week alongside the thematically related world premiere of Mandico’s latest short, We The Barbarians. Continues next page

Bold, up-to-date programming, from Golden Leopard contenders to crowd-pleasers in Piazza Grande, makes Locarno a cuttingedge festival

Max Borg, August 1, 2023

His first experience of Locarno, as a spectator/critic, was in 1994, during the Marco Müller years. It’s an edition still fondly remembered by seasoned festival goers, chiefly for what remains the ultimate Müller-era double bill in Piazza Grande: Abbas Kiarostami’s Through the Olive Trees, followed by Speed. And while Nazzaro may not be a fan of the word “eclectic” per se, he aims to recreate that same sense of contrast with his programming choices.

“As a festival goer and critic, I’ve been to events where you end up

Continues next page

Mandico’s lurid demi-monde of high-art perversion and bloodthirsty decadence is clearly not pitched at mainstream multiplex tastes, of course, but Conann still feels like his most fully rounded and lavishly crafted statement to date. It is certainly beautiful, with its ravishing 35mm monochrome cinematography, and graphically gory, with its visceral scenes of erotically charged sadism and ritual cannibalism. These extreme midnight-movie elements, coupled to a cryptic and episodic plot, will limit the film’s potential post-festival audiences to cult connoisseur circles. But for viewers with a high tolerance for art-house cinema with a generous undertow of transgressive pulp attitude, Conann is a richly rewarding addition to the Mandico Cinematic Universe. The inspirational seed for Conann was Mandico’s planned stage production about a film crew shooting Conan the Barbarian (1982), the shlocky sword and sorcery saga that propelled Arnold Schwarzenegger to Hollywood action-hero fame. Full Review

feeling you’re sort of always watching the same movies,” he tells The Film Verdict. “My hope for Locarno audiences is that after spending a day at the festival, they will go home and think they saw four or five films, all very different from one another.”

In fact, Nazzaro is keen on challenging the notion of what a festival film is. This year, the Cineasti del presente competition includes an erotic comedy (the Spanish production On the Go), and laughter has always been a key component of the current vision for Locarno. Nazzaro looks back on one of his bolder choices for the 2021 edition, when Cop Secret was among the contenders for the Golden Leopard: a gay buddy/cop movie from Iceland, the film also boasted a director, Hannes Halldórsson, who is perhaps best known as a soccer goalkeeper.

(In fact, the world premiere in Locarno had to accommodate his match schedule.) “I thought I had hit the jackpot, and then people started saying it wasn’t a Locarno kind of movie,” the artistic director remembers with a chuckle.

But if you ask Nazzaro, the distinction between “commercial” and “arthouse” cinema is nonsensical. “At the end of the day,” he explains, “when you produce an arthouse movie, you still need actors, a director, a writer, a cinematographer, an editor, a composer, a sound designer, etcetera. And unless they’ve all agreed to do it for the glory, that film will cost money, and you have to think about making it back.”

Going back to the topic of diversifying the lineup, he mentions two examples from the same country, the Philippines. For Full Article, Click here

Location Flashback

Swiss Route 19 / Oberlap-Realp, Switzerland

Goldfinger (1964)

Oberalp Pass is a high mountain pass at an elevation of 2,044 meters (6,706 feet) above sea level, located on the border of the cantons of Graubunden and Uri in Switzerland through the Swiss Alps.

In this scene, James Bond (Sean Connery) keeps his distance while keeping an eye on Auric Goldinger (Gert Frobe), but little does he know, he’s already been detected and is in the sights of a nearby assassin, Tilly Masterson (Tania Mallet).

Goldfinger was heralded as the film in the franchise where James Bond “comes into focus”. Its release led to a number of promotional licensed tie-in items, including a toy Aston Martin DB5 car from Corgi Toys which became the biggest selling toy of 1964. The promotion also included an image of gold-painted Eaton on the cover of Life. Goldfinger was the first Bond film to win an Oscar (for Best Sound Editing) and opened to largely favorable critical reception. The film was a financial success, recouping its budget in two weeks and grossing over $120 million worldwide. In 1999, it was ranked No. 70 on the BFI Top 100 British films list compiled by the British Film Institute.

Photo: ©United Artist, Eon Productions

Locarno Screening Guide

August 2

14:00 GranRex

The Mexico Olympics (1969)

Introduced by Giona A. Nazzaro, Olaf Moller and Roberto Turigliatto

Retrospective

15:30 Palexpo (FEVI)

The Lodger (1927)

Pre-Opening Screening with live Music

Cinema History

17:30 GranRex

La Noche Avanza

Introduced by Michel Lipkes Leduc

Retrospective

19:15 Teatro Kursaal

The Great Champion (1949)

Retrospective

21:30 Piazza Grande Opening Ceremony

Excellence Award Davide Campari to Riz Ahmed

Dammi

Second Screening

The Falling Star

22:00 GranRex

Torero (1956)

Retrospective

August 3

9:00 GranRex

The Case of the Wee Murdered Woman (1955)

Retrospective

La Sala

5 Hectares

11:00 amTeatro Kursaal Me & The Beasts

Open Doors: Screenings

11:00 Palexpo (FEVI)

The Giacomettis

Panorama Suisse

11:30 GranRex

La Corte de Faraon (1944)

Introduced by Frédéric Maire

Retrospective

14:00 · Palexpo (FEVI) Animal

Concorso interazionale

14:30 · La Sala

Pardi di domani: Concorso Corti d’autore Nocturne for a Forest Duck

A Tortoise’s Year of Fate

Du bist so wunderbar

The Currency – Sensing 1 Agbogbloshie

Continues Next Page Animal

(C)Homemade films

Dammi Me & The Beasts

The Falling Star

(c) Bendita Film Sales

(c) Ami Paris Vixens Wayword films

(c) Laurent Thurin Nal

Screening Guide

continued from previous page

August 3

The Path of Excellence

15:00 · GranRex

Mogul Mowgli (2020)

Cinema History: Excellence Award Davide Campari to Riz Ahmed

16:45 · Palexpo (FEVI) Yannick

Concorso interazionale

17:00 · PalaVideo @Palazzo dei Congressi Muralto · Find a Film!

Pardi di domani: Special Event

17:30 · GranRex

Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg (1990)

Cinema History

17:30 · La Sala Procida

Fuori Concorso

20:30 · GranRex

La mente y el crimen (1961) Restrospective

21:30 · PalaCinema 1

If the Sun Never Returns (1987)

Cinema History: Cinema Suisse

21:30 · Piazza Grande

Vision AwardTicinomoda to Pietro Scalia

The Path of Excellence

Procids

(c)Regione Campania, Film Commission Campania

(c)Emmanuelle Firman

LOCARNO REVIEW DAILY

Tsai Ming-liang Receives Locarno’s Leopard Award

PIAZZA GRANDE

Vive L’amour (1994)

Locarno celebrates the elegant, contemplative work of renowned Asian filmmaker and artist Tsai Ming-liang.

Clarence Tsui, August 2, 2013

On August 6, Tsai Ming-liang will be bestowed with a careercelebrating Honorary Leopard Award at the Locarno Film Festival.

Adding to the plethora of prizes he has won at nearly each and every A-list festival in a career spanning across four decades – a Continues next page

THE FALLING STAR

VERDICT: Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel return with 'The Falling Star', another picture more wacky than substantial and therein lies its charm and limitation.

Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, August 2, 2013

Directors Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel have been about their peculiar filmmaking style and content for years, which by now has to be considered a signature. In their latest film, The Falling Star, which is showing at the 2023 Locarno Film Festival, they are joined by cast members who must have been specially selected or innately attuned to the peculiarity of the couple’s storytelling.

As fans of their work will surely

expect, the directing pair play characters bearing their first names. Abel is Dom. Gordon is Fiona. There’s a small twist this time: because this is a film featuring a double, Abel is also Boris, a man whose resemblance to Dom forms an important part of the plot.

Back in his youth, Boris was an activist whose bomb attack made the news. Years later, he’s become a bartender at the film’s eponymous bar.

Continues next page

Locarno Film Festival

Golden Lion from Venice, two Silver Bears from Berlin, a Golden Hugo from Chicago and a Fipresci gong from Cannes – the Swiss accolade has cemented the 65year-old cineaste’s standing as one of the most acclaimed Asian artists of his generation.

Tsai is renowned among festival programmers and critics for his frank and amicable demeanour, something the festival will harness in the form of an on-stage conversation between the director and film critic Kevin B. Lee after a screening of his 2020 feature Days on August 3. The talk should be useful in understanding the complexities shaping Tsai’s personal and creative trajectory

across geographical and multimedia boundaries – it’s always perilous to try and brand him with reductive, sleight-ofhand descriptions.

Don’t (just) call Tsai “Taiwanese”. He may have spent most of his life in Taiwan, a country he has repeatedly thanked for hosting and supporting his work, but he arrived on the island when he was 20. Born in the city of Kuching, on the Malaysian part of Borneo Island, Tsai hails from a family with roots in southern China, an ancestry still evident in his ability to speak Cantonese in addition to Mandarin and Taiwanese.

For Full Article, Click here

His past comes calling one night in the shape of a man with a gun. This is the film’s very first scene, the texture of which reveals the flavour of wackiness that follows. To announce what he knows about his bartender, he opens a newspaper in such a manner that Boris can read it. He knows who the bartender is, he says, and then produces a gun, which he aims.

The gun goes off but so does the shooter’s arm. It’s a prosthetic arm clutching the gun. He screams in pain and runs out but he returns to grab the fallen limb a few moments later.

It’s ridiculous, but it’s the type of film where ridiculousness is an asset. “He lost his arm but his legs are fine,” says Tim (Philippe Martz), after chasing after the man with the gun and failing to catch him. Tim is a friend of Boris and his partner Kayoko (Kaori Ito); he also guards their bar.

Full Review

Locarno Film Festival

Director Dominque Abel, photo: Unifrance

THE OLD OAK

VERDICT: After angry, affecting portraits of northern England’s working class families in his previous two films, in 'The Old Oak' director Ken Loach travels to a former mining village where Syrian refugees are being resettled, to tell a moving but more generic, less engaging story than its predecessors.

Deborah Young, May 26, 2023

British octogenarian Ken Loach, whose recent films set in northeastern England have earned him renewed respect as the chronicler of his country’s social malaise, once more heads north with his regular screenwriter Paul Laverty to reveal the dire economic conditions of England’s working class in The Old Oak. The story, a low-level conflict between two disinherited groups forced to live together, is set in County Durham where, until recently, mining was the main form of livelihood. Now the village is so poor it’s barely able to support a single pub. These morose portraits of angry, defeated sons of miners convey a sense of their current plight better than any documentary. And yet, this is the least absorbing of Loach’s three last films, both because of its milder, less urgent approach to the low-key drama and the difficulty the viewer has getting close to the community of foreigners who come to live in the town.

The Old Oak – the name of the last pub standing – comes after two very hard acts to follow: ‘I, Daniel Blake’ (2016) about a man fighting to keep his welfare benefits after a heart attack, which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes, and ‘Sorry We Missed You’ (2019), a heart-breaker about a poor man who buys a van to do rush-order delivery work. It’s safe to say that anyone who has seen these films will not easily forget what it’s like to struggle on the bottom rungs of the social ladder.

The new film, unfortunately, seems to stop half-way, capturing the vividness of life on the English side, but not that of its band of outsiders. While D.P. Robbie Ryan’s lens remains sharply focused on the depressed pub owner TJ Ballantyne (played with measured perfection by non-pro actor Dave Turner, who has appeared in other Loach films)

Full Review

Locarno Screening Guide August 3

9:00 GranRex

The Case of the Wee Murdered Woman (1955)

Retrospective

11:00 La Sala 5 Hectares

Fuori Concorso

11:00 Teatro Kursaal

Me & The Beasts

Open Doors: Screenings

11:00 Palexpo (FEVI)

The Giacomettis

Panorama Suisse

11:30 GranRex

La Corte de Faraon (1944)

Introduced by Frédéric Maire

Retrospective

14:00 · Palexpo (FEVI) Animal

Concorso interazionale

14:30 · La Sala

Pardi di domani: Concorso Corti d’autore

Nocturne for a Forest Duck

A Tortoise’s Year of Fate

Du bist so wunderbar

The Currency – Sensing 1 Agbogbloshie

Animal

15:00 GranRex

Mogul Mowgli (2020)

Cinema History: Excellence Award Davide Campari to Riz Ahmed

16:45 · Palexpo (FEVI) Yannik

Concorso interazionale

17:00 · PalaVideo @Palazzo dei Congressi Muralto · Find a Film!

Pardi di domani: Special Event

17:30 · GranRex

Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg (1990)

Cinema History

17:30 · La Sala Procida

Fuori Concorso

20:30 · GranRex

La mente y el crimen (1961)

Restrospective

21:30 · PalaCinema 1 If the Sun Never Returns (1987)

Cinema History: Cinema Suisse

21:30 · Piazza Grande

Vision AwardTicinomoda to Pietro Scalia

The Path of Excellence

Procids

(C)Homemade films

Me & The Beasts

(c) Bendita Film Sales

The Path of Excellence

(c)Regione Campania, Film Commission Campania

(c)Emmanuelle Firman

Locarno Events for August 4th

10:30 · Forum @Spazio Cinema Conversation

Conversation with Pietro Scalia Vision Award Ticonomoda

Moderated by Manlio Gomarasca

13:30 · Forum @Spazio Cinema Round Table / Panel

Are You Still a Film Critic or Already an Influencer

Organized by the Asociation of Swiss Film Journalists SVFJ

Location Flashback

Dolder Grand Hotel – Zurich Switzerland

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

The Dolder Grand opened in 1899 as the Dolder Grand Hotel & Curhaus, and offers 175 luxurious rooms and suites, world-class restaurants, a spa, and an art collection that includes originals from Takashi Murakami and Salvador Dali.

In this scene, after helping Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) clear his name, Lisbeth Sander (Rooney Mara) arrive at the hotel to begin her face to face meeting with the bankers, in order to empty the accounts of corrupt businessman Hans-Erik Wennerstrom (Ulf Friberg)

The film premiered at Odeon Leicester Square in London on December 12, 2011, eventually grossing $232.6 million on a $90 million budget. The film was chosen by National Board of Review as one of the top ten films of 2011 and was a candidate for numerous awards, winning, among others, the Academy Award for Best Film Editing while Mara’s performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

Photo: © Columbia Pictures

LOCARNO REVIEW DAILY Spectacle Every

CONCORSO INTERNAZIONALE

Day.

36 Films in Locarno’s Mexican Retrospective

From Luis Buñuel to Luchadores, Locarno's Mexican Retrospective brings history and joy to the festival.

Lucy Virgen, August 2, 2023

‘Spectacle Every Day – The Many Seasons of Mexican Popular Cinema’ is a Mexican retrospective that comes to the Locarno Festival full of diversity, history and joy.

The richness of Mexican cinema in the decades – the 1940’s through the 1960’s – is amazingly on display in the retrospective mounted by the 2023 Locarno Festival, but the show’s most striking, even overwhelming Continues next page

ANIMAL

VERDICT: Dimitra Vlagopoulou shines in 'Animal', Sofia Exarchou's sometimes sexy, sometimes poignant second feature film.

Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, August 3, 2023

The first strain of music in Animal is Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’. Appropriate for this sometimes sexy, sometimes poignant second feature film from Sofia Exarchou, which has premiered at the Locarno Film Festival.

There’ll be more pop music as the film proceeds, but it won’t stray too far from the taste of a certain type of European in love with pop songs from a bygone era:

Madonna’s classic ‘Like A Virgin’, Baccara’s half-forgotten hit ‘Yes Sir, I Can Boogie’, Alla Pugacheva’s ‘Million Roses’

But these songs belie a film that is, at its core, a horror drama frontloaded with the mundane…up to a point. In the typical horror film, hell is unleashed in the final third. In Animal, what gets released is subtler and arguably more moving.

Set at a Greek resort, Animal is busy with two main groups: the tourists and the people who entertain them. Exarchou has her eyes and camera trained on the latter.

Full Review

CineVerdict: Espectáculo a diario. 36 filmes en la retrospectiva mexicana en el Festival de Locarno

CineVerdict: De Luis Buñuel al cine de luchadores, la retrospectiva mexicana llega a Locarno llena de historia y vitalidad

Lucy Virgen, August 2, 2023

Las distintas temporadas del cine popular es una retrospectiva mexicana que llega al Festival de Locarno llena de diversidad, historia y alegría.

La riqueza del cine mexicano entre 1940 y 1960, las tres décadas que abarca la retrospectiva que presenta el Festival de Locarno 2023 es asombrosa, pero la característica más llamativa -y en un momento apabullante- es la diversidad. Aparecen en ella genios del cine como Luis Buñuel, respetados directores mexicanos como Julio Bracho y Alejandro Galindo mezclados con películas de culto kitsch como Santo contra las mujeres vampiro y La mujer María Félix, bailarinas como

Tongolele y Ninón Sevilla; actores y actrices consagradas como Silvia Pinal, Isabella Corona, Pedro Armendáriz y los hermanos Soler; ídolos populares como Pedro Infante y Jorge Negrete.

La retrospectiva llamada Espectáculo cada día: las distintas temporadas del cine popular incluye una parte de la llamada época de oro -en dónde la industria cinematográfica mexicana era el centro mundial del cine en español – hasta los inicios de los 60 cuando el gusto de la audiencia cambió y la producción disminuyó. Sobre la variedad de géneros el historiador mexicano Juan Carlos Vargas

For Full Article, Click here

characteristic is its diversity. Cinema genius Luis Buñuel and respected Mexican directors Julio Bracho and Alejandro Galindo appear mixed with kitsch cult films like Santo contra las mujeres vampiro and La mujer murciélago. This selection of 36 films brings together divas like María Félix, dancers like Tongolele and Ninón Sevilla; established actors and actresses such as Silvia Pinal, Isabella Corona, Pedro Armendáriz and the Soler brothers; popular idols like Pedro Infante and Jorge Negrete. The retrospective called Spectacle Every Day – The Many Seasons of Mexican Popular Cinema includes a part of the so-called golden age –when the Mexican film industry was the center of Spanishlanguage cinema in the world –until the early 1960s when the audience’s taste changed and production declined. Regarding the variety of genres, Mexican historian Juan Carlos Vargas comments, “The cycle stands out for the inclusion of classics from film noir and ‘chili westerns’, as well as for presenting films of For Full Article, Click here

CONCORSO INTERNAZIONALE

Yannick is convinced it’s funny, and Dupieux himself states with confidence, “99% of films are boring. This one is not,” but sadly the declaration is just an empty promise.

Set in a marginal Parisian theater where a doltish working-class audience member interrupts the banal stage action and demands respect, Yannick clocks in at a super trim 66 minutes, but unlike classic pre-Code comedies of the same length, this can’t be called brisk. Finding audiences outside die-hard French fans will be a tough sell.

YANNICK

VERDICT: Quentin Dupieux’s gentle satirical humor has been put to better use than in "Yannick," a slight (in every sense) comedy in need of either more intelligence or delirium to make it meaningfully fill its 66minute running time.

Jay Weissberg, August 3, 2023

This is hardly the first review of a Quentin Dupieux film to complain that the prolific cult director rarely puts more than

one idea into his movies, and it’s unlikely to be the last. Like a comedy sketch stretched far, far beyond its welcome,

It’s not that Dupieux lacks a feel for absurdism, yet in so many of his films (Deerskin, Incredible But True, Smoking Causes Coughing, and others) he rarely takes it far enough, so the humor may occasionally tickle the funny bone but it lacks the intelligence or sheer delirium to carry an entire movie.

Full Review

MEG 2: THE TRENCH

VERDICT: Meg 2: The Trench wastes an hour or so before finally delivering what we paid to see: giant, prehistoric sharks eating tourists. Alonso Duralde, August 3, 2023

Meg 2: The Trench reminds us that there’s a fine line between the stupid and the absurd. The ongoing Sharknado franchise, for example, is utterly stupid, and

knows it. 2018’s The Meg which was essentially Sharknado with a bigger budget, delivered with a straighter face was absurd, and it knew it. Less a horror film than

a comedy with occasional jump scares, the movie posited that oversized, prehistoric sharks (megalodons, or “Megs”) still lived in the deep recesses of the ocean and were now emerging to chomp on tourists.

All Meg 2: The Trench had to do was deliver more hungry megasharks and more hapless swimmers, and fans of campy aqua-carnage everywhere would have been satisfied. Instead, this sequel wastes its first hour with dull exposition and incoherent action before finally, finally unleashing its undersea eating machines on an unsuspecting resort.

Jason Statham returns as asskicking marine biologist Jonas, whom we first encounter here acting as a “green James Bond,” stowing away on a cargo ship and capturing evidence that the crew

Full Review

Locarno Screening Guide

August 4

17:00 · GranRex · Black Hawk Down

Introduced by Pietro Scalia

Cinema History

17:30 · PalaVideo @Palazzo dei Congressi Muralto Nocturne for a Forest Duck

A Tortoise’s Year of Fate

Du bist so wunderbar

The Currency –Sensing 1 Agbogbloshie

Pardi di domani: Concorso Corti d’autore

18:00 · L’altra Sala Animal

09:00 · GranRex

Getting Down at the Corner (1948)

Retrospective

11:00 · Palexpo (FEVI) Pipes

Big Little Women Panorama Suisse

11:00 · La Sala Archive of the Future

Semaine de la critique

11:15 · L’altra Sala

Yannick

Concorso internazionale

11:15 · L’altra Sala

Excursion

Concorso Cineasti del presente

11:30 · GranRex

The King of the Neighborhood (1949)

Retrospective

11:30 · Teatro Kursaal

Ramani Wasi: Home of Stories

Eating Papaw on the Seashore

The Red Spiral

Volivia

Willkawiwa (The Sacred Fire of the Dead)

Open Doors: Shorts

14:00 · Palexpo (FEVI)

Manga D’Terra

Concorso internazionale

14:00 · GranRex

The Three Garcias (1947)

Retrospective

14:30 · PalaCinema 1 What Remains

Fuori concorso

14:30 · La Sala

ALEXX196 & the pink sand beach

The Waves

My Mother is a Saint A Study of Empathy

Slimane

Pardi di domani: Concorso nazionale

15:00 · L’altra Sala Procida

Fuoir concorso

16:00 · PalaCinema 2 & PalaCinema 3

Nina and the Hedgehog’s Secret

Locarno Kids Screenings

16:45 · Palexpo (FEVI) Do Not Expect Too Much of the End of the World

Concorso inernazionale

Concorso internazionale

18:00 · PalaCinema 1

Family Portrait

Concorso Cineasti del presente

18:30 · PalaCinema 2 & PalaCinema 3 Alphaville (1965)

Cinema History

20:15 · GranRex

The Batwoman(1968)

Retrospective

21:00 · PalaVideo @Palazzo dei Congressi Muralto Me & the Beasts

Open Doors: Screenings

21:30 · PalaCinema 1

5 Hectares

Fuori concorso

21:30 · Piazza Grande

The Beautiful Summer Guardians of the Formula

22:15 · GranRex

The Witches Mirror (1960)

Retrospective

Excursion

Family Portrait

(c) Conjuring Productions, Insufficient Funds, NSF

(c)SCCA/pro.ba

Locarno Events for August 5th

11:30 - Davide Campari Lounge CONVERSATION

Encounter with the delegation of La Bella Estate

Moderated by Piera Detassis, President and Artistic Director of Accademia del Cinema Italiano –Premi David di Donatello

14:00 - Forum @ Spazio Cinema

Round Table / Panel

Swiss Film Industry

New Film Act and New Opportunities

Practical insights on new financing opportunities for Swiss Film Producers

FEST clips

TIFF PLATFORM PROGRAMME

TIFF unveils the 10 World Premiere features that comprise the Platform programme for 2023, along with the 2023 Platform jury members: Academy Award–winning filmmaker Barry Jenkins, Cannes Jury Prize–winning director, writer, and actor Nadine Labaki, and 2022 Platform Prize–winning filmmaker Anthony Shim.

“I am delighted to announce that we have an international dream jury with acclaimed filmmakers Barry Jenkins, Nadine Labaki, and Anthony Shim as jury members for the Platform programme at TIFF,” said Anita Lee, Chief Programming Officer, TIFF. “Together, they represent the bold and independent spirit of the Platform Prize.”

Platform is TIFF’s competitive programme that champions bold directorial visions. The films selected for this year’s programme hail from 12 countries across three continents, all of which will be making their World Premiere at TIFF. The 10 films in the 2023 programme are eligible for the Platform Prize, an award of $20,000 CAD given to the best film in the programme, selected by the in-person international jury.

Selected Films

Dream Scenario

Kristoffer Borgli | USA

Dear Jassi

Tarsem Singh Dhandwar | India

Great Absence

Kei Chika-ura | Japan

I Told You So (Te l’avevo detto)

Ginevra Elkann | Italy

The King Tide

Christian Sparkes | Canada

Not A Word (Kein Wort)

Hanna Slak | Germany/Slovenia/ France

The Rye Horn (O Corno)

Jaione Camborda | Spain/Belgium/ Portugal

Sisterhood (HLM Pussy)

Nora El Hourch | France

Shame on Dry Land (Syndabocken)

Axel Petersén | Sweden

Spirit of Ecstasy (La Vénus d’argent)

Héléna Klotz | France

Toronto film Festival takes place Sept 7–17

Sundance Film Festival 2024 will kick off January 18, with film screenings in both Park City and Salt Lake City. The lineup will again include 90+ feature films and 60+ shorts. The Festival Awards will be presented on January 2,. at The Ray Theatre.

January 25 will launch at-home screenings of the films in our five Competition sections (including NEXT). Films invited to the other sections can opt-in to screen online during this limited sneak preview window. Press and industry will have online access to these competition films and others that opt-in for the professional community beginning one day earlier on January 24.

Fest takes place Jan 18–28, 2024

Nonfiction Media Makers

with

Disabilities Survey

Deadline Extended to August 11

Your chance to take the Nonfiction Media Makers with Disabilities Survey has been extended to August 11, 2023.The Survey is now available in English, Spanish, Arabic, Urdu, and Hindi.

Nonfiction Media Makers with Disabilities Survey, click here

Dream Scenario (2023) Photo credit: Courtesy of TIFF

LOCARNO REVIEW DAILY

CONCORSO INTERNAZIONALE

DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD

VERDICT: Radu Jude’s audacious assault on the state of Romanian society and, by extension, contemporary society in general, is a deliriously funny, caustic roller-coaster ride and the perfect summation of themes addressed in his earlier films.

Jay Weissberg, August 4, 2023

Fasten your seat belts: Radu Jude is taking you on a deliciously outlandish journey that makes Bad Luck Banging, or Loony Porn feel almost restrained. Letting loose with an even more caustic assault on contemporary Romanian society’s smashed social fabric, Do Not Expect Too Much from

the End of the World will leave audiences reeling from its nonstop blitzkrieg on the senses even as they roll in the aisles from the delirious vulgarity of the humor. When the first words of a film are “fucking shit,” you know things aren’t going to suddenly get gentle after that.

Continues next page

The prize-winning Romanian provocateur shares his thoughts on Jean-Luc Godard and Andrew Tate, the Barbie movie and the thrilling power of bad taste.

Stephen Dalton, August 4, 2023

Iconoclastic Romanian director Radu Jude continues his war on good taste with his latest satirical epic, Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of the World, which world premieres in Locarno this week. A sprawling feast of scabrous farce and film theory lesson, peppered with highbrow quotes and lowbrow pop culture references, Jude’s new feature is composed of two main Continues next page

“I don’t want to make cute things” an interview with director Radu Jude

DONOTEXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD (Continued)

From his first feature, The Happiest Girl in the World, Jude announced his intention to flay alive the inhumanity of his fellow nationals in their daily interactions, and ever since he’s sought to combat willful ignorance, prejudice and cruelty through films that masterfully balance gut-punches with sidesplitting laughter: no other writerdirector has such a creative ear for obscenity-laced dialogue. Do Not Expect Too Much can be considered a summation (but not a final chapter) of the themes he’s visited multiple times, in which his fury boils over to scald everything it touches. There may be those who feel he’s covered some of this material in the past, but that’s a reductivist reading of a filmmaker constantly exploring new ways of expression. If the end of the world really is approaching, Jude may be our most trenchant Cassandra. Propelling us into this world is Angela, played with breathtaking audacity by Ilinca Manolache...

Full Review

sections. The longer opening chapter revolves around an overworked, foul-mouthed, brutally funny film production assistant (Ilinca Manolache) as she blasts around Bucharest in her car, the shorter coda an injured factory worker (Ovidiu Pîrsan) struggling to share the inconvenient truth about his industrial accident. Here the prize-winning provocateur chats to The Film Verdict about Jean-Luc Godard and Andrew Tate, TikTok and Barbie

Do Not Expect

Too Much From

The End of the World has two main loosely linked sections. How are they connected for you?

“Well for me, they connect and they don’t connect. It’s difficult for me to answer in a straightforward way because it has to do first of all with the fact that these two stories are real. They are based on stories I encountered many years ago when I was

working as a production assistant and assistant director. They stayed in my head because they happened 10, 12, 15 years ago. I find both stories to be very symbolic, for the life in our new society, but also for the production of images. Then I decided to put them together in a single narrative, but little by little it felt like to fold them into a single narrative was to betray something from their essence, to make them more conventional, more traditional. As you know one film has to have one main story, but what if I have made a film with two stories? Of course they are connected, but they are different films in a way.”

These contemporary sections are also intercut with archive clips from a Communist-era Romanian film about a female taxi driver, Angela Moves On (1981). What was your intention with these scenes?

For Full Article, Click here

CONCORSO INTERNAZIONALE

MANGA D’TERRA

VERDICT: Set on the multicultural fringes of Lisbon, Swiss director Basil Da Cunha's third feature is a slender but big-hearted blend of social realist drama and Afro-diaspora musical.

Stephen Dalton, August 4, 2023

A Swiss director with Portuguese heritage, Basil Da Cunha takes a musical journey through multicultural Lisbon in Manga D’Terra, which world premieres this week at Locarno Film Festival.

Following After The Night (2013) and The End of the World (2019), Da Cunha’s third feature is another bittersweet love letter to Reboleira, the historically poor but rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood where the director has lived and made films for the past 15 years. The area is renowned for its large immigrant population and abundant music, particularly from the West African island republic of Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony.

In his press notes for Manga D’Terra, Da Cunha lays out his mission to preserve the sights, sounds and faces of Reboleira on film before the relentless march of capitalism sanitises and erases them. In doing so, he has created a hybrid of gritty social-realist ensemble drama and unorthodox

movie musical, light on narrative substance but full of delicious songs, colourful characters and handsome neon-drenched visuals. Refreshingly, he finds beauty, kindness, humour and resilience here alongside crime, violence and poverty. Festivals and specialist outlets with particular interest in musical subjects, immigration stories and African diaspora culture will likely show the keenest interest.

In his previous features, Da Cunha concentrated on Reboleira’s male characters: mostly drug dealers, gangsters and ex-convicts, all hustling to survive. Driven almost entirely by women of colour, Manga D’Terra is partly a conscious attempt to redress this gender imbalance, with strong focus on the feisty matriarchs and tough earth mothers who often hold the social fabric together in ghetto areas. These are women wrestling not just with deprivation, racism and police brutality but also with feckless, unreliable menfolk.

Locarno Events for August 6th

10:30 · Forum @ Spazio Cinema Round Table / Panel

Embracing Diversity: Disability Inclusion and Representation in the Film Industry

Moderated by Fatih Abay

13:30 · Forum @ Spazio Cinema Conversation with Marianne Slot Raimondo Rezzonico Award

Moderated by Olivier Pere

Location Flashback

Grindelwald Village, Switzerland

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Grindelwald, a village in Switzerland’s Bernese Alps, is a popular gateway for the Jungfrau Region, with skiing in winter and hiking in summer. It’s also a base for mountain-climbing up the iconic norh face of Eiger Mountain.

In this scene,Sith Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) turns to the Dark Side to become DarthVader, after the death of Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman), their daughter Leia is taken by Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits) to Alderaan to be raised by himself and his wife.

Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith premiered on May 15, 2005, at the Cannes Film Festival, then released worldwide on May 19, 2005. It broke several box office records during its opening week and went on to earn over $868 million worldwide, making it the secondhighest-grossing film in the Star Wars franchise at the time. It was the highest-grossing film in the U.S. and the second-highest-grossing film worldwide in 2005. It also holds the record for the highest opening-day gross on a Thursday, making $50 million.

Photo: © Lucasfilm

LOCARNO REVIEW DAILY

CONCORSO INTERNAZIONALE

Kudos to Marianne Slot A Champion of Auteur Cinema

THE VANISHING SOLDIER

VERDICT: Potent pacing and a charismatic lead propel this absorbing Israeli film in which a young soldier deserts his post during a Gaza incursion and escapes to Tel Aviv where he keeps running.

Jay Weissberg, August 5, 2023

A young Israeli soldier deserts his unit during a Gaza incursion in Dani Rosenberg’s absorbing sophomore feature, The Vanishing Soldier. Propelled forward by the protagonist’s need to constantly be on the move, first in Gaza and then his familiar Tel Aviv haunts, the film boasts of a number of superb scenes and is extremely well cast, most especially young

Ido Tako as the soldier Shlomi and Efrat Ben Zur as his mother Rachel. Unquestionably an antiwar film critical of Israel’s brutal occupation, The Vanishing Soldier is also a movie that stays very much on the Israeli side of things, so what audiences get out of it will largely depend on their previously established sympathies.

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The Danish-born French producer has brought the best of auteur cinema to discerning audiences around the world.

Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, August 5, 2023

The esteemed French producer Marianne Slot has built her reputation around an impressive array of top festival and art films, not only from Europe but from around the world. This year she will be the recipient of the Raimondo Rezzonico Award at the Locarno Film Festival, followed by a screening of Benedikt Erlingsson’s 2018 Women At War, which her aptly named company Slot Machine produced.

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Powerful images kick things off as an army unit shacked up in a halfdestroyed Palestinian home use red lights on their helmets to cut through the darkness, punctuated by rocket blasts seen through a blown-out wall. Soldiers with their faces blacked up sleep against a wall, looking like a bronze war memorial rather than breathing men until they’re roused to evacuate. One private, Shlomi, is slow to stir and then hides behind an upright mattress after everyone else is gone. At daylight he looks to get out of Gaza, avoiding both soldiers and a group of Palestinian children who scurry away like piglets, until he takes the car of a man lying dead on the street and drives out of Gaza.

Shlomi’s escape – from the fighting, his duties, his rigidly proscribed place in Israeli society –doesn’t appear to be a premeditated one and he has no plan other than fleeing an intolerable situation.

Full Review

It is a richly deserved recognition to a far-sighted producer who has proven adept at working with directors with very individual visions of cinema, on genrebending films that otherwise might never have been made.

Perhaps the producer’s most popular, regular (and controversial) director is Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier. Their collaborations began with Breaking the Waves in 1996 and include the daring Nymphomaniac, Dancer in the Dark, Melancholia and Antichrist, films that have pushed the limits of art cinema, spurring audiences to react with joy and sometimes with anger. Argentinian auteur Lisandro Alonso is another regular at Slot Machine.

A glance at her filmography shows that Marianne has worked with an impressive swathe of women directors, who have included

Lucrecia Martel, Albertina Carri, Emma Dante, Juliette Garcias, Dinara Drukarova, Naomi Kawase, Yesim Ustaoglu, Susanne Bier, Malgorzata Szumowska and Paz Encina, to name a few.

She has also served the film community in other positions: she was the Scandinavian delegate to the San Sebastian Film Festival and presided over a cinema initiative co-created by the French Ministry of Culture. And yet, these official positions are a footnote to a life so passionately dedicated to thought-provoking movies and contemporary issues. One remembers her walking up the Cannes red carpet five years ago, alongside 81 other women, to protest sexism in cinema.

Back in 2015, Marianne was asked what she thought about the future of co-productions with regards to arthouse films.

For Full Article, Click here

THE BEAUTIFUL SUMMER

VERDICT: Laura Luchetti’s freely inspired adaptation of Cesare Pavese’s novel 'The Beautiful Summer' features an impeccable cast in a perennially relevant tale about the consequences of sexual awakening.

Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, August 5, 2023

How many films have deployed sex as the passage to adulthood? One of the newer ones, Laura Luchetti’s The Beautiful Summer, is showing at the Locarno Film Festival. The director describes it as freely inspired by the Cesare Pavese novel of the same name.

The film, like the novel, tells the story of Ginia (Yile Yara Vianello), a young girl who becomes curious and infatuated with the pleasures, the mysteries the mysterious pleasures—of adult life. What is it like to make love, she asks? Tricky question. But she receives a reply: you become important to someone else for a few hours…maybe more.

If this seems like a rather cynical view of romance, it doesn’t register with Ginia. Our heroine isn’t dissuaded. Something has been ignited; a combustion isn’t far ahead, but whose place is it to tell her?

Definitely not Amelia’s (a supremely well-cast Deva Cassel, heir of her famous parent’s killer genes). Ginia meets this incredibly sophisticated young woman while hanging out with friends one fine day.

Amelia, in fact, might be the source of Ginia’s craving. Luchetti shows how this happens in a scene staged like a meet-cute, on the arrival of this fascinating stranger. She hops off a boat that is still sailing and, unperturbed, walks to shore, her clothes clinging to her body and her head held high. She is beautiful and quite aware.

A TORTOISE’S YEAR OF FATE

VERDICT: A factory worker wrestles with a dispiriting future in this short about a fortune-telling tortoise and a desire for self-determination.

Ben Nicholson, August 5, 2023

Yi Xiong’s A Tortoise’s Year of Fate takes place in a factory in China where the workers drift through humdrum lives and slivers of independence distract from a lack of any real autonomy.

The director’s previous short film, Singing Along with a Farewell (2020) was a rumination on the shifting nature of social interactions in Shanghai, specifically focused on those in old age. In his new film, which premieres this week at Locarno, there is a similar sense of attempting to navigate the impact of modernity in China through the changing shape of relationships. Set against a backdrop of mass manufacture and regimented labour, the story examines the ambivalence of present-day life and the need for workers to explore their own paths of liberation in a system designed to curtail it.

One such worker, Bing (Ziyuh Xiong), is new to the factory and initially seems to embody the drifting malaise of a hopeless future. He speaks rarely and when he does, he is virtually monosyllabic. Even when presented alongside co-workers, he is shown to be distant and impassive; in the day he stands on the production line, spraying the metal parts passing through his station, at night he wanders the empty building. However, through a series of actions –striking up a conversation with a female colleague Nana (Wuyang Zhang), who is from the same region as him, or visiting a travelling fortune-teller that relies on the magical properties of a 500-year-old tortoise – he dislocates himself somehow from the mundane flow of the system.

Locarno Events for August 7th

10:30 · Forum @Spazio Cinema Round Table / Panel

Spectacle Every Day – The Many Seasons of Mexican Popular Cinema

Moderated by Olaf Moller and Roberto Turigliatto

15:30 · Davide Campari Lounge Conversation Incontro –Edoardo Leo with Piera Detassis

17:00 · BaseCamp pop up @Istituto

Sant’Eugenio

Identity / Identities

A Performative Talk Curated by Open Doors

AWARDS clips

Switzerland selects Thunder as its International Oscar Submission

Thunder, originally titled Fourde, directed by Carmen Jaquier, had a successful international festival run, and was awarded two Swiss Film Awards for best sound and best film score.

Festival Awards include Special Mention in the Focus Competition and the Emerging Swiss Talent Award at the Zurich Film Festival, the Special Jury Prize in Rome and the award for Best Director in Marrakesh.

Director Carmen Jaquier won the Pardino d’argento at the Locarno Film Festival in 2011 for her short film, The Girls Grave

This years at the Cannes Film Festival, Jaquier was honored as “Emerging Talent” as part of the Women in Motion Awards. She was also selected by European Film Promotion (EFP) to participate in the “Europe! Voices of Women in Film” talent program at the Sydney Film Festival in June. Thunder is her debut feature film.

In its statement on the film, the selection jury wrote: “Set in an archaic mountain scenery, liberation and sisterhood are at the center of this timely feminist period film. Carmen Jaquier’s uniquely sensual first feature skillfully explores sexuality and faith and captivates with its nuanced mise-en-scène and evocative imagery.”

Thunder was produced by the renowned Geneva-based Close Up Films. Producers Joëlle Bertossa and Flavia Zanon have made a name for themselves with high-profile feature films and documentaries and as committed partners in international coproductions like I Am Not Your Negro and The Plough.

Thunder

TFV originally reviewed September 20th, 2022

VERDICT: Carmen Jaquier’s powerul debut feature chronicles a stormy collision between religious faith and sexual rapture in early 20th century Switzerland.

Stephen Dalton

September 20th, 2022

A religiously devout young woman surrenders herself to the carnal side of spiritual love in Swiss writer-director Carmen Jaquier’s passionate, lyrical, visually ravishing debut feature Thunder, which has just world premiered in both Toronto and San Sebastian.

Drawing on the agony and ecstasy in Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Matthew (1964), Jaquier’s feverish coming-of-age drama sometimes gets a little consumed by its own self-serious, quasi-mystical pretensions. But this is still an accomplished and original debut, rooted in worthy intentions to give voice to all those voiceless women missing from the history books for being too lustful, too disobedient, too far ahead of their time.

Photo: Close Up Films

Photo: Swiss Films

LOCARNO REVIEW DAILY

CONCORSO INTERNAZIONALE

The Legacy of Marco Solari

ESSENTIAL TRUTHS OF THE LAKE

VERDICT: Lav Diaz returns to Locarno with A-list collaborators John Lloyd Cruz and Shaina Magdayao in ‘Essential Truths of the Lake’, a fiery noir-inflected takedown of the culture of criminal impunity shaping contemporary Philippine society.

Clarence Tsui, August 6, 2023

With Essential Truths of the Lake, Lav Diaz continues his Sisyphuslike j’accuse against the long litany of tyrants who have poisoned the contemporary Philippine body politic with their rabble-rousing speeches and paramilitary hit squads. Boasting a powerful performance from John Lloyd Cruz as a cop who loses his mind as he struggles to unearth the truth behind the disappearance of a social

activist (Shaina Magdayao), the film mixes its soul-destroying narrative with DP Larry Manda’s beautiful imagery – including, perhaps for the first time for the famously austere Diaz, a slowmotion shot of a discharging gun.

At the beginning of Essential Truths of the Lake, two highranking police officers meet clandestinely on the rooftop of a Continues next page

The President of the Locarno Film Festival for 23 years, Marco Solari makes a graceful bow as he steps offstage.

Max Borg, August 6, 2023

After 23 years, the President of the Locarno Film Festival is stepping down. He looks back on his tenure with The Film Verdict. When TFV arrives for the scheduled interview with Marco Solari, he’s just getting off the phone with another journalist, answering a question in flawless Bärndütsch (the Bernese variant of the Swiss-German High Alemannic dialect) with only the mildest trace of an Italian accent. The soon-tobe former President of the Locarno Film Festival is, in fact, a veritable embodiment of Switzerland as a cultural melting pot.

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suburban villa to ponder the problems in their line of work, in a society where state-sanctioned extra-judicial murders have become the rhythm of everyday life. One asks: “What ails the Philippine National Police?” The other pauses and says: “Political. Cultural. Sociological. Ideological, or even spiritual.”

That’s exactly how Diaz seeks to unpack the violent state of the Philippine nation in his latest, three-hour opus. Armed with the seemingly generic devices of a disheveled cop and a very cold case, Diaz reveals – through a mix of talky expositions, static landscapes and delirious nightmares – the many ways in which a society buckles as corruption, cynicism and outright violence is tolerated and eventually integrated into the social fabric.

Admittedly, that’s what Diaz has been doing the past ten years, as he left behind the mythical and allegorical nature of his earlier work to condemn the specific autocrats who have cast his country asunder.

Full Review

Born in the Swiss capital to a Ticinese father and a Bernese mother, he studied at the University of Geneva and has worked all over the country. When the Ticino government approached him in 2000 to take on the job of President, he was one of the top executives at Ringier, one of the major Swiss publishing groups, in Zurich. Choosing to relocate to Ticino once more was, by Solari’s own admission, a hard decision, as he had to give up power and salary. And now, 23 years later, leaving that post is an even harder one.

“The team really is like a family,” he explains. “The festival, which is a magnificent cultural event, has always been very fortunate in having extraordinary people who keep it going. I think it has something to do with the Locarno region. My predecessor, Raimondo Rezzonico, the things he did for the festival! He truly

earned his ‘Presidentissimo’ nickname.” Rezzonico served as President from 1981 to 1999, and his original successor was Giuseppe Buffi, who sadly passed away before the beginning of the 2000 edition. “He’s a star that went out way too early,” says Solari.

Before joining the team, he’d been an avid festival goer since 1972, when he first made Ticino his home as head of the tourism board. “I got to know the various artistic directors: Moritz De Hadeln, Jean-Pierre Brossard, David Streiff, and Marco Müller, of course, who left the same year I became President.” During his tenure, Solari has appointed six artistic directors: Irene Bignardi (2001-2005), Frédéric Maire (2006-2009), Olivier Père (20102012), Carlo Chatrian (20132018), Lili Hinstin (2019-2020) and Giona A. Nazzaro (2021-present). For Full Article, Click here

CINEASTI DEL PRESENTE

cinematographic stage adolescents pass through on their way to adulthood. Alas, Hollywood style has permeated local ways, transforming teenagers into elven beings – with not a pimple in sight – who manage their conflicts (all solvable) with a minimum of yelling and a good dose of romance. All the Fires is the Mexican answer to this glamorized teenage universe.

ALL THE FIRES

VERDICT: 'All the Fires', a sensitive and realistic coming-of-age Mexican film, premieres in Locarno.

Lucy Virgen, August 6, 2023

In All the Fires, first-time director Mauricio Calderón Rico rises to the challenge of making a sensitive coming of age film with LGBTQ+ interest and a personal style.

CINEASTI DEL PRESENTE

Bruno (Sebastian Rojano), the protagonist, is a teenager who lives with his young widowed mother Inés (Ximena Ayala). He’s rather quiet and solitary, sometimes malicious, with a rather non-descript appearance. His adolescent rebellion is channeled into a fascination –which has not yet become a mania– for fire. He is seduced by flames: how to cause them, video them, share them on the Internet. But he is not interested in their effects, as an arsonist would be. He also feels pressured to define his gender identity in an environment in which LGBTQ+ is repudiated or at least silenced. The attempt of a kiss by his best friend Ian (Ari López) and the presence of Gerardo (Héctor Illanes), a man interested in his mother, trigger him to escape the city and go find Daniela (Natalia Quiroz), an admirer of his videos.

TODOS LOS INCENDIOS

CINEVERDICT: Cine Verdict: 'Todos los incendios', un película coming of age mexicana, sensible y realista se estrena en competencia en Locarno.

Lucy Virgen, August 6, 2023

En ‘Todos los incendios’ Mauricio Calderón cumple con el reto de hacer una película coming of age -sensible con interés LGBTQ+ y con un estilo personal.

Todos los países del mundo tienen sus películas coming of age, con el tema de esa oscura, conflictiva y muy cinematográfica etapa por la que los adolescentes transitan en su camino a la adultez. Por desgracia el Hollywood Style ha permeado los formatos locales transformando a los adolescentes en seres élficos – sin acné a la vista- que resuelven sus conflictos -todos solucionables- con mínimo de gritos, y buenas dosis de romance. Todos los incendios, es la respuesta mexicana a este universo adolescente glamourizado.

Bruno (Sebástian Rojano) el protagonista es un adolescente que vive con su Inés su joven madre viuda (Ximena Ayala); es más bien callado y solitario, algunas veces malicioso, nada que lo distinga en su aspecto. Su rebeldía adolescente se canaliza en una fascinación -que aún no se convierte en manía- por el fuego. Es seducido por pequeños incendios, como causarlos, filmarlos y compartirlos en Internet, pero no por sus efectos, como lo sería un pirómano. Se siente además presionado por definir su identidad de género en un ambiente en el que lo LGBTQ+ es repudiado o al menos silenciado. Un intento de beso de Ian (Ari López) su mejor amigo y la presencia Gerardo Héctor Illanes un hombre interesado en su

VERDICT SHORT

NIGHT SHIFT

CINEVERDICT: The beguiling Night Shift follows two individuals as they meander around venerated institutions after dark, crafting an entrancing portrait of liminal existences.

Ben Nicholson, August 6, 2023

Kayije Kagame and Hugo Radi’s Night Shift is a quietly enthralling inhabitation of eerily marginal spaces.

Set backstage at La Comédie Française in Paris and after hours at the Muséum d’histoire naturelle in Geneva, the film follows two individuals as they navigate the fringes of these establishments. On one hand, an actor (Gaël Kamilindi) prowls behind the scenes at the theatre, waiting – perhaps – for an opportunity to take centre stage. On the other, a female security guard (Kagame) does her rounds at the natural history museum, which seems to take on a life of its own beyond the gaze of its daytime visitors. Without a word of dialogue, these two very different experiences of space diverge and coalesce in a seductive ballet. Filmmakers Kagame and Radi have worked together before. The former, who will be a familiar presence to some audiences, having been roundly lauded for her performance in Alice Diop’s Saint Omer (2022), appeared in Radi’s 2022 short, Initial. Radi was also one of several collaborators on Kagame’s 2022 performance piece – also called Night Shift – at the Fondation Cartier in Paris. That work serves as a clear blueprint for the second section of the film, in which Kagame wanders the nocturnal avenues of a museum. The building may be unoccupied by other people, but it is by turns flooded by the hum of rainforest life and filled with music, the sway of which Kagame’s guard is powerless to resist. Full Review

Locarno Pro industry awards & Heritage Online Restoration Contest winners 2023

Locarno Pro, the industry event of the Locarno Film Festival, has announced the winning projects for its work-in-progress section First Look on UK films and Alliance 4 Development, the co-development program for film projects from Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, along with the winner of the very first Heritage Online Restoration Contest.

FIRST LOOK

Creativity Media First Look Award

Mother Vera

by Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson, produced by Laura Shacham (She Makes Productions)

Jury statement: “From the opening moments of this film, we were immediately drawn to the strikingly photographed stark portrait of a fascinating nun in Belarus who makes a journey to France. We congratulate filmmakers Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson and wish them the best with this new film, Mother Vera.”

Jannuzzi Smith Award No Ifs Or Buts

by Sarah Lewis, produced by Sarah Lewis (Felt Culture), co-produced by DoBeDo

Le Film Français Award No Ifs Or Buts by Sarah Lewis, produced by Sarah Lewis (Felt Culture), co-produced by DoBeDo

ALLIANCE 4 DEVELOPMENT

Alphapanda Market Breakout Award

Pas Ta Maman

by Michèle Flury, produced by Felix Schreiber from Sommerhaus Filmproduktion (Germany)

Jury statement: “The Alphapanda Market Breakout Award goes to a film that will certainly move audiences just like it has moved us, a brutal yet playful tale, that uses contrasting genres to explore a current and important topic, abuse against women and what it means to be sexualised, victimised, and to fight back. We were very touched by the pitch and can’t wait to see this film on a big screen.”

Script consultancy residency at DreamAgo, offered by the Valais

Film Commission

La P’tite (The Young One) directed by Despina Athanassiadis, produced by Quentin Daniel (Wombat Films, France)

MIDPOINT Consulting Award

WHO/MAN directed by Lorenz Merz, produced by Michela Pini (8horses, Switzerland)

Ticino

Film Commission Residence Award

Objet a by Ann Oren, produced by Kristof Gerega, Sophie Ahrens and Fabian Altenried (Schuldenberg Films, Germany)

HERITAGE ONLINE RESTORATION CONTEST

Mulher de verdade (1954) by Alberto Cavalcanti

The 12th edition of First Look presented six UK works-inprogress to an audience of sales agents, buyers, programmers and representatives from post-production support funds, thanks to a partnership with British Film Institute (BFI), using funds from the National Lottery.

Alliance 4 Development is possible thanks to partnerships with CNC (Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée), France; FFA (Filmförderungsanstalt), Germany; DGCA-MiC (Direzione Generale Cinema e Audiovisivo del Ministero della Cultura), Italy; Austria; the Federal Office of Culture (FOC) / MEDIA Desk Suisse, Switzerland

For more, click here

Director Cécile Embleton from Mother Vera, winner Creativity Media First Look Award 2023, receives her award.© Locarno Film Festival

The winners of the Alliance 4 Development awards © Locarno Film Festival

Still from Mulher de verdade (1954), winner Heritage Online Restoration Contest 2023

Locarno Events for August 7th

15:30 • Davide Campari Lounge

Conversation with Edoardo Leo and Piera Detassis

17:00 · BaseCamp pop up @ Istituto Sant’Eugenio

Identity / Identities • A Performative Talk Curated by Open Doors

The

Location flashback

Verzasca Dam, Gordola, Ticino, Switzerland

GoldenEye (1995)

In this scene, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) does a full swandive as he bungee jumps into a secret Soviet chemical weapons facility where fellow “00” M16 Agent, Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean) is waiting so they can blow up the place.

The film was released after a six-year hiatus in the series caused by legal disputes, during which Timothy Dalton’s contract for the role of James Bond expired and he was replaced by Brosnan. M was also recast, with actress Judi Dench becoming the first woman to portray the character, replacing Robert Brown.

The film accumulated a worldwide gross of over US$350 million, considerably better than Dalton’s films, without taking inflation into account.It received positive reviews, with critics viewing Brosnan as a definite improvement over his predecessor. It also received award nominations for Best SpecialVisual Effects and Best Sound from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

Contra Dam, commonly known as the Verzasca Dam and the Locarno Dam, is an arch dam ontheVerzasca River in theValVerzasca of Ticino, Switzerland. The dam creates Lago di Vogorno 2 kilometers upstream of Lake Maggiore. It supports the 105 MWVerzasca hydroelectric power station.

LOCARNO REVIEW DAILY

Mohammed Soudani on Ticino, Filmmaking and Family

CONCORSO INTERNAZIONALE

From soccer to filmmaking, Premio Cinema Ticino-winner Mohammed Soudani has lit, directed, produced and taught cinema in the Swiss region of Ticino, his home for five decades.

Max Borg, August 7, 2023

TFV speaks to the acclaimed filmmaker, who’s receiving Locarno’s Premio Cinema Ticino.

At Mohammed Soudani’s request, we meet at his home in Minusio, near Locarno. It’s a place that’s very dear to him, as he explains when we first arrive: “Tiziana and I built it. Well, we had it built. Mainly to her specifications. My Continues next page

STEPNE

VERDICT: Maryna Vroda’s richly lensed feature debut is a melancholic look at a dying part of north-eastern Ukraine that’s seemingly untouched by the present war, and while the narrative holds interest thanks especially to the protagonist, it’s the documentary-like scenes that are the film’s heart.

Jay Weissberg, August 7, 2023

It’s a truism that wars and revolutions sweep away traditional lifestyles, but the truth is there’s always been strife of that sort, and certain ways of life have stubbornly clung on in isolated pockets. The real gamechanger is the inexorable juggernaut of capitalism in a world where a lack of connection equals death. Maryna Vroda’s Stepne, a richly lensed meditation on loss –

of a mother, of ties to the land, of a traditional existence – is a melancholy recognition of a nearly extinct way of life in rural northeastern Ukraine, a locale seemingly untouched by the Russian invasion, expiring from modernity rather than conflict. Shifting between narrative and ethnography, the film is at its best in the documentary-like sequences, which are wisely given

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Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival

Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival

main contribution was adding the swings and the pool.”

Tiziana, his late wife, was a powerhouse in the world of Swiss film production, including coproductions with Italy (she worked with filmmakers like Alice Rohrwacher and the D’Innocenzo brothers), and he still sometimes reverts to the present tense when he mentions her, as though that fateful day in January 2020 never took place. In fact, he still talks to her every day. They met shortly after Soudani, born in Algeria in 1949, relocated to Switzerland in his early 20s, first making a name for himself in the Italian-speaking region as a soccer player. Already trilingual at the time (in addition to Arabic and French, he learned German in school), he quickly picked up the local dialect – during our conversation, he slips into Ticinese when he gets particularly carried away – and using it to his advantage: during a match, he

responded to a racist taunt by scoring a goal and then saying to the heckler, “Use that word again, and I’ll score another one.” So well-integrated is he, he’s commonly known among friends as “il Dani”, a typical Swiss-Italian nickname.

There’s a reason we’re talking to him: he’s receiving the Locarno Film Festival’s Premio Cinema Ticino, an award first introduced in 2009 and subsequently given every two years to an important film professional with ties to Ticino. In 2013, Tiziana Soudani accepted one on behalf of Amka Films, the production company she and Mohammed founded in 1988. Today, their daughter Amel, whose name inspired half of the company’s moniker, serves as the CCO and main producer. (The other half of “Amka” derives from her sister Karima, who works in the medical field).

For Full Article, Click here

Full Review

STEPNE

Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival

the time to play out. Although the present war isn’t directly referenced and the events could just as easily have occurred before the invasion, the fact that this is a Ukrainian film practically guarantees a healthy festival life. There’s one hitch though: life in the village of Stepne, close to the Russian border, has been one of hardship for centuries. The peasants (the word is used in a non-pejorative sense, as people of the land) have barely changed since the days of serfdom, eking out an existence in an often unforgiving landscape with few resources. The film seems on the fence about whether to mourn this atrophied mode of life, which has carried on for so long not because it’s valued, but because these people were always denied access to advancement of any sort. Trapped in a cycle of poverty, they’ve persisted until finally the young people have abandoned such villages, leaving them inhabited solely by the elderly whose homes are left to rot once they die.

CINESTE DEL PRESENTE

TOUCHED

VERDICT: Claudia Rorarius's 'Touched' competently telegraphs a complex intimate relationship with unusual frankness and gorgeous visuals, and yet, it falls short of its own material in true emotional terms. Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, August 7, 2023

A little over a decade ago, ‘The Sessions’, a film starring Helen Hunt as a sex surrogate and John Fawkes as a man paralysed from neck down, appeared at Sundance to critical acclaim. After several awards at that festival, it went all the way to the Oscars. Claudia Rorarius’s Locarno premiere, ‘Touched’, is that film’s European sibling. However, it’s not a copy of the American film in one major way: there are no sex surrogates anywhere here. But its plot does feature a man paralysed from neck down seeking (or acquiescing to) sexual activity.

We meet the protagonists within the first few minutes. Maria (Isold Halldórudóttir) has just resumed a job in which she has to tend to Alex (Stavros Zafeiris), whose lower limbs have muscles no longer in normal use. At this point, there are no real sparks flying, but Rorarius immediately establishes a frank, medically attuned depiction of the body, as an older nurse shows and teaches the younger woman to tend to Alex.

She moves him here and there, then she readies his genitals for the insertion of a catheter. This is shown without the clever blocking Hollywood deploys for these situations. We get a closeup of catheterisation with foreskin, tube and all. It’s a bit shocking to be so frontloaded, but perhaps the idea is to signal the audience: “get comfortable, there’s more nudity coming”. It’s no spoiler to say, for the squeamish or the prudish, that’s as heightened as it gets. Not long after, Maria becomes enamoured of her patient. Perhaps her being overweight and lonely has something to do with it, but it is regrettable that not much is made of the romantic process. Maria does come to her patient’s rescue when he somehow wheels himself inside the institution’s pool. And yet, it doesn’t feel quite like that is the magic moment when affection dawns. Some connective tissue is missing in the storytelling.

It is doubly puzzling that not much is said about Maria’s background and the reason for her extreme aloneness.

Locarno Events for August 8th

Moderated

10:00· Forum @Spazio Cinema Open Doors Award Ceremony

Moderated by Paolo Bertolin

13:30· Forum @Spazio Cinema Conversations with Luc Jacquet

Locarno Kids Award la Mobiiare

by Daniela Persico

Watch Locarno Film Festival Video

Ten projects based on metaverse, AI, machine learning and augmented reality, among others, to compete in the Zinema Startup Challenge.

The projects by Spanish startups and entrepreneurs will have a specific competition, part of ‘Spanish Screening: Financing & Tech,’ one of the initiatives of ‘Spanish Screenings XXL’ and part of the Recovery, Trans formation and Resilience Plan (PRTR).

FEST clips

Zinemaldia & Technoloogy, taking place on 28 September, will offer presentation of the ten projects and a round table AI.

The five finalists for the Spanish competition are Festival Infinito, a project which, through users a unique and participatory experience with visual content, and from any device; Union Avatars, which provides users and companies with the tools to manage their digital identities through a vatars; VRMulticam, which unifies immersive audiovisual

technologies and broadcasts in a single service, offering a unique experience to the viewer; and WitScript which, thanks to machine learning, creates optimised processes for sound professionals, significantly minimizing the time associated with voice-over QA/QC for audio-books and audiovisual and multimedia content in general. Finally, an entrepreneurial team from the Basque Country will present Bonzo Studios, offering an integrated motion control system, high speed camera and LED Wall for making productions

San Sebastian Film Festival takes place Sept 22-30

For complete story, click here

2023 Austin Film Festival and Writers Conference Panelists

Among this year’s 53 panelists are Karen Joseph Adcock, a writer on FX’s The Bear and Showtimes’ Yellowjackets; Megan Alderson, Creative Development Executive, Pixar Animation Studios and Matt Cook, writer/co-producer of Triple Nine, By Way of Helen and co writer of Patriots Day.

Karen Joseph Adcock is a drama comedy writer, who grew up in a small town in Louisiana, has a BA in film studies from Columbia University and an MFA in TV Writing and Producing from Marymount University. Karen writes about broken people doing the best they can and laughing along the way – what’s the saying? “Write what you know. . .”

Matt Cook served two combat tours in Iraq and has written several articles for Texas Monthly about his experience. He also served as a correspondent in Afghanistan in 2012 He was raised in the tiny three stoplight town of Castorville,Texas, attended the University of Texas at Austin, and is a member of the Philosophical Society of Texas.

Megan Alderson supports project in early development, scouts screenwriters, collaborates with experts and spearheads research trips. Megan received her MFA from The American Film Institute as a directing fellow and holds a Bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in the Bay Area with her family and her dog Loki.

The Austin Film Festival 2023 takes place Oct 26 – Nov 2

LOCARNO REVIEW DAILY

Kudos to Renzo Rossellini

Italian producer Renzo Rossellini is honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at Locarno.

CONCORSO INTERNAZIONALE

day 8

Deborah Young, August 8, 2023

Renzo Rossellini’s lionized father Roberto was one of the undisputed masters of Italian postwar neorealism, and as we know from films like the recent Vera, which is about actor Giuliano Gemma’s daughter, being the child of a famous parent can have disastrous results. Renzo’s life, full of ambition, accomplishment and political commitment, has been quite another story. Along with his Continues next page

PATAGONIA

VERDICT: A developmentally delayed young man falls under the spell of a pansexual itinerant children’s entertainer in Simone Bozzelli’s wellperformed but psychologically ill-judged feature debut.

Jay Weissberg, August 8, 2023

Simone Bozzelli’s feature debut Patagonia has much to recommend it: lensing by Leonardo Mirabilia that reflects the nervous energy of the protagonists, a couple of excellent leads skillfully negotiating the edgy tension of their characters, and an interesting take on power dynamics and questions of freedom. The problem is that the central relationship, though well-played, simply isn’t

believable, and for all the discussions about freedom, the film itself, awash in guarded homoeroticism, doesn’t allow itself the liberty of depicting gay sex, which is implied but never shown. While the story of a young unformed guy becoming enthralled by a dominant drifter has a tangible fascination, it requires a greater degree of psychological credibility to make us feel

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Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival An adventurous life lived on the cutting edge of movies and politics.

Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival

sister Isabella, he is one offspring of a large movie family who has left deep marks of his own on contemporary cinema. His career as a major Italian producer is all the more astounding for being intertwined with the avantgarde political movements that shaped his life.

He is the recipient of the Locarno Film Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which will be conferred on August 10.

Beginning his career as an assistant to his father and other directors in the 1960’s, he went on to produce some 64 movies and

became the influential head of Gaumont Italia from 1977 to 1983. He has been associated with such memorable international productions as Joseph Losey’s Don Giovanni (1979), Werner Herzog’s 1982 adventure Fitzcarraldo, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Italian-set Nostalghia (1983), Francis Ford Coppola’s The Cotton Club (1984) and the Mickey Rourke-Kim Basinger erotic romance 9 ½ Weeks (1986).

His contribution to Italian cinema, in particular, has been enormous: Francesco Rosi’s Carmen and… For Full Article, Click here

Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival

invested. It’s easy to imagine the film playing at fests and Italian showcases, but wider distribution away from home will prove challenging. Another issue is that Bozzelli overplays his hand with visual clues, including the opening and closing shots of fences and cages: yes, we get it, the whole film is about metaphorical cages, but just a few real ones will be enough to get the point across. Yuri (Andrea Fuorto) is 19, or perhaps 20, an orphan working the cash register at the family butcher shop and shuttled month-by-month between his three aunts, who house and feed him near the Abruzzi city of Teramo. He’s also developmentally delayed, barely able to do simple math and clearly socially backward. He’s teased by children and his aunt Anna (Marina Catia Lamperi) not only infantilizes but still bathes him.

At his younger cousin’s birthday party Yuri becomes fascinated by Agostino (Augusto Mario Russi), an itinerant birthday clown whose pierced lip and nipple and dyed hair, not to mention the sneer, mark him instantly as a bad boy.

Full Review

Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival

INTELLIGENCE

VERDICT: A man learns of his own imminent death in iNTELLIGENCE, a strikingly graphic meditation on a curtailed life and the allure of immortality.

Ben Nicholson, August 8, 2023

At the heart of Jeanne Frenkel and Cosme

Castro’s strange and surreal semi-animation sits a mysterious company called iNTELLIGENCE.

It’s the location of a hasty midnight appointment made by the anxious Pascal (Vincent Macaigne) after he sees their television advertisement in which they claim to create ghosts, so people can continue beyond their natural demise. Pascal has inadvertently discovered he is about to die whilst preparing the layout of tomorrow’s edition of the newspaper he works at – and stumbling upon his pre-written death notice. Now he hopes that these people may be able to extend his experiences beyond their tragically short 45 years.

This isn’t the first time that Frenkel and Castro have imagined such a strange service. Their first collaboration, on their 2017 short Adieu Bohème, was centred around a team who offered couples the chance to stage beautifully romantic goodbyes. Here, the offering from iNTELLIGENCE is far more arcane, some unfathomable procedure that transfers consciousness into a picture frame that can continue on indefinitely. The somewhat fantastical nature of this proposition is reflected in the film’s dreamlike visual style, which shoots its actors and then incorporates them into an atmospheric, deconstructed, animated world. Pascal is a designer, and the reality he inhabits seems to almost have spilt from his consciousness. The aesthetic constantly morphs between blocky graphic approximations, chiaroscuro screen prints, line-drawn backgrounds that could be slates from comic panels, paint pigment

CONCORSO INTERNAZIONALE

BAAN

VERDICT: An undisciplined feature debut burdened by regrettably immature dialogue that knee-caps a potentially interesting impressionistic exploration of what “home” means in a globalized world.

Jay Weissberg, August 8, 2023

“Baan” in Thai means “home,” which Leonor Teles chose as the title for her debut feature because the film, largely shot in Lisbon but melding at times into Bangkok, is meant to address the rootlessness of globalized youth searching for some place to call “home.” It’s a good theme, unfortunately kneecapped by a woefully immature script rife with hamfisted dialogue that would challenge even seasoned actors. Shot by Teles herself in short, sometimes impressionistic scenes whose general lack of development doesn’t help make the drab protagonist any more interesting, Baan charts the rocky relationship between a Portuguese architect and the Thai-Canadian woman she’s fallen for, weaving in issues of racism and belonging. The whole thing feels like a well-meaning but misguided first film, yet Teles’ 2016 short Batrachian’s Ballad won the Golden Bear, so she knows her way around. It’s hard to imagine where this will go following its Locarno premiere. One of the issues is that she tries to create a liminal space between Lisbon and Bangkok, destabilizing viewers’ expectations of time and place in a manner far more ambitious than she’s able to handle. Rather than create a kind of memory palimpsest offering insight into a sense of displacement for both women, Teles melds the two cities and in so doing globalizes them too, in a negative way. In addition, she plops songs in at random, including “I Feel for You” and “Voyage Voyage,” in a manner that may be meaningful to her, but their arbitrariness as well as their placement simply leave the viewer perplexed.

Full Review

Locarno Events

Aug 9

Aug 10

Photos courtesy of Locarno Film Festival

20:44 · BaseCamp Popup @ Sant’Eugenio

A Long Night of Dreaming of the Future of Intelligence

Moderated by Devika Girish & SOFF with Shane Denson, Devn B. Lee

10:30 · Forum @ Spazio Cinema

Istvan Szabo on “Film Culture and Spritiuality”

50 Years Ecumenical Jury In Locarno

Moderated by Ingrig Glatz

Watch Locarno Film Festival Video

LOCARNO OPEN DOORS WINNERS

Open Doors, Locarno Pro’s talent development program for artists from underrepresented communities around the world, has announced its 2023 winners.

For the second of its three-year cycle, Open Doors focused on the region of Latin America and the Caribbean. A total of eight projects in development were selected for its coproduction platform, the Projects’ Hub, along with eight creative producers who participated in the program’s talent incubator, the Producers’ Lab. Together with the directors of films of the Open Doors Screenings, who form the Directors’ Club, they make up the full selection of the program.

Open Doors Grant

A total of CHF 50’000 sponsored by visions sud est (with the support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation), the City of Bellinzona and the Open Doors initiative.

CHF 25’000 to Pantasma

Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras

Directed by Gloria Carrión, produced by Leonor Zúniga

CHF 20’000 to Tres balas (Three Bullets)

Dominican Republic

Directed by Génesis Valenzuela, produced by Wendy Espinal

CHF 5’000 to Desidia

Bolivia, Chile

Directed by Leandro Grillo, produced by Alejandra Antequera

CNC Development Grant

EUR 8,000 for development provided by CNC –Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée

LOA. Mata a tus amos (LOA. Kill Your Masters) Venezuela, Puerto Rico

Directed and produced by Carlos Zerpa

Prix ArteKino International EUR 6,000 for development provided by ARTEKino.

Tres balas (Three Bullets)

Dominican Republic

Directed by Génesis Valenzuela, produced by Wendy Espinal Sørfond Award Participation in the project to the Sørfond pitching event in November including travel and accommodation.

Libertinas (Libertines)

El Salvador, Peru

Directed by Leslie Ortiz, produced by Adriana Morán

Additionally, several of Open Doors’ partners provided awards to participants across the three program strands:

Open Doors – Rotterdam Lab Award

Provided by the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). One of the Producers’ Lab participants is offered the opportunity to take part in the next Rotterdam Lab, including accommodation covered by the International Film Festival Rotterdam along with a contribution to the travel’s costs by the Locarno Film Festival.

For more, click here

©Locarno Film Festival / Ti-Press

LOCARNO REVIEW DAILY

Kudos to István Szabó

CONCORSO INTERNAZIONALE

The feted Hungarian Oscar-winner has spent his epic career probing Central Europe's painful, morally complex history of post-imperial trauma and totalitarian tragedy.

Stephen Dalton, August 9, 2023

István Szabó is more than just the most feted Hungarian filmmaker of his generation. With a remarkable life and epic career that spans many of Europe’s darkest world-historical convulsions across the 20th century and beyond, the muchgarlanded 85-year-old deserves major kudos for his long service as the cinematic conscience of his nation, even if the journey required him to make some tough ethical compromises along the way. Indeed, Szabó is

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LOUSY CARTER

VERDICT: American indie darling Bob Byington will please his fans with this minor amusing look at an underachieving English lit professor whose greatest disappointment is himself.

Jay Weissberg, August 9, 2023

The Austin independent film scene is a self-contained world, guided by its own minimalist aesthetics and wry humor. Its inward-looking individuality is admirable, yet that very quality makes it difficult to translate onto an international market, though Bob Byington has had more opportunities than most to show his films outside the States: Frances Ferguson, 7 Chinese Brothers, Somebody Up There Likes Me, and others. His

latest, Lousy Carter, remains firmly in that mold, filmed in Austin and edited largely in shotcounter shot with lowkey dialogue full of snide zingers delivered by a cast well-known to acolytes of the subgenre. Set on a college campus where an uninspired English professor with unrealized dreams is told he has six months to live, the film relies heavily on a pre-existing fan base, for whom this will be a pleasant entertainment.

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Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival

Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival

probably the greatest living bigscreen chronicler of Central Europe as a whole, a vast trauma zone still recovering from wave after wave of imperial collapse and totalitarian tragedy.

Szabó is attending Locarno Film Festival this week to receive an honorary Golden Leopard prize and introduce his most recent feature, Final Report (2020), a wry, elegiac, semi-autobiograophical reflection on creeping old age and political hypocrisy. This minor-key autumnal drama reunites the director with his friend and longtime collaborator Klaus Maria Brandauer, a potent AustroHungarian double act first forged more than 40 years on the majestic Oscar-winner Mephisto (1981), in which Brandauer plays an ambitious German stage actor

whose moral compass is warped by his growing success during Hitler’s rise to power. “Vanity is the artist’s weakness,” the veteran director told Film Philosophy magazine in 2002, “it enables seduction.”

Even in his early directing days, Szabó was a forensic examiner of how people in repressive dictatorships, from ordinary citizens to famous artists, make their own tricky moral compromises with murderous regimes. One of his earliest standout films, the autobiographer coming-of-age drama Father (1966), casts a cynical eye on national myth-making in the wake of the bloody Hungarian uprising of 1956, which was brutally put down by the Soviet army.

For Full Article, Click here

The film starts with a framed photo of Lousy Carter (David Krumholz), his peculiar name never addressed, with a quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald describing Jay Gatsby as someone with “an extraordinary gift for hope.” Professor Carter has made a specialty out of The Great Gatsby, but the description doesn’t fit him at all: he’s a schlub of a figure with an extraordinary gift for disappointing people, himself most of all. Once an animation filmmaker who hoped for a bright career, Lousy is now financially strapped and trapped teaching students he doesn’t care about. At the film’s start his indifferent doctor informs him he has six months to live, setting off a reevaluation of his life that begins by falling off the wagon

His one confidante is his ex gf Candela (Olivia Thirlby), a nononsense beauty with no interest in humoring his self-pity, though she does suggest that a good way to get out of his current funk is to sleep with one of his students.

Full Review

Final Report ©Film Street

Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival

PIAZZA GRANDE

FIRST CASE

VERDICT: Victoria Musiedlak's first feature from France contains strong performances from Noée Abita and Anders Danielsen Lie as people who aren't allowed to talk to each other outside of work but of course want to.

Boyd van Hoeij, August 9, 2023

A young French law-office worker unexpectedly finds herself defending a murder suspect in First Case (Première Affaire), the debut feature from Victoria Musiedlak.

The unassuming drama continues in the vein of down-to-earth portraits of regular people working in France’s police and/or judicial systems that we’ve seen in titles from The Young Lieutenant (2005) to Courted (2015), and more recently, in César winner The Night of the 12th (2022). Here, the rush of being asked to step up to the plate independently for the first time as a lawyer is paired with a comingof-age story, as the female protagonist is just 26 and only has theoretical knowledge but no practical experience both as a lawyer and as a, well, a human adult. Though the story’s well-structured, dialogue are a little iffy, so it helps immensely that the two leads are played by actors as intensely watchable as Noée Abita (Ava) and Anders Danielsen Lie (The Worst Person in the World). It’ll also be their names that’ll allow the film to travel from Locarno’s Piazza Grande to other festivals.

Nora (Abita) comes from an Algerian family that fled to France in the 1990s, Algeria’s “Black Decade,” and that has since had to basically start over. So it’s no wonder that especially her mother, Baya (Saadia Bentaieb, always a welcome face), likes to protect her as much as possible from the harsh outside world. But it’s impossible to be a lawyer and not be exposed to the outside world and more specifically its ugliness and nonsensical violence and malice.

DAMMI

VERDICT: Riz Ahmed takes centre stage with Isabelle Adjani in 'Dammi,' Yann Mounir Demange’s fragmentary, experimental and highly sensorial reckoning with his own bifurcated past Ben Nicholson, August 9, 2023

With his new film Dammi, Yann Mounir Demange has been given free rein by AMI Paris to create a bold and emotionally complicated portrait of self.

Alexandre Mattiussi’s fashion house is no stranger to artistic collaboration, having launched a touring exhibition in collaboration with Magnum in 2022. There, a dozen photographers and video artists were given carte blanche to interpret the theme of ‘family.’ Granted similar freedom, Demange’s new film explores his own roots – spread between Algiers, Paris, and London – through a theatrically mounted short that splinters an overarching narrative of romance and self-identification into something impressionistic and experiential.

What narrative there is involves Riz Ahmed’s character narrating a desire to somehow change his past through repeated visits back to Paris to see his Algerian father who stayed there when his mother took him to the UK. At the time of doing that, he left his Arabic name, Mounir, behind – notably, ‘Mounir’ has been restored to the director’s name in the credits for the film – and now, when he comes back to France, he finds himself pulled between these three (national) identities. During one evening in a local bar with his father’s friends, Mounir meets Hafzia (Souheila Yacoub), who shows him a way to be in Paris as an Algerian, but this only serves to stoke the fires of his internal conflict.

The debates seem to rage within Mounir and between him and Hafzia – recriminations are laid at one another’s feet as well as at those of Mounir’s parents (played by Isabelle Adjani and Yousfi Henine).

GRAN TURISMO: BASED ON A TRUE STORY

VERDICT: This biopic of a gamer-turned-racer delivers sports-movie uplift and racing-movie thrills while never letting up on the product placement. Alonso Duralde, August 8, 2023

2023 is shaping up to be the year of the productplacement biopic, about subjects ranging from shoes (Air) to spicy snacks (Flamin’ Hot) to hand-held digital devices (Blackberry) and even video games (Tetris). Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story doesn’t focus on the creation of the popular PlayStation driving

simulator, but it’s no less of a feature-length advertisement for it.

Still, even as they’re crafting a piece of marketing propaganda, director Neill Blomkamp and screenwriters Jason Hall and Zach Baylin slip a relatably human triumph-of-the-underdog story amid the corporate-mandated product-pitching, with some solid auto-racing thrills for extra pleasure. (This is the kind of movie that benefits from a booming cinematic sound system where one can feel the engines revving along the back of one’s neck.)

The based-on-a-true-story part centers on Jann Mardenborough (played here by Archie Madekwe, Midsommar). Except for the time he got taken to an auto show as a five-year-old, the closest Jann ever got to a racecar was in the hours and hours he played Gran Turismo; the game, as we are reminded over and over again in this film, was designed to be as accurate as possible, from the creation of the cars to the sounds and sensations of racing at the world’s most famous speedways. Jann’s dad Steve (Djimon Hounsou) wishes his son would turn off his computer and play football (Steve was a pro player on Cardiff’s team); mum Lesley (Geri Halliwell Horner, nearly unrecognizable as the Artist Formerly Known as Ginger Spice) is more supportive.

FEST clips

Lazar Dragojević to host the opening ceremony of the Sarajevo Film Festival

Photophobia to premiere in the Venice Film Festival Giornate degli Autori

The 29th Sarajevo Film Festival will open on Friday, August 11th, with a ceremony at the Sarajevo National Theatre and a series of events leading up to it.

This year’s host, actor Lazar Dragojević said, “Sarajevo is the most beautiful chapter of my life, a city which I always return to. The Sarajevo Film Festival is the nicest event in the year to me, a period when the city never sleeps and when art takes over. It is an honor and a pleasure that I was given the role of host of the opening ceremony. I cannot briefly describe my joy, it’s immense.”

Lazar Dragojević was born in Podgorica in 1996. He graduated from the Academy of performing arts in Sarajevo in 2020.

Every year, Sarajevo Film Festival is pleased to hand over the opening ceremony host role to the successful regional film artists of the younger generation, with the desire to discover, support and promote regional young film professionals.

Sarajevo Film Festival takes place Sept 11 - 18

Two of the three filmmakers behind the award winning documentary Velvet Terrorists, Ivan Ostrochovský and Pavol Pekartík, have reunited for a film project called Photophobia, shot in Ukraine after the Russian invasion. Both filmmakers arrived in the country in spring 2022 with humanitarian aid personnel and spent four months shooting the movie. The film premieres at theVenice Film Festival, set for the independent Giornate degli Autori sidebar.

Photophobia is being produced by Ivan Ostrochovský, Albert Malinovský and Katarína Tomková, of Punkchart Films (Slovakia), Tomáš Michálek and Kristýna Michálek Kvetová from Cinémotif Films (Czech Republic), and Denis Ivanov from Arthouse Traffic (Ukraine). Radio and Television Slovakia, Czech Television and partizanfilm (Pavol Pekarcík) are serving as co-producers. The Slovak Audiovisual Fund, Czech Film Fund and Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic have provided support. Filmtopia will handle the Slovak theatrical release.

Venice Film Festival takes place Aug 30 - Sept 9

Saltburn International Premiere to open 67th BFI London Film Festival

The tale of privilege and desire is directed, produced and written by Academy Award winning UK filmmaker Emerald Fennell. The film stars Carey Mulligan, Rosamund Pike, and Richeard E. Grant.

BFI London Film Festival takes place Oct 4-15

photo courtesy of Sarajevo Film Festival

© Punkchart Films

Location flashback

Chateau de Chillon, Veytaux, Vaud, Switzerland

The Little Mermaid (1989) Location Inspriation

Chateau de Chillon, location inspiration for the animated Little Mermaid, is an island castle located on Lake Geneva, south of Veytaus in the canton of Vaud. It is situated at the eastern end of the lake, on the narrow shore between Montreux and Villeneuve, which gives access to the Alpine valley of the Rhone,

The castle has been around since the Bronze Age (3300 BC to 1200 BC) and was first used as a romantic locale in 1816 by Lord Byron when he used the chateau as the setting for hm poem “The Prisoner of Chillon,”

The Little Mermaid was released to theaters on November 17, 1989, to critical acclaim, earning praise for the animation, music, and characters. It was also a commercial success, garnering $84 million at the domestic box office during its initial release, and $235 million in total lifetime gross worldwide, becoming the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1989. The film won two Academy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song (“Under the Sea”).

Photo: Walt Disney Pictures

LOCARNO REVIEW DAILY

Iranian Director

Ali Ahmadzadeh

Pressured to Withdraw ‘Critical Zone’ from Locarno

CONCORSO INTERNAZIONALE

The Film Verdict, August 10, 2023

Critical Zone, the story of a drug dealer set in the Tehran underworld, will be one of the highlights premiering in Locarno’s International competition. It will be screened for festival audiences in spite of the fact that the director, Ali Ahmadzadeh, has been receiving threats, harassment and all sorts of pressure to withdraw it from the festival. He will not be able to attend the screening.

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CRITICAL ZONE

VERDICT: In another angry bulletin from Iran in revolt, Ali Ahmadzadeh’s ‘Critical Zone’ hits censorship out of the ballpark. Deborah Young, August 10, 2023

A highly stylized, visceral incursion into an upscale drug dealer’s world set in an eerie nocturnal Tehran, Critical Zone (Mantagheye Bohrani) by Ali Ahmadzadeh is a major shocker.

Reflecting the rage and anger in Iranian society, particularly among young people, in the distorting mirror of speeding cars and strung out toxic excess, here is a film that takes allegory to exciting and frequently uncomfortable extremes. It is hard to believe

such a direct screenplay, one filled with harsh obscenities and a protracted female orgasm, could have been shot in Iran. Its frankness can only be compared to last year’s festival hit Holy Spider but that was a Euro coproduction shot in Jordan.

It is a slippery film to grab hold of in the early scenes, where elegant long takes and repetitions are the order of the day, and a bit puzzling in the middle. But the film gathers momentum as it goes

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Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival The Locarno festival and the production of 'Critical Zone' ignore threats.

Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival

Although Locarno is perhaps not the first place people go to see new films from Iran (the last one was screened in 2015), when it chooses a film it sticks by it. According to the film’s producer Sina Ataeian Dena, festival director Giona Nazzaro has staunchly defended the inclusion of Critical Zone in the program and neither the festival, the producer nor the director entertains any idea of withdrawing it. “We are not alone in our fight,” says Ataeian Dena.

Shot just before the uprising that has involved so many women demanding their basic rights, the film is described as a highly topical reflection of the rage and anger in Iranian society, particularly among young people. “We kind of knew it was a matter of controversy,” said the producer, an Iranian who now

lives in Germany. “It is a very different underground film, and without censorship.”

Even without seeing the film, people who Ataeian Dena calls “supporters of the Islamic regime” have been deluging the director with threatening and accusatory messages meant to intimidate him into pulling the film from its international showcase this week. He has also been summoned to appear at interrogations by the country’s security services, reports Ataeian Dena, and is expecting possible arrest after the film airs in Locarno.

This is Ali Ahmadzadeh’s third feature film, following Kami’s Party in 2013 and the fantasydrama Atom Heart Mother, screened in the Berlin Forum in 2015.

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Sadly, Critical Zone will have its world premiere in Locarno’s international competition without the director and screenwriter Ali Ahmadzadeh (Kami’s Party 2013, Atom Heart Mother 2015). But despite mounting pressure from Iran that the film be withdrawn and its screening canceled, the Locarno festival, the director and his German-based producer Sina Ataeian Dena have stood firm. Further festival screenings and possible release through Luxbox can be expected to attract a lot of attention to this bold and disconcerting vision of hell.

There is an air of desperation, even self-destruction in Amir (Amir Pousti), a cocky, single-minded pusher who has something lethal for everyone in his big bag of tricks. Behind his curly brown hair and beard, his pupils are dilated.

Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival

Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival along to culminate in two dazzling, unforgettable scenes of drug trips gone awry. Its ambience and taboobreaking should speak particularly to young local audiences, who are very unlikely to see it in film theaters.

CONCORSO INTERNAZIONALE

ROSSOSPERANZA

VERDICT: The audacious second feature from Annarita Zambrano ('After the War') explores the mindspace of Italian teenagers in 1990 who aren't allowed to be themselves.

Boyd van Hoeij, August 10, 2023

France-based Italian director Annarita Zambrano’s sophomore feature, Rossosperanza, is set in 1990 and looks at a group of young misfits in an institution that has promised their respective parents they’ll “become normal.” The obvious paradox here, of course, is that this situation itself is anything but normal, and Zambrano’s feature suggests how surreal this really is not only in terms of the plot but also in terms of the film’s structure, with the narrative often going off on tangents that seem to be dreams, have no consequences or might turn around in circles. It’s a daring approach to a complex sociopolitical period in Italy’s history, dominated by the “rosso” or “red” of the title, which should bring “speranza” or “hope” but which more often than not turns out to be the colour of despair or blood

Zambrano’s first film, the superlative drama After the War (Dopo la guerra), premiered in Cannes in 2017 and depicted the ramifications of one left-wing domestic terrorist’s actions in the 1970s on his life and extended family in 2002. Rossosperanza, her follow-up, seems to do the opposite, looking at how larger socio-political systems impact individual freedoms and more specifically how they impact younger people, who don’t or barely have the right to vote yet.

Any young generation stands to inherit the country left to them by their parents and the other members of the previous generation, and in 1990, the Years of Lead of domestic terrorism (the focus of After the War) had come to an end a decade earlier but that didn’t turn Italy into a prosperous nation

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Aug 12

10:30 · Forum @Spazio Cinema

Conversation with Harmony Korine

Pardo d’onore Manor

Moderated by Manlio Gomarasca

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Awards Ceremony

Locarno 76

Free Admission

LOCARNO REVIEW DAILY

Locarno 2023: The Verdict

The Film Verdict, August 10, 2023

Jay Weissberg and Boyd Van Hoeij

After some rocky years in which the Locarno Film Festival seemed more appreciated by filmmakers than critics, the situation is evening out as artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro and his programming team complete their third year guiding the venerable event, with a stronger-than-usual international competition line-up. That’s especially good news as the Festival moves into a new period of its existence, with long-time president Marco Solari handing control over to his successor Maja Hoffmann. Solari, a hands-on, ebullient presence whose deep links to Switzerland’s Ticino region ensured that the Festival maintained and solidified its importance within the country’s Continues next page

PIAZZA GRANDE

THEATER CAMP

VERDICT: Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman's loving tribute to theatre teachers, camp and performances is familiar but a little magic all the same.

Boyd van Hoeij, August 11, 2023

The magic of live theatre is hard to capture on film, which is why movies about the theatre frequently end up being about the performers doing theatre rather than theatre itself.

Blame it on the power of closeups, which are the one thing that movies have and theatre doesn’t (unless it’s one of those newfangled stage situations that incorporate live video capture and projection theatre purists have

killed for less). Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s crowd-pleasing shaggy-underdog drama Theater Camp is not immune to a wellplaced close-up or two, even if there’s no real overall sense of style. But somehow, it manages to evoke something of the magic of live theatre as well. After a wellreceived Sundance bow and another award in Seattle, the funny and fun Theater Camp landed in Locarno for its European premiere. Full Review

Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival

Italian-speaking canton, now passes the baton to Hoffmann, an international art patron on a major scale (Bloomberg lists her as the 435th richest person in the world), whose philanthropic activities are better known globally than regionally. She does however have experience in the film world, having studied filmmaking in New York and acted as executive producer, most especially on documentaries about artists. How she’ll seek to change Locarno, which just finished its 76th edition, remains to be seen, though her arrival is one of the more interesting developments in the ever-changing festival world. The criticisms of recent years that the Piazza Grande selection felt increasingly amorphous haven’t subsided, but this year’s international competition boasted

of a number of strong titles whose future life seems assured. Topping the list are two remarkably bold and excoriating takes on their own societies: Radu Jude’s withering Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World and Ali Ahmadzadeh’s risky Critical Zone While vastly different in approach, the two films, one from Romania, the other from Iran, fillet their country’s social order (or lack thereof): in the latter, government repression has forced people to rely on each other, whereas in the former, government corruption has smashed the social fabric. Unsurprisingly, they nabbed the two top honors, with the Pardo d’oro (Grand Prize) for best film going to Critical Zone and the Special Jury Prize to Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.

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THE 76th LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL AWARDS

VERDICT: Critics and public alike applauded the top 76th Locarno Film Festival Awards to Iran and Romania.

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

Pardo d’oro Grand Prize of the Festival of the City of Locarno for best film CRITICAL ZONE (MANTAGHEYE BOHRANI) by Ali Ahmadzadeh Iran/Germany

Special Jury Prize of the Cities of Ascona and Losone DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD (NU ASTEPTA PREA MULT DE LA SFÂRSITUL LUMII) by Radu Jude Romania/Luxembourg/France/ Croatia

Pardo for Best Direction of the City and Region of Locarno Maryna Vroda for STEPNE

Ukraine/Germany/Poland/Slovakia

Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival

Photo courtesy of Locarno Film Festival

Full Winners list

CONCORSO INTERNAZIONALE

THE INVISIBLE FIGHT

VERDICT: Estonian director Rainer Sarnet's 'The Invisible Fight' is an idiosyncratic tale featuring monks, metal rock, and a manically superb performance from Ursel Tilk.

Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, August 11, 2023

If there’s a heaven for great epigraphs, open the hallowed gates for Rainer Sarnet. He begins his fifth film, The Invisible Fight, with a quote from the Psalms: “Praise him with drum and dance” and then unfurls a madcap tale of kung fu and metal rock. Drum and dance indeed.

The picture opens gloriously. Three leather-clad rockstar kung fu men fall gracefully from the skies. It is the 1970s and the rockstars are on their way from the clouds to the USSR-China border. Upon arrival, they attack Soviet guards with kicks, swirls, nunchaku, and rock music. At the end of the ruckus, every guard is dead, except for one. You get the picture: it’s quite enough of an insane event to inspire a change of life.

But Rafael doesn’t become a vigilante seeking the deaths of rockstar kung fu fellas. He falls in love with the coolness of their technique, perhaps because, as he later says, “Everything cool is banned in the Soviet Union.”

And so Sarnet’s ridiculous tale truly begins. His film recalls both the Jackie Chan drunken-kung fu films of the 1970s as well as the hyperkinetic Stephen Chow hit, Kung Fu Hustle. As with the latter film, The Invisible Fight has taken a rascally irreverent route to pay homage to a genre that has always paired physically impressive actions with comedy. But Sarnet’s take is too European, too arthouse-y to attract Chow’s sizable audience. He is much too given to sacrificing coherence for gimmickry. For much of the film’s first half, the main thing is fun and silliness.

MÁTALOS A TODOS

CINEVERDICT: En Mátalos a todos una amistad tentativa florece a través de una video correspondencia. Este docudrama observa con destreza la incertidumbre juvenil y su conmovedora soledad.

Ben Nicholson, August 11, 2023

Mátalos a todos de Sebastian Molina Ruiz’s combina estética grunge en video con elementos epistolares para explorar el sentimiento adolescente de aislamiento.

Aunque es evidente muy pronto en la acción que Mila (Mila Mijangos) y María (María Villanueva) nunca se han conocido en persona, la naturaleza de la floreciente relación entre ambas es un tanto ambigua. Entonces, el plan es consumar en persona durante el verano una amistad que se ha desarrollado en línea. En ese momento la banda musical de María se presentará y habrá un boleto a esperando a Mila en la puerta. A través de la preparación y representación de este escenario, Molina Ruiz crea un drama discreto pero conmovedor que insinúa varias inseguridades y aflicciones que afectan a sus jóvenes protagonistas, y un trastorno más innato que parece ser parte integrante, territorio de la vida contemporánea, transitoria y digital.

Molina Ruiz abre la película con video digital granuloso, filmado por las dos chicas mientras se envían presentaciones. “Valentina me dijo que casi nunca publico fotos”, explica María, por lo que quiere asegurarse de que Mila la reconozca. Estos perfiles de video están llenos de pequeñas preocupaciones sobre su apariencia, sobre el valor de lo que están diciendo; la reserva subyacente, particularmente en el caso de Mila, parece ser sobre su valor. Es Mila con quien se queda la película cuando terminan los segmentos autograbados. Con ojo de documentalista

SHAYDA

VERDICT: Noora Niasari’s episodic debut film

‘Shayda’ stars Zar Amir Ebrahimi (‘Holy Spider’) in an involving performance as an Iranian woman in an Australian women’s shelter.

Boyd van Hoeij

August 12th, 2023

An Iranian woman tries to stick to the traditions of Nowruz, or Iranian New Year, for her 6-year-old daughter even though they are in a women’s shelter in Australia in Shayda, the feature debut from

Australia-based, Tehran-born director Noora Niasari Episodic in nature, the film is largely predictable but it’s carried by an involving performance from Zar Amir Ebrahimi, who recently won the best actress gong at Cannes for her work in the Iran-set thriller Holy Spider. Shayda, named after its protagonist, won an Audience Award at Sundance earlier this year, suggesting there’s a viewing public for this realistic slice-of-life drama which counts Cate Blanchett among its long lineup of executive producers. The drama’s European premiere is at Locarno, where it is the closing film.

It’s 1995 in Australia and Zimbabwean singer Rozalla’s Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good), from 1991, is still heard everywhere. But it’s something that’s easier said than done. Shayda (Ebrahimi), for example, is a strong-willed woman who is stuck between a rock and hard place. She’s found temporary lodging in a women’s shelter with her daughter Mona (Selina Zahednia, solid) to get away from her abusive husband, Hossain (Osamah Sami, whose hairdo alone tells you he’s not to be trusted). But a judge has decided that he’s still allowed to see their daughter once a week, which means that Shayda has to see her abuser at least twice a week,

(c) Jane Zhang / Festival del film Locarno

VERDICT SHORT

remains somewhat ambiguous, but it is quickly evident that they have never met. As such, the plan is to consummate an online friendship in person during the summer, when María’s band are playing a gig and Mila has a ticket waiting for her at the door. Through the build-up to and depiction of this scenario, Molina Ruiz creates an understated but affecting drama that hints at various insecurities and maladies afflicting its young protagonists, and a more innate dislocation that seems to as part and parcel of a transitory, digital, contemporary life.

KILL ‘EM ALL

VERDICT: A tentative friendship blossoms through video correspondence in 'Kill ‘Em All', a deftly observed docudrama filled with youthful uncertainty and poignant loneliness.

Ben Nicholson, August 11, 2023

Sebastian Molina Ruiz’s Kill ‘Em All combines grungy video aesthetics and epistolary elements to explore a sense of teenage isolation.

The nature of the burgeoning relationship between Mila (Mila Mijangos) and María (María Villanueva)

Molina Ruiz opens the film with grainy digital video, filmed by the two girls themselves as they send introductions to one another. “Valentina told me I almost never post photos,” explains María, so she wants to be sure Mila would recognise her. These video profiles are filled with minor qualms about their appearances, about the value of what they’re saying –the underlying reservation, particularly in Mila’s case, seems to be about her value. It is Mila with whom the film remains when the self-recorded segments finish. With a documentarian’s eye, the director and his DoP, Ángel Jara Taboada, , capture the discreet patterns of Mila’s life as she skates along deserted streets and sheepishly adds her name to the graffiti in a rundown city park.