The Ecumenical Jury in Locarno 2016 has awarded its Prize to "Godless", the feature film debut by Bulgarian director Ralitza Petrova. She also won the Golden Leopard, the main prize of the festival. The juries choose theier winners from the 17 films of the international competition. The Ecumenical Jury also awarded another first feature film: "Marija" by Michael Koch got a Commendation, as well as "Mister Universo", directed by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel. Both directors won awards by ecumenical juries before, 2009 in Kiev and in Locarno in 2012.
"Political and poetical, visionary and nonconformistic": this is how Carlo Chatrian, artistic director of the Festival del film Locarno, characterized the festival. Its 69th edition he dedicatesd to the directors Michael Cimino and Abbas Kiarostami, both passing away lately. Cimino was honoured by a Pardo d'onore Swisscom in 2015. Kiarostami had his international breakthrough 1989 in Locarno when his "Where is the Friends Home?" won a Bronze Leopard and Special Mentions by the Ecumenical Jury and the FIPRESCI Jury. In his presentation of the festival programme Chatrian, referring to a title of a Kiarostami film, choose the wind as a leitmotif and described the films selected and supported by Locarno as part of a "cinema which carries us away as the wind."
The Festival awarded German actor Mario Adorf with a Pardo alla carriera and Alejandro Jodorowski with a Pardo d'onore Swisscom. The retrospective was dedicated to the "Cinema in the young Federal Republic of Germany" from 1949 to 1963.
Link: Festival-Website
Link: Presentation of the Ecumenical Jury by the Festival