Tag: Locarno

From the Leopard’s mouth: our verdict of the 76th Locarno Film Festival

Posted on by victorfraga

Our partnership with largest film festival of Switzerland and the second oldest one in the world started in 2019, when our writer Redmond Bacon attended the event for the first time. We have since provided in loco coverage of this diverse and international film bonanza. Not an easy task. Locarno showcases on average more than 200 films per year. In 2023, the 11-day film marathon included 350 screenings divided into 12 sections (three competitive and nine non-competitive ones), talks, events, art exhibitions, parties, and a lot more. Each evening, up to 8,000 people gathered on the Piazza Grande, Europe’s largest open-air theatre, in order to watch international film premieres under the starry sky of the mountainous region of Ticino (Switzerland’s only entirely Italian-speaking canton). As Redmond decided to seek pastures green with his own endeavour, I attended the Festival myself for the first time. What an incredible ride I was in for!

In total, we reviewed 17 films (you can read the pieces in our review archive), and conducted two interviews: one with the iconic LGBT+ “king of slow cinema” Tsai Ming-liang (who attended the event in person in order to receive a Career Achievement Award), and another one with the Festival’s Artistic Director Giona Nazzaro (this was a catch-up on the conversation that we started two years ago, when he started his new position).

I carried out most of the work in loco, with a couple of remote helping hands helping me out in order maximise our coverage. Still no easy task. It is hard not to be overwhelmed by diversity of the selection, and the allure of so many film auteurs. Quentin Dupieux, Ken Loach, Radu Jude, Lav Diaz – just where does one begin? Not to mention the genuinely refined selection of short films in the Pardi di Domani (“the leopards of tomorrow”, in free translation).

My dirty favourites in the main Competition (Consorso Internazionale) this year were Quentin Dupieux’s Yannick (pictured above), a hilarious metacomedy that liberates viewers inconveniently bound to their seats, and Laura Ferres’s The Permanent Picture, a dark portrait of Spain now and under Franco (with an aesthetic touch of Ulrich Seidl). In the Pardi di Domani section, the biggest standouts were Julian McKinnon and Fiume’s La Vedova Nera, a dirtylicious Franco-Italian tribute to giallo, and Urša Kastelic’s Remember, Broken Crayons Colour too, a deeply poetic Swiss documentary about a Jamaican trans woman. They all left empty-handed.

The Golden Leopard went to Ali Ahmadzadeh’s Iranian drama Critical Zone (review to follow soon), while the Special Jury Prize of the Cities of Ascona and Losone went to Radu Jude’s Don’t Expect Much from the End of the World, a highly inventive comedy and a caustic satire of Romania (pictured below). Best Direction went to Maryna Vroda for Stepne, a sombre and sullen Ukrainian drama about a man returning to his native village in order to care for his ailing mother. The two Performances Leopards went to Renée Soutendijk in Ena Sendijarevic’s Sweet Dreams, a profound period drama about Dutch colonial relations, and Dimitra Vlagopoulou for Sofia Exarchou’s Animal. The Special Mention Award went to Sylvain George’s Obscure Night – Goodbye Here, Anywhere, a very long documentary that exoticises Moroccan boys living in the Spanish exclave of Melilla.

Other prizes include the Ecumenical Jury Prize, which went to Simone Bozzelli’s Patagonia, a twisted queer coming-of-age tale with some beautiful and disturbing moments, and the Pardi di Domani’s Silver Leopard to Leandro Goddinho and Paulo Menezes’s Paradise Europe (aka You are so Wonderful), a visceral, funny and realistic LGBT+ drama about a Brazilian gay man flat-hunting in Berlin.

Ken Loach attended the event in person, and showcased his new creation The Old Oak, which premiered in Cannes three months earlier. The film is an authentic and captivating portrayal of poverty, xenophobia and failed refugee integration in Northern England. The social realist director gets to the roots of racism without condoning it. He received a warm ovation as he presented his film at the Piazza Grande, while also remaining loyal to his socialist values in his speech (he criticised the Festival for counting a bank among its sponsors). He won the UBS Prix du Public Audience Award.

I look forward to the 77th edition of Locarno!

Our dirty questions to Tsai Ming-Liang

Posted on by victorfraga

Having been a huge fan of the 65-year-old director – perhaps the most prominent LGBT+ filmmaker in Asia and certainly one of the biggest exponents of slow cinema in the world -, I couldn’t wait to meet Tsai Ming-liang in person. I first watched The River (1997) when I was still a teenager in my native Brazil while working at the Sao Paulo Film Festival, in the year then film was originally launched. Ming-liang’s tender and subversive sensibility shocked and moved me profoundly. He has firmly remained on my radar since.

He attended the 76th edition of the Locarno Film Festival. On August 3rd, he received the Career Leopard Award in a nearly packed Piazza Grande (which can host a whopping 8,000 film-lovers). Giona A. Nazzaro, the Festival’s Artistic Director explains: “The cinema of Tsai Ming-liang entails a passionate convergence of stories and languages. From the outset he has been able to capture the multiple identities of a creative pathway through the complex articulations of both Taiwanese history and his personal story as a Chinese moving between Malaysia and Taiwan”.

The art exhibition entitled Moving Portraits was also held in Locarno. Its included experimental audiovisual works such as exhibition Transformation (2012), Your Face (2018) and The Tree (2021), curated byKevin B. Lee. His experimental pieces, much like his feature films, are very slow-paced and require a lot of love – and hours – in order to be appreciated in their full splendour.

Ming-liang was born in Malaysia to Taiwanese parents, and he moved to Taipei at the age of 10, where he still resides. He has a career spanning more than three decades, and 11 feature films. He won many prestigious prizes around the world, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for Vive L’Amour (1994). The remained particularly active in the 1990s and 2000s, when he became widely recognised for the topics of unfulfilled sexuality, loneliness, alienation and the passage of time. His films have since became more sparse, with most of his recent output dedicated to exhibitions. He only made one feature film in the ’10s, the tragic and gloomy Stray Dogs (2013). His last film Days was released three years ago.

The director does not speak any English, and our brief interview was aided by a sharp interpreter, courtesy of the Festival. We started our conversation discussing realism. “My films come from life, real life. That’s why I show a lot of loneliness. The characters show their personality through behaviour, not words. I really care about authenticity, that’s one of my biggest pursuits. I want audiences to feel this authenticity. That’s why I don’t leave much room for performance. In general, ordinary actors are afraid of not being able to perform. On the other hand, non-professional actors don’t know how to perform, and instead just do what they are asked to do. Even with non-professionals, I don’t give many instructions. I just put them in certain space and environments, and their own actions or behaviours will take care of the rest. And sometimes these reactions are completely unexpected”.

Ming-liang has consistently used a combination of professional and non-professional actors in his films, and he has a very close relationship with them, particularly 54-year-old Lee Kang-sheng, who has starred in every single one of his 11 feature films. “I live very close to my actors, physically and figuratively. Lee Kang-sheng lives in the same neighbourhood as me. So I observe him, I often watch his life”. He then explains that his closeness enables him to observe the passage of time more effectively, and that he intends to do a film about ageing. “I want to shoot a movie about myself at the age of 60. Because that’s when I realised my body is going through a lot of changes. But I want Kang-sheng to play that role, so I am waiting for him to turn 60”. The passing of time is a recurring topic in many of Ming-liang’s movies (such as 2001’s What Time is It There and Days), and also in his filmography as a whole (as the director observes Kang-sheng’s real-life ageing).

We also talked about the importance of sounds, and their purpose on the elusive search for authenticity: “My films are full of sounds. These are sounds of everyday life, reality replaces the music score. Sometimes these sounds are exaggerated. The objective is to highlight the inner loneliness of the characters. [We hear these sounds] as if they were close to their ears”. I asked him why I asked why Days is “intentionally unsubtitled” (as announced in the beginning of the film). “I don’t really believe in film dialogues. They are not real. That’s just too dramatic”, he explains in his soft and calm voice.

Next, we talked about equality rights. His face lit up, and the director became visibly proud when I asked him about Taiwan being the first country in Asia to legalise gay marriage (in May 2019), and whether he thought that his art played a role in changing the nation’s hearts. He gives a prompt and confident answer: “Yes, I think that my films contributed to same-sex marriage. I really appreciate these changes in Taiwan. I arrived in Taiwan 30 years ago, and I met a local activist who was campaigning for gay rights with placards on the streets back then, and he is still doing that. I want to ask you a question. How many different types of people do you think God created? Just men and women? Gays don’t decide they become gay, right? Flowers can be green, yellow or red. In Taiwan the young generation can really be themselves. I’m glad to live in such a place”.

We finished our interview by talking about another topic close to Ming-liang’s heart (and other parts of his anatomy). I asked him: “Is it ok if we talk about sex?”. He promptly replied “yes”, in English and before the question was translated, with a big smile on his face. I carried on: “Sex in your films is very beautiful, but also very subversive. You get a huge age gap [Days], incest (The River], prostitution [What Time is It There?, Days] and even watermelons [The Wayward Cloud, 2005]. Is subversive sex more beautiful than traditional sex?”. He retorted: “I like sex a lot. But I’m old now! The sex that you see in my movies is actually beautified. Sex in real life is like eating, or other human relations. The more authentic part of sex isn’t so beautiful, not so perfect. When audiences look at sex in my films, they don’t just see sex, they also see dominance, the inability of communicate and loneliness. In Days, for example, you cannot deny that sex was transactional, yet you cannot deny it brought consolation to a lonely person”.

Let’s hope that Tsai Ming-liang’s future projects come to fruition, that there is no shortage of sex – beautified or not -, and that we can continue to observe the passing of time in the life of the artist and his favourite actor Kang-sheng.

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Tsai Ming Liang is pictured at the top and at the bottom of this article (alongside Victor Fraga), snapped by Victor Fraga. The image at the middle is a still from Days.

Our dirty questions to Giona Nazzaro, Locarno’s Artistic Director

Posted on by victorfraga
Images on his article: Locarno Film Festival/Ti Press

It’s been two years since we first spoke to the new artistic director of the Locarno International Film Festival. Now on its 76th edition, the a-list event boasts the distinction of being the second oldest such film festival in the world, founded in 1946 (second only to Venice, established in 1932). Back in 2021, Giona had just taken over his new role, and the film industry was a very different place. The world was still grappling with a pandemic, and the challenges were somewhat different (with many festivals being held online, or in hybrid format). So we decided to talk to him again and find out what’s happened since.

The 76th edition of the Locarno International Film Festival takes place between August 2th and 12th. DMovies will be live at the event for the fifth consecutive year unearthing the dirtiest gems of world cinema exclusively for you. You can check the full programme by clicking here.

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Victor Fraga – You are now on your third year at the helm of Locarno. Can you please tell us what you’d say you’ve achieved or how the festival has changed ever since we last spoke two years ago?

Giona Nazzaro – Well, you know, I’m not a supporter of the idea that you have to reinvent the wheel. What I try to do is work in service of this entity while giving my individual take on what cinema is and where it’s going. We discussed this a lot with the selection committee. We are trying to create a programme that feels unpredictable, that does not explore the usual roads, and that can point in several directions at once.

VF – When you say unpredictable, what exactly do you mean? Unpredictable endings? Unusual aesthetics? Or something else?

GN – I mean looking at different kinds of films without any preconception. This year we have Quentin Dupieux with surrealistic humour and Lav Diaz. We have Bob Byington with his deadpan humour, and Radu Jude. We have Sofia Exarchou and Annarita Zambrano. So these are very talented and recognised filmmakers, and each has a very specific idea of what cinema is in terms of form, how it stands towards the challenges of the present time, how it should look like aesthetically, formally and politically. I very much like very much the idea that Locarno is a place where you can have a taste of different things.

The fact that we have auteur cinema does not mean that we are looking exclusively in that direction. We’ve opened up to comedies, genre films, and so on. When I talk with producers, I always say: “Stop thinking along the lines of ‘I have the perfect film for Locarno’ because probably it’s not what we are looking for“. I really hope that the Competition is perceived as a place for different sensibilities, and that this conversation can be exciting to professional critics, cinephile as the broader audiences alike.

VF – You say that don’t want to be seen as exclusively auteur-driven. I’ve looked at your programme. I haven’t seen Indiana Jones [which premiered a couple of months ago in Cannes] or even anything remotely as commercial.

GN – The notion of cinema being a commercial or anti-commercial is really alien to me. I don’t think along those lines. And I really work to support auteur cinema. We might have a slightly different take on what auteur cinema is. Lav Diaz and Radu Jude are clearly auteurs. Same with Quentin Dupieux, or the Italian newcomer Simone Bozzelli, which I am convinced will be one of the very strong and fascinating surprises of the line-up. For me, the notion of auteur is a bit more open. Ultimately, everyone who makes the film is the auteur. In this sense, you wouldn’t find a bigger supporter of auteur cinema than Tom Cruise. He controls every aspect of the process, and he does only the things he wants. He tells only the stories that he wants to tell. And he brings his films only to the theatres. He doesn’t go with them to the platforms or streaming, so he does what he does on his own terms. I’m bringing to you a dialectic provocation. But what I’m trying to say is that sometimes we are looking at auteur cinema more as a defined a set of conventions rather than the expression of adventurous sensibilities set out to explore the possibilities of the media

VF – You’re going to show 214 films from 113 countries and that you received in excess of 5500 submissions. Can you tell us a little bit where these submissions are from? Which countries tend to submit more films?

GN – From everywhere in the world: Asia, Eastern Europe, the so-called Global South, whatever that means. So they really come from everywhere.

VF – You have a large programming team. Can you please share your biggest secret? What is the most important thing, which they should be at the forefront of their mind when they are selecting a film for Locarno?

GN – I don’t tell them anything. The idea of having a selection team is exactly to put yourself into uncharted territories. I don’t tell them: “You have to look out for this and this because I like this and that”. Cinema today has so many possibilities. When you are working in a selection committee, you have to ask yourself some hard questions. So we challenge each other all the time. So it’s not a downhill drop. It’s always uphill: climbing, debating, strongly but respectfully disagreeing, and bringing to the table all our abilities, all our experiences, all our critical insights, and trying to listen to each other. And I know this sounds a bit sanctimonious, but it’s a very tough process. It’s a long journey. A very long journey. I didn’t look for people that were thinking along my ideas when I put together the selection team,. I deliberately chose people because I was intrigued by their intellectual generosity, their intellectual audacity. So and I feel privileged to be working with people that challenge each other all the time. Yet again, this sounds like very rosy and stuff, but it’s not. It’s hard.

VF – How large is your select committee? How many people are there?

GN – We’re about six or seven.

VF – What are your performance indicators? How do you gauge success after the Festival was finished?

GN – It’s quite easy. Last year, all the films that we had fared very well with the rest of the festivals and achieved distribution, have been bought, have been acquired. Just a couple of examples: Nightsiren [Tereza Nvotová], which won Best Direction, has been invited to 26 festivals, won a lot of awards, was bought by Netflix and so on. The Tamil film Declaration [Mahesh Narayanan] has also been acquired by Netflix. The film I Have Electric Dreams [Valentina Maurel] has been invited everywhere in the world, and won lots of awards. The same with Safe Place [Juraj Lerotić], Rule 34 [Julia Murat], Stone Turtle [Ming Jin Woo], Matter Out of Place [Nikolaus Geyrhalter], and so on. So. These films have managed to establish a meaningful conversation with different audiences. I always say that the Locarno Film Festival begins when actually the last film has been screened.

VF – Are you telling me that literally every single film that you were screened last year, except perhaps for archive, secured a distribution or a streaming deal?

GN – No, I’m not saying this. I said that a lot of them did that.

VF – There are 14 a-list festivals in the world. Fiapf has now suspended Moscow, as I’m sure you are aware of. Eight of these festivals indeed remain in Europe. Europe is such a hotbed for a-list festivals, isn’t it? What would you say that is it that distinguishes Locarno from from the other seven A-list festivals in the continent?

GN – This is a question that I’ve been asked to answer over and over again. Locarno is a very small city in the southern part of Switzerland. And as the festival takes place, the whole city changes. Colours and shapes. You can really feel the Festival. As in a feast, a celebration. We have real film-aficionados, and we also have a lot of film professionals. In the end of the day, it’s really about how films are embraced, and how the Festival is experienced.

VF – Locarno is indeed a very small place. About 15,000 inhabitants, isn’t it? It’s the smallest city where an a-list festival is held. Even Karlovy Vary is much bigger. I read that you have 13 theatres and that you can have 8,000 people in your Piazza. That’s half of your population, isn’t it? How does such a small place achieve all of that? It’s incredible. Is that just because of the Festival or is there is that a broader film tradition in the city?

GN – It’s really linked to how the Festival, what the festival means to the region of Ticino, and to Switzerland. When we opened the Piazza, half of the city came. This is also very moving because you can really feel the connection that film culture has with the city. You can really feel how people are connected to one of the largest screen screens in the world, and certainly the screen with the largest distance from a projection booth to the screen. This is not to say that the other festivals are not doing a wonderful job. You mentioned Karlovy Vary, and Karel Och is a wonderful friend. I deeply respect his work. I deeply love him. So I’m not saying that what Locarno does is better than what anybody else does, but that’s really not it. But since you are asking me of this unique element, I would say that it’s this idea of people celebrating the joy of being a community that gathers around this campfire that still is cinema

VF – Back to my previous question. There are 13 theatres. That’s a lot for a town with just 15,000 inhabitants. Is that a year-round tradition? What happens to these places when the Festival is not taking place?

GN – We have also a film academy. We are working towards the goal of establishing Locarno as a media city in the near future. We have a local film commission. The Festival has renovated a cinema, the GranRex. Our offices are in a building called the Bala Cinema, the former elementary school of Locarno. Instead of tearing down the building, the municipalities and the authorities rebuilt the whole thing and it became the seat of the Film School, the seat of the Film Commission, and the offices of the Film Festival.

You have to understand that the Festival of Locarno came to be in the south of Switzerland in the Italian-speaking part of the country immediately after WW2. The Venice Film Festival had been established by the regime of the ’20s and the festival in Moscow had been established by the by the [Communist] Party. So Locarno, after WW2, was truly the voice of independent cinema.

VF –You were founded in the same year as Cannes, if I’m not mistaken?

GN – You’re not mistaken. Yes. Locarno was one of the places where Italian neorealism was welcomed in real time. The first film that we that the Festival projected back in 1946 was a rather now obscure film called O Sole Mio by Giacomo Gentilomo, which celebrated the uprising of Naples, the Four Days of Naples. Let me tell you another story: Locarno set the tone and at the height of the Cold War. The Festival welcomed the films from behind the Iron Curtain, prompting a parliamentarian interrogation of how legit it was to show the films of the enemy. Pasolini came to Locarno in order to defend the films of Sergio Citti. Rossellini came too, you know. The Festival of Locarno is ingrained in the fight for progressive ideas.

VF – When I spoke to you two years ago, you told me that if a festival takes place online, it’s not a festival. Do you still have the same opinion about online and hybrid festivals, or has that changed since the pandemic came to and end?

GN– Let’s say me and you disagree about a film online, right?. If things get really bad, I can simply switch off the conversation. But if I meet you in a in a cinema and we are watching the same film, then we need to discuss. I cannot switch you off! For me, going to a festival is being part of a community. And this is also the reason why festivals and becoming stronger and more interesting, despite the struggles in the marketplace, distribution, production, and so on.

VF – Is it fair to say that the Locarno International Film Festival changed the history of Locarno?

GN – Yes. This is something that the President [Marco] Solari has pointed out himself. Two examples. This is where, for the first time, the Italian comic actor Toto was recognised as a true artist, even before the Italians did. The place where Douglas Sirk was first recognised as an auteur was Locarno. He was still alive, living close by in Lugano, a small town nearby. The region of Ticino and Switzerland itself grew thanks to the cultural push that Locarno gave to the whole region and to the whole country. Culture helps you to become something else. Culture widens the horizons of your possibilities.

VF – Culture is transformational, isn’t it?

GN – Absolutely!

VF – But let’s talk about Britain. You’ve got Ken Loach coming, that’s very exciting. I love The Old Oak [which premiered in Cannes two months ago]. Can you please tell us a little bit how that invitation come to be? And what is the significance of Ken Loach and British cinema to Locarno?

GN – Well, first of all, I’m an Anglophile. I’m really in love with the English cinema culture and so on. Ken Loach has been the protagonist of one of the greatest gatherings in the Piazza when he last was here, and he himself was completely overwhelmed by the warmth of the welcome.

VF – Which film was that?

GN – I, Daniel, Blake [in 2016].

VF – Why do you think Ken Loach resonates so much with people in Switzerland?

GN – It’s his humanity. It even resonates with people who might disagree with this ideology. I know of some people that disagree with him, and they are still touched by the warmth of the way he brings his ideas to you. There’s never an authoritarian stance in the way he makes his points. The Old Oak is a film that truly moved me. Somehow the spirit of great Italian neorealism made itself heard in the pictures of this old pub of the remnants of the working class that are under the pressure of ceding to the temptation of becoming unwelcoming, xenophobic. The humanity of these people that are resisting and being resilient on a daily basis, and who simply try to be decent human being, this is something that resonates in an incredible way!

VF – What is your message to filmmakers aspiring to make a difference like Ken Loach, or just want to show their films in Locarno?

GN – There is no message. As Alfred Hitchcock, another British filmmaker, used to say: “If I want to send a message, I can send a postcard”. I never wanted to be a filmmaker because I always was aware that in order to be a filmmaker, you need a certain degree of obsession that I can only have toward certain things in life. And one of them is doing a festival.

The filmmakers that have been in Locarno are truly individual filmmakers. They play by their own rulebook. I would tell a filmmaker: “Don’t listen to people who ask of you to be reasonable, to be realistic, listen to yourself and follow your instincts and the rest will come”!

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You can check Locarno’s full programme by clicking here.

Wet Sand

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM LOCARNO

And it all ends in tears. The last film I watched at the joyous Locarno Film Festival is a slow-burn weepie about the price people pay for living in secret. Using a generous two-hour runtime to fully examine the difficulties of living authentically in a small village in Georgia, Wet Sand has a deeply understated yet ultimately rather effective approach to storytelling.

The title refers to a small cafe on the Black Sea, where manly-men tease owner Amnon (Gia Agumava) over his “pisspoor beer.” This is the kind of neighborhood where everyone knows each other to the point where you can’t cough in the distance without somebody commenting upon it. The fault-line that lies behind the generally friendly people is revealed when the local loner Eliko dies by suicide. He is so disliked that nobody wants to bury him, leading to Amnon having to finally step up.

He is joined in his efforts by Moe (Bebe Sesitashvili), who immediately sticks out of place thanks to her ice-white hair. She normally lives in the more liberal Tbilisi, and is struck by how stuck in their ways the people are. The wider context is referred to on TV, reporting on both Family Day celebrations — an Orthodox counteraction to the International Day Against Homophobia — and the effects of climate change, burning forests and polluting the Black Sea. The message is obvious: governments across Europe are cruelly trying to legislate gay lives out of existence — from Russia to Hungary to Georgia — while completely ignoring the fact the Earth is on fire.

No one should have to live in secret, but many do, repressing an essential part of their personality in the process. In depicting this, there is an Ozu-like touch throughout the film, whether it’s the static frames, quiet performances or use of omission, suggesting a wellspring of emotion lingering just beneath the surface. This is a film filled with pregnant pauses, characters taking their time as they think of what to say and how to say it. They simply live in a world where some things are impossible to say out loud, their absence filling the air with a deep, awful sadness.

A timeless feel comes through the camerawork and settings, the film constantly returning us to the relentless waves of the ocean, which gives us all the potential for renewal and rebirth. Director Elene Naveriani is content to simply observe characters as they look at the sea, go for a swim or listen to music; allowing us to see the inner lives of those who must live under such repressive ideas. They also have a masterful command of parallel narratives, creating a tension between the world as it was, as it is, and how it could be in the future. While the film takes a while to come into its own, the intent is exceptionally clear, as is the final powerful message. While it might not light the country on fire like And Then We Danced (Levan Akin, 2019), it’s sure to start some more conversations about the need to treat LGBT people with the dignity they deserve.

Wet Sand plays in Concorso Cineasti del presente at Locarno Film Festival, running from August 4th to 15th.

Zeros and Ones

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

The Eternal City is often portrayed as joyous place, filled with life, excitement, beautiful people and incredible scenery. But when walking very late at night, it can often feel rather malevolent and mysterious, filled with long-hidden secrets. The Rome of Zeros and Ones is a pandemic-infused noir suffused with dark shadows, the endless symbols of Christianity repurposed for much darker purposes.

Into this reality comes American military officer JJ (Ethan Hawke): equipped with a face-mask, he looks like he has never smiled in his life. He is on a mission to seemingly save the world from an unknown threat. He invokes Jesus through voiceover more than once, boldly stating that he was “just another soldier.”

Any of the genuine Christian elements such as loving your neighbor, turning the other cheek and self-sacrifice seem omitted here: this is a cold and lonely world, exacerbated by the worst pandemic in a hundred years. It’s difficult to say exactly what he is fighting, only that he manoeuvres an almost empty world, solely populated by Russian spies, Asian drug dealers and American spooks. His brother (also played by Ethan Hawke) has been detained, accused of promoting revolutionary ideals across the country. What those ideas are, we never quite know, as the film prefers to shroud its central mystery in an ambivalent, shadow-heavy tone.

Ferrara works hand-in-hand with cinematographer Sean Price Williams, one of the best cameramen in the business, as evidenced through his work with the Safdies and Alex Ross Perry. Williams shoots Rome almost entirely at night, making it seem as filled with betrayals and secrets as The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949). This is complemented by grainy, over-exposed digital footage, ramping up the paranoia with a sense of constant surveillance. The music by Joe Delia then expands the scope where the evidently small budget can’t, featuring reverb-heavy military drums and Glenn Branca-like guitars. The result is an incredibly moody spy thriller so baked in cynicism that it makes John Le Carre look like Frederick Forsyth.

The setting make absolute sense and is integral to the film’s mood. Italy was the ground zero for coronavirus in Europe, the haunting images emerging from the country a terrifying prelude to what would soon devour the continent. Nonetheless, while it is definitely a more interesting corona-influenced film than the comedies and dramas I have seen so far, finding a way to wrap it into a political thriller, Zeros and Ones preference for atmosphere over coherence can make it hard to find a grip.

Ferrera is a great experimental filmmaker, making his relative misfires still worth exploring and digging into. But while something such as Siberia (2019) could work brilliantly as an exploration of the mind and soul despite having little to no plot, Zeros and Ones’ attempt at reconfiguring a genre usually obsessed with plot makes it harder to love. No one could come out of that film knowing what actually happened, but certain images — like the saints of the Vatican shot like members of a secret cult, or Ethan Hawke running down a deserted, barely-illuminated alleyway or yet another Ferrara sex scene between JJ and a mysterious woman — will stick with me, creating an allegory for a world that has been plunged into a new dark age.

Zeros and Ones played in Concorso internazionale at Locarno Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. On all major VoD platforms on Monday, March 21st (2022).

Mostro

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM LOCARNO

Mostro is a couple of different ideas mashed together — an experimental light show and a slice-of-life drama. The light show is interesting to a certain formal extent while the realism eventually strains the viewer’s patience. Even at a fleet seventy-seven minutes, this Mexican portrait of wayward and forgotten youths, albeit ambitious at its most visually expressive, didn’t do much for me at all.

Lucas (Salvador de la Garza) has lost his girlfriend. They were hanging out in a little shack, taking drugs, then the police arrived and she was apparently taken. He works in a factory and balances the difficulty of doing his day job with trying to figure out where she has actually gone. Her disappearance is the animating absence behind the film, an arthouse conceit that brings to mind L’Aventurra (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960) and the work of Abbas Kiarostami.

Mostro takes a kitchen-sink stylistic approach, combining low-light nighttime shaky-cam scenes with impressive tracking shots and expressive portraits of memories, lights and colour melding together to create a vivid conception of memory, identity and relationships. But as the film moves from a contemplative and picturesque mode into a character study, we rarely understand what make Lucas tick besides his humdrum work lifting things on a factory floor.

Lucas doesn’t fundamentally change throughout the movie. He is the same depressed and unresponsive person whether he is in the throes of love with his girl or whether he is frantically searching for her. This lack of development makes it hard to sympathise with his plight. While de la Garza provides fine work, especially in the more frantic scenes, it would’ve helped to get more under his skin other than through vague voiceover and cryptic flashbacks. More interesting is his confrontation with the police, who seem particularly blasé about where his girlfriend has gone or the manner of her disappearance. If the film dug deeper into the indifference of bureaucracy, it could’ve been a piercing critique, but this is quickly passed over in favour of more deeply held close ups and thinly light portraits.

Nonetheless, the wider context of teenage disappearance — a national issue in Mexico — doesn’t seem to interest first-time director José Pablo Escamilla that much, who has a keen eye for striking mise-en-scène, but few ideas to keep the thematic clock ticking. The aforementioned experimental moments seem to vanish by the later half of the film, creating a secondary stylistic absence that make one wonder why they existed in the first place – either the two styles blend by the end, or they create a strange dichotomy; here they seem to barely relate to each other.

Lucas must return to his job, suffering the inequities of oppressive managers while worried sick, creating a vivid critique about how capitalism at its most acute cannot let people rest. Sadly, whether shot in the dark or caught on headache-inducing shaky-cam, Lucas’ strife becomes difficult to genuinely care about. With little closure and a whispy finale, Mostro’s formally ambitious conceits amount to a lot of style about nothing much at all.

Mostro plays in the Concorso Cineasti del presente at Locarno Film Festival, running from August 4-15th .

Locarno 2021 preview: a return to the magic of in-person discovery

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Festivals are constantly evolving, having to adapt to new forms of cinematic languages and formats. I’ve covered London, SXSW, Berlinale and several short film festivals from the comfort of my own bedroom, all the while craving the intimacy and distraction-free nature of a proper event. While digital festivals are great for expanding accessibility, they miss the same sense of immersion and discovery, creating moments that stick with you due to the context within which they’re seen.

Newly-appointed artistic director Giona Nazzaro, previously General Delegate of Venice’s International Film Critics’ Week, has a huge challenge ahead to defend Locarno’s claim as one of the most fascinating international arthouse film festivals in the world.

It’s great to see that Locarno is screening over 200 films in cinemas perched on the gorgeous Lago Maggiore. Nazarro agrees, but to a more orthodox degree, telling DMovies that: “If a festival takes place online, it’s not a festival… a festival is an expression of the community.”

Locarno
Vortex, Gaspar Noé

And what a great community Locarno is — look past the extortionate prices and you see a cosy bustling town filled with cute cafés, homely grottoes and stunning vistas, all without the queuing stress typically found in a festival of this magnitude. It’s tempting to call it my first “post-pandemic festival,” yet this wouldn’t be entirely accurate. I’ll expect more vigilance, less handshakes, and a constant checking of vaccination documents. It’s an unnerving world right now, with international cinema caught between commerciality and artistic integrity, accessibility and glamour, safety and community.

Nonetheless, the flashy headlines of Cannes or the Oscar-bait of Venice or Toronto, Locarno still appeals to the more discerning cinephile. The Concorso internazionale is the main event, featuring the much hyped gay drama Cop Secret from Iceland, legendary Serbian director Srđan Dragojević (best known for The Wounds) with Nebesa, the return of Russian director Alexander Zeldovich after 10 years since Mishen with tragedy Medea, and Zeros and Ones, the new film from auteur Abel Ferrara starring Ethan Hawke that concerns, because of course it does: “A war between history and the future.”

For those really interested in cinema that breaks down conventions, Concorso presente is one of the most vital film programmes in European cinema. I was particularly impressed last time by those visions which expertly blended the line between documentary and fiction. While I can’t claim to know the names of any of the directors featured this year, this programme promises to provide new films that redefine the capabilities of what cinema can achieve, given past entries such as Space Dogs (Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, 2019) and Ivana the Terrible (Ivana Mladenovic, 2019).

Free Guy

Nazarro has also talked about expanding the popular aspects of the festival, with this year offering crowdpleasers in the form of the Ryan Reynolds-starring (and smirking) Free Guy (Shawn Levy, pictured above),everyone’s favourite shlock-auteur Gaspar Noé with Vortex and even reruns of National Lampoon’s Animal House (John Lanfis, 1978) and The Terminator (James Cameron, 1985) to provide those popcorn pleasures on the Piazza Grande screen (pictured at the top). Those looking for under-appreciated directors from ages past will enjoy the retrospective of the late Alberto Lattuada, a genre-hopping auteur described as a master of Italian cinema. Meanwhile, the three-year focus on Asian cinema continues with the Open Doors features and shorts, spanning films from Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia.

I am very excited, but due to a combination of lockdown, the Euros and an adorable new dog, I haven’t actually been to a cinema since February, making me a little trepidatious about jumping right in. In an attempt to reacquaint myself with the physicality and tactile nature of the cinema screen, I’m avoiding the soul-and-mind-destroying direct flight to Milan in favour of a slow train and bus journey via Baden-Württemberg, Austria, Liechtenstein and Zurich; my Berlin-accented Hochdeutsch becoming more useless with every further destination until switching to my non-existent Italian at the festival proper. I have absolutely no doubt that both trip and final destination will serve up a buffet of different cultures and ideas, with the new leadership more than capable of reaffirming the magic of in-person discovery. Forza cinema!

Dmovies will be at Locarno Film Festival from 9-13th of August. Check our page regularly for live reviews from the event.

A return to cinemas this summer? Yes, we can do it!

Posted on by victorfraga

There is light at the end of the tunnel. Most Western European countries are now very gradually and very cautiously lifting lockdown measures, and there is abundant faith that we will resume some semblance of normality this summer, at least in some smaller places such as Locarno. Giona Nazzaro, the newly-appointed artistic director of the second oldest film festival in the world, has a positive message for filmmakers, industry professionals and film lovers alike. He is confident in the ability to hold the Festival in bricks-and-mortar format this year, inside a real dark chamber – just as cinema is intended to be.

Victor Fraga, the editor of DMovies, spoke to Giona Nazzaro in a Zoom meeting. He was sitting in front of a plush leopard print, as in the Festival’s mascot [pictured below]. To my disappointment, the background was just a PDF image; I was indeed tricked into believing it was a glamorous decorative piece in Nazzaro’s lounge, until the hard truth was revealed to me at the end of the call. The Swiss-born, native German speaker describes himself as “Italian”, and ascertain that Switzerland is very cosmopolitan and integrated within the EU, without concealing his profound dislike of Brexit. Nazzaro has a calm and stern demeanour, yet he becomes very passionate and assertive when discussing the new industry opportunities, an explaining why the word “hybrid” no longer means anything!

Victor Fraga – You have a relationship with Locarno dating back to 2009. Can you please tell us how this marriage blossomed?

Giona Nazzaro – It’s really easy! I was invited to Locarno by one of the previous artistic directors, Fréd Maire, through the intersection of Carlo Chatrian. They invited me to Locarno in order to moderate the German Q&As, press conferences and also to deal with the German, Austrian and Swiss delegations. That was my first gig. It took off from there. One of the great memories that I have from Locarno was working with Carlo Chatrian in one of the retrospectives. After Fréd Maire, I stayed when Olivier Père became the artistic director, then Carlo, and so on!

VF – There is a lot of confidence that Locarno will take place in situ this year, and it might be the first a-list festival to achieve such an accomplishment. What measures (including contingency measures) have you got in place in order to ensure this happens?

GN – We are planning for a full-scale physical edition and we are working accordingly in order to implement the safety measures set by the federal sanitary authorities in Switzerland. We have seen that it is possible to hold a festival at pandemic times, like Venice, San Sebastian and Zurich proved quite eloquently. I think that festivals in small places – where you can control the audience, trace them and closely follow safety measures – are better off. We haven’t moved our dates [August 4th to 14th]. We’re working full steam ahead. The announcements will follow soon.

VF – Are there any targets for this year (number of films, number of admissions, etc) that you could share with us at this stage?

GN – We scaled down the number of people that will come. We still need to tread carefully. We won’t be able to welcome the usual 8000+ figure to the Piazza [pictured at the bottom], but instead 4,000 people. We will divide the Piazza in different sectors. We will allow people to come and to meet progressively.

We will have to present fewer films. At the moment, we are thinking of 16 films in Competition, 16 in Cineasti del Presente, nine slots for the short films, and a reduced number of films for Histoire(s) du Cinéma and out-of-Competition movies. We normally show 19 films in Competition, so 16 is still a lot.

I hope we will attend screenings with a mask.

VF – Will there be social distancing?

GN – It might be be every other seat. This is becoming yesterday’s news because the vaccine programme is moving quite steadily in Switzerland. Why would you need distant seats if people are vaccinated?

VF – So there’s hope no social distancing might be necessary inside the cinemas?

GN – I can’t take this situation anymore. I would have no problem showing my sanitary certification, proof that I have been vaccinated. On the other hand, as far as civil rights and civil freedoms go, it seems that even this has become an issue. I personally have no problem showing my certificate in order to enter a cinema, a discoteque, or to board a plane.

VF – Once the pandemic is over, should A-list festivals such as Locarno return to physical-only format, or should they remain hybrid?

GN – This is a very interesting question and we must be very clear about this. I don’t think “hybrid” means anything anymore at all. In Locarno, we are developing a completely different strategy. There will be the core of the Festival, the 11 days of the Festival. Then throughout the year we will have the rest of our activities – Locarno Kids, L’immagine e la Parola, the different activities from our industry hub, and so on – in this new digital hub, which we are planning, developing and structuring ourselves. We want to be present for the film industry throughout the year. This is not because of the pandemic. We started doing this before the pandemic struck.

Quite honestly, if a festival takes place online, it’s not a festival! Call it what you want, but it’s not a festival! I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. It’s just not a festival. Festival comes from Italian “festa”, or French “fête”, and even English “festive”. A festival is an expression of the community. Cinema is a collective experience. You might get angry at your neighbour for crunching away his popcorn. You might not want to have him next to you, but that’s it.

Watching the films on a laptop in the frame of a festival, or watching it on a television is something different. When it comes to business, it’s completely different when you can evaluate the person in front of you: sales agents, producers, distributors, you name it. What I’m saying is: Locarno will fully address the needs the ever-developing film and audiovisual communities are going through, but don’t call it hybrid. We are already hybrid. Every time I send an emoji – happy or frustrated – that’s a hybrid reaction because I don’t have the person in front of me. They might be in Eastern Europe of South America.

VF – What about people who can’t fly to Locarno due to the pandemic. Will they get online access to the movies?

GN – We are currently evaluating the situation. There will be opportunities for people requesting an accreditation, as well as for potential buyers, to watch the film. It’s still embryonic.

VF – What are your personal aims and ambitions for Locarno in the long term?

GN – It’s very easy. I want Locarno to be the festival that it was and I want Locarno to be the festival that it can be. This project that we are working on – Locarno Plus, or Locarno 365 – means that the Festival will be firing on all cylinders all year through. Most of the activities that become synonymous with Locarno will take place on our digital community. The heart of the matter in Locarno, however, will always be the physical experience.

I’m a music fan. It’s like being a record label that puts out a selected number of very fine printed records over the years. That diversifies the business model, allowing you to buy the same record in flag file, in MP3, whatever. We are fully aware of the transformation of the whole audiovisual industry. The real change is to move forward with a plan.

VF – You are doing a retrospective of a largely unsung hero of Italian cinema, Alberto Lattuada. Please tell us how this came about?

GN – When we did the Titanus retrospective, there were a couple of Lattuada films that triggered extreme curiosity in the cinephile community: “How come we didn’t know more about him?”, “How come we don’t know his films”? He’s an extreme eclectic director, he did not develop some auteur mannerisms, such as with Fellini and Antonioni. He loved to challenged himself by constantly changing his visual approach. He loved to experiment with genre cinema. He managed to have a very good relationship with the Italian audience, but the critics struggled to understand what he was doing. An auteur was doing the same film all the time. Alberto Lattuada did 33 feature films, all completely different from each other. He constantly challenged his creativity.

VF – This sounds a lot like Locarno itself. The Festival is defined neither by genre nor by one specific film practice, and it constantly challenging creative concepts!

GN – We are trying to reshape Locarno, which is perceived as a quite radical auteur, experimental-oriented film festival. I would love to keep the edge, while also adding new nuances to this perception. I would love to push Locarno in a more audience-friendly direction. A direction which would allow us to interact more creatively with the industry protagonists: sales, producers, distributors and so on. Popular doesn’t mean populist. All the great filmmakers have been popular filmmakers. From John Ford to Fellini, you name it. That’s the idea: to broaden the appeal of the Festival, and to try to attract players that do not think of themselves as Locarno material.

The message is: come to Locarno, we’re open for business!

VF – Let’s talk about British cinema in Locarno. Please share with us the biggest achievements/ highlights or even curious anecdotes since you joined?

GN – I pay very precise attention to the British film production. Maybe you are familiar with what I did in Venice for years at helm of the Critics’ Week. I am in a constant conversation with people in the UK. I have already scheduled meetings with key players this year. I am extremely interested in upcoming British talent.

VF – Brexit has now come to fruition. Will that affect the relation between British and European cinema? Are there lessons to be learnt from Swiss cinema, which has thrived outside the EU?

GN – Oh my God. Look, there is absolutely nothing to learn from Brexit. Brexit was a scam brought forward by Nigel Farage and his stooges.With regards to Brexit, I stand with Elton John. The UK was one of the strongest partners and voices in the EU. As usual, it’s always the fault of the dirty foreigners! Don’t get me started.

The Swiss confederation has a completely different attitude, and the situation is not comparable. Switzerland is still cooperating with its neighbouring countries. We speak the languages on Italy, France and Germany. And we have our own language. The situation in Switzerland is fully integrated into a wider European context, with its own identity.

VF – When you say European, do you mean “EU”?

GN – Look, I’m Italian. I was born Switzerland, and I have now lived in Switzerland for 14 years. Switzerland is a cosmopolitan reality.

VF – What’s your message to both nascent and established filmmakers who want to take part in Locarno 2021?

GN – The doors are open. Send us your films!

VF – Do you have any uplifting and inspiriting messages to struggling filmmakers who have not managed to complete their film due to the pandemic?

GN – Last year we did the programme The Films After Tomorrow. We did not have a physical festival the way we wanted, but we put this programme in place, with a competition for films that needed to needed to be finished, and required financial support. So we already put programmes and strategies in place in order to support struggling filmmakers. This year, we are looking at other support instruments that we can put implement in order to help people who are going through very rough times.

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The Locarno Film Festival will take place for 11 days, between August 4th and 14th. DMovies will cover the event in loco and exclusively for you.

A Voluntary Year (Das Freiwillige Jahr)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM LOCARNO

A tale of adolescent indecisiveness, fatherly overbearance and the inability to communicate, A Voluntary Year is a painful, funny and slyly profound work. Spinning gold from the most basic of premises, it is also another fine addition to the “German awkwardness canon” (a phrase I coined myself).

In recent years, ranging from Maren Ade films such as Everyone Else (2009) and Toni Erdmann (2016), running through to elements of I Was At Home, But (Angela Schanelec, 2019) and The Ground Beneath My Feet (Marie Kreutzer, 2019), German-Language directors have been particularly adroit at mining social awkwardness and communicational failures for bitterly dark comic effect. A Voluntary Year follows in this recent, rich vein, creating moments of genuine comedy from relatable, personal failures. They work because no one acts like they are in a comedy. By treating everyone’s issues very seriously, the comic beats land harder, making you laugh while you cringe.

It starts on the way to the airport. Urs (Sebastian Rudolph) is driving his daughter Jette (Maj-Britt Klenke) there so she can take a flight to Costa Rica, where she will spend a gap year in a hospital. She looks less than pleased, still roiling from the breakup with her boyfriend Mario (Thomas Schubert) and nervous about what this future halfway across the world will bring. Not that her father notices. He thinks she’ll have a wonderful time.

A Voluntary Year

“You can’t please everyone all the time,” Urs lectures his unsure daughter, all the while showing how disastrous it is trying to be an expert on everything. An early scene involving a changed lock quickly establishes Urs as an unreliable father; panicking over nothing instead of taking the time to think rationally. Meanwhile Mario turns up to say goodbye, throwing her central conflict into sharp relief. Perhaps she won’t catch that flight after all?

In the hands of a less confident director, these personal issues would’ve been more obviously telegraphed through endless backstories. This limited viewpoint works wonders for the film, which is all about how the desires we project onto others affects our own lives. The flight to Costa Rica is the central metaphor here, seen by Urs as an escape from small town life and by Jette as a great plunge into the unknown away from Mario. The conventional script of teenage escape versus parental provincialism is flipped, the film expertly blurring the lines between the generations.

Sebastian Rudolph does fine work as the hubris-laden father, fully chewing into a screenplay that allows him to be arrogant, stupid, naive and caring all at the same time. Whether it’s his strained relationship with his brother, his joyless affair with his married secretary, or his negative attitude towards his own patients at the clinic, he cannot seem to maintain a truly wholesome relationship with anyone. He’s not a stereotypically bad person, yet his myopic viewpoint — stressed by the film’s use of limited perspective — blinds him to the real issues at hand. Klenke is equally game, flitting endlessly between rash decision-making and indecisiveness, sometimes in the same scene, showing that even if father and daughter have different viewpoints in life, they deal with their issues in often the same way.

Ulrich Köhler keeps the viewpoints close, never cross-cutting, only following characters from one point to another if they have met in the same space. This is a particular effective technique as it truly lays bare how easily miscommunication can happen. Taking place over only a couple of days, A Voluntary Year provides a convincing snapshot of German provincialism. Complemented by overcast skies, sodden fields and barren woods, A Voluntary Year makes a good case for escaping the complications of small town living, but only if you can escape yourself first.

No release date has been set yet for A Voluntary Year, which debuted in the Concorso internazionale at Locarno, but expect a warm release in Köhler’s native Germany.

Our dirty picks from the upcoming Locarno Film Festival

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

The last major film festival of the summer season before Oscar hype ramps up in the autumn, Locarno’s reputation is built upon its eclectic and unconventional programme. Its standout cinema is the Piazza Grande — with over 8,000 available seats, it’s the largest outdoor screen in the world (pictured below) — which crucially means that queueing is a lot less stressful than during Venice or Cannes. This year’s Festival, curated for the first time by Lili Hinstin since Carlo Chatrian moved to the Berlinale, might be low on the big names, but nonetheless offers an exciting, experimental and challenging line-up. From the Moving Ahead section, focusing on cinema’s most obscure edges to the retrospective Shades of Black — celebrating black cinema in all its forms — this year’s Festival champions that which is daring, different and auteur-driven. The event takes place from August 7th to the 17th.

Here are the 10 films we are most excited for!

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1. 7500 (Patrick Vollrath):

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a great knack for taking traditional genre fare and turning it into something that seems vital. He stars in 7500 as a young pilot tasked with negotiating with plane hijackers. Given that this premise is one of the most overcrowded of micro-genres, it will be interesting to see if 7500 — referring to the code pilots use in the event of a hijacking — can rise above its predecessors into something truly worthwhile. The claustrophobic clips released so far suggest a rather minimalist and claustrophobic approach, requiring Gordon-Levitt to really step up and carry the film all by himself.

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2. Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino):

Easily the most anticipated film at the festival, Tarantino’s ninth film sees the postmodern auteur return to the LA locale of his first three films. Received to rapturous applause at Cannes, this Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt-starring lament for a passing age of Hollywood, set against the backdrop of the Manson Murders, has been touted by some as a return to form following the middling The Hateful Eight (2015). Known for provoking endless discussion, it will be fascinating to see how he tackles the horrendous Manson murders and makes it entertaining and meaningful.

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3. Days of The Bagnold Summer (Simon Bird):

Yes, its Will from The Inbetweeners (2008-2010) with his debut film playing in competition at a major international film festival! Days of the Bagnold Summer, adapted from the graphic novel by Joff Winterhart, looks like a classic coming-of-age tale, telling the story of a young heavy-metal loving teen who is forced to spend his holiday’s with his annoying mother. Featuring an airy Belle and Sebastian soundtrack, and performances from Tamsin Greig, Rob Brydon and Earl Cave, it seems to be another thoughtful addition to the British oddball teen canon.

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4. Space Dogs (Elisa Kremser, Levin Peter):

Laika was the first living creature to ever be sent into space by the Soviet Union, dying in the name of scientific progress. Legends say that the dog returned to earth and lives among the streets of Moscow as a ghost. Experimental documentary Space Dogs looks to be an unconventional look at animal-human relations, and how progress can easily come at a cost to the earth’s most friendly animals. Interestingly enough, this film comes with a content warning while the inevitably violent Once Upon A Time In Hollywood doesn’t. Dog lovers beware!

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5. Maradona (Asif Kapadia):

Asif Kapadia has established himself as one of the best profilers in the documentary business with character portraits of legends such as Amy Whinehouse (Amy, 2015) and Brazilian F1 Driver Artyon Senna (Senna, 2010). For his latest work, he turns to arguably the greatest footballer of all time, Diego Maradona, utilising an extraordinary 500 hours of unused footage to go deep on his mythical stature. With critics saying that deep knowledge of football is not required to enjoy the movie, it seems that Kapadia has found a way to use Maradona’s tale to enquire into deeper truths regarding the human condition.

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6. Wilcox (dir. Denis Côté):

The preeminent Quebecois auteur Denis Côté’s previous film, Ghost Town Anthology (2019) may have already been released this year after positive buzz at Berlinale, but he’s already back at it again with the experimental film Wilcox. Running only 63 minutes long and featuring no dialogue, it seems Côté is taking his minimalist instincts to a new level; telling the quiet story of a hermit living beyond the normal bounds of society, surviving on his wits alone in the vast countryside.

Wilcox is also pictured at the top of this article.

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7. Echo (Rúnar Rúnarsson):

The most exciting contemporary director to come out of Iceland, Rúnar Rúnarsson tells sensitive, family-focused tales set against the beautiful backdrop of the rugged and barren countryside. Often filmed in grainy 16mm, his body of work does a lot with little dialogue yet strong and evocative gestures. His latest is set during Christmas time, and features only 56 scenes; foregoing a traditional narrative to create an entire portrait of Icelandic society. Judging from his boldly shot trailer, this could perhaps be his best film yet.

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8. The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot):

Already released to highly positive reception in the USA, The Last Black Man in San Francisco makes its debut on European shores. At tale of gentrification that leaves the African-American community of San Francisco behind, it has been touted as a highly lyrical and dreamlike depiction of a city that has changed beyond measure. It stars Jimmie Falls playing a version of himself, attempting to reclaim his childhood home built by his grandfather. Picked up by A24, currently the hottest independent film studio in the USA, it’ll be interesting to see how it plays over the pond.

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9. A Voluntary Year (Ulrich Köhler):

The Berlin school — comprised of directors such as Christian Petzold and Angela Schanelec — have been making serious waves on the arthouse scene recently, from Berlinale to beyond. Ulrich Köhler may not specifically be from Berlin, but his work — bold, uncompromising and completely its own — fits the ticket exactly. His last film, In My Room (2018) took a wistful look at the end of the world, while the upcoming A Voluntary Year tells the story of a girl taking a gap year volunteering abroad, possibility separating her from her father. It’ll be fascinating to see what Köhler does with the topic here.

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10. To The Ends of the Earth (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa):

An Uzbekistan-Japan co-production, To The End of The Earth is a clash of civilisations story; depicting a young Japanese woman’s travels to the central Asian country to film the latest episode of her travel show. Here she has the bizarre aim of capturing a legendary fish; once again showing Kurosawa’s love of blending genres together, mixing together comedy, thriller and romance for good effect. The closing film of the festival, it’ll be the second Kurosawa film to premiere at Locarno after Real (2013).

DMovies critic Redmond Bacon will be at the festival. Follow DMovies for our exclusive coverage of the event!