Marco Solari: Last News

Climate change activists briefly halted the Locarno Film Festival’s honorary awards ceremony for environmentalist and documentarian Luc Jacquet on Monday evening.Jacquet, who won the Best Documentary Oscar in 2006 for The March Of The Penguins, was being feted with the Locarno Kids Award, followed by a screening of his new film Magnetic Continent in front of a 7,000-strong crowd on the festival’s landmark Piazza Grande.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Locarno Film Festival has formed an advisory board for its industry side and recruited a roster of top indie industry figures including former Amazon Studios film executive Ted Hope, Bobby Allen, who is senior VP of content at Mubi, and former European Film Market chief Beki Probst as members. Locarno’s industry advisory board will be headed by Nadia Dresti, the former head of the prominent Swiss indie cinema event’s market side who has been with Locarno intermittently for roughly 30 years with an interlude for a few years as head of marketing for Fox Switzerland.

Veteran producer Ted Hope and former European Film Market head Beki Probst have been named as members of the Locarno Film Festival’s new industry advisor board.

Maja Hoffmann has been officially confirmed as President of the Locarno Film Festival following a vote at an Extraordinary General Assembly on Wednesday.

As the first major international film festival mounted following SAG-AFTRTA’s decision to join the WGA in strike action against the studios, there was much speculation about how the Locarno Film Festival would adapt its lineup. 

Anna Marie de la Fuente Switzerland’s preeminent Locarno Film Festival has tapped arts patron Maja Hoffmann, founder of the LUMA Foundation, to be its first female president in its 70-plus years of existence. The festival’s Board of Directors unanimously approved Hoffmann to succeed Marco Solari who has held the position for more than two decades.

The 76th edition of the Locarno Film Festival will close with a screening of the Sundance Competiton pic Shayda attended by the film’s star Zar Amir Ebrahimi (Holy Spider) and Exec Producer Cate Blanchett.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Cate Blanchett and Zar Amir Ebrahimi are set to attend the Locarno Film Festival’s closing night to promote the European launch of Iranian-Australian director Noora Niasari’s debut film “Shayda.” Blanchett is an executive producer on the drama, which world premiered at Sundance and scored the Utah festival’s audience award. “Shayda” stars Ebrahimi – who broke out last year as a Cannes prizewinner for her role in “Holy Spider” – as a domestic violence survivor during the ’90s in Australia who demands a free life on her own terms, away from the shadow of her abusive husband. Variety critic Tomris Laffly in her review praised Ebrahimi’s turn in “Shayda” as a “quietly commanding performance” and underlined the film’s “unmistakably feminine spirit of perseverance, one that runs wild and free in this promising debut.”

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Locarno Film Festival is switching to gender-neutral categories starting from next year’s 2023 edition. The prominent Swiss fest dedicated to global indie cinema is following in the footsteps of the Berlin Film Festival, which in 2021 awarded its first gender neutral acting prize. Unlike Berlin, however, Locarno will hand out two gender-neutral prizes for best performance in both the fest’s main competition and its Cineasti del Presente competition for first and second works. When Berlin did away with awards for the best actor and actress it subbed them with single gender neutral prizes for best leading performance and best supporting performance.

The Locarno film festival will shift to gender-neutral acting categories with its 76th edition set to run August 2-12, 2023.