70th Festival Locarno

At the 70th Festival Locarno the awards have been decided. The Ecumenical Jury awarded its Prize to the American competition entry "Lucky" by John Carroll Lynch with Harry Dean Stanton in the eponymous role. In addition, the jury awraded two Commendations. The international festival jury headed by French director Olivier Assayas awarded the Golden Leopard to the Chinese film "Mrs. Fang", directed by Wang Bing. The Special Jury Prize was awarded to "As boas maniera" (Good Manners) from Brazil, directed by Juliane Rojas. F. J. Ossang from France won the award for Best Direction for his "9 doigts" (9 Fingers). The Prize of the international film critics (Fipresci) went to "Qing Ting zhi yan" (Dragonfly Eyes), directed by Xu Bing  The film also won a Commendation by the Ecumenical Jury. 

At its 70th anniversary, the Festival del film Locarno has been renamed. Briefly, it is the Locarno Festival from now on. 18 entries in the international competition rivaled for the Golden Leopard and other awards, the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury among them. The festival introduced innovations like two new theatres, "Locarno Talks", a space for conversations about cinema, and a section for young audineces, "Locarno Kids". The retrospective was devoted to Jacques Tourneur, one of the famous protagonists of film noir. The Pardo d'onore (Leopard of Honour) has been awarded to Jean-Marie Straub, a great individualist and modernist of cinema. The festival screened twelve of his films, among others one of his early shorts, "Der Bräutigam, die Komödiantin und der Zuhälter (The Bridegroom, the Actress and the Pimp, 1968), "Dalla nube alla resistanza" (From the Clouds to the Resistance, 1979), or "Klassenverhältnisse" (Class Relations, 1984), an adaptation of Kafka's unfinished novel Amerika. The opening film screened on the Piazza Grande on August 2nd was Noémy Lvovsky's "Demain et tout les autres jours" (Today and all the other days).

Link: Festival website