With few changes, the 2021 Locarno Film Festival returns to its usual format despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Unlike last year, the festival will not be a hybrid event with audience participation as well as digital streaming. This year, there are no plans to restrict the size of the audience in the open-air cinema on Piazza Grande square, nor for venues with a capacity of more than 1,000 people.
The only requirement is a certificate attesting to COVID-19 vaccination, recovery or a recent negative PCR test. Smaller venues don’t even require those, because people there still need to wear face masks and keep their distance. The festival in southern Switzerland is one of the most important European film festivals, along with Venice, Cannes and Berlin .
In pre-COVID times, huge crowds were mesmerized at Piazza Grande
The 74th edition of the Locarno Film Festival runs from August 4 to 14, and there will be films galore against the magnificent backdrop of Lake Maggiore. It is Giona A. Nazzaro’s first Locarno festival as director after he took over early this year from Lili Hinstin, who resigned after two years.
Difficult time for cinema
Nazzaro has been in charge of the Critics’ Week at the Venice International Film Festival since 2016 and has been a presenter at Locarno since 2009. As director, he plans to continue the Locarno festival’s tradition of presenting author films. He took over at the helm at a difficult time for cinema: apart from the coronavirus crisis, structural change due to competition from streaming services has been problematic.
Giona A. Nazzar is the festival’s new artistic director
The opening film makes very clear the extent to which cinema is changing and streaming is on the rise — Netflix has the rights to Beckett. The thriller will be available on Netflix before the end of the festival, unheard of in the past.
Beckett tells the story of a US citizen who is hunted down after an accident while on vacation in Greece. John David Washington, the son of Oscar-winner Denzel Washington, plays the lead character. The actor starred in Spike Lee’s Oscar-winning BlacKkKlansman and Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. The film opens the film festival on August 4 in Piazza Grande square.
Competing for a Golden Leopard
No main prize was awarded last year because of the pandemic situation. This year, 17 films are in the running for the Golden Leopard in the international competition, the Concorso Internazionale. Eliza Hittman, the US director who won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2020 for Never Rarely Sometimes Always , heads the jury.
John David Washington and Alicia Vikander star in ‘Beckett’
Fans are looking forward to the Swiss film Soul of a Beast about a teenage father, as well as the Swiss-Austrian-German co-production Monte Verità, about a group of dropouts at the beginning of the 20th century — among them the psychoanalyst Otto Gross and the writer Hermann Hesse. Both films are competing for the top prize along with with Abel Ferrara’s entry, the thriller Zeros and Ones.
The German production Niemand ist bei den Kälbern (No One is with the Calves), based on Alina Herbing’s debut novel of the same name, is vying for the Concorsi Cineasti del presente young talent award. The story is about Christin, who is fed up with country life and dreams of the big city.
The crime story ‘Ida Red,’ starring Melissa Leo, will also be showing in Locarno
Targeting young audiences
For the first time, there is a prize for filmmakers who introduce younger audiences to cinema, the Locarno Kids Award la Mobiliare. The aim is to give children and young people a special place in the festival audience. The first laureate is Mamoru Hosoda, a Japanese animated film director. His new film Belle is about the influence of social networks on the young generation and will premiere on August 9.
‘Belle’ is an animated movie about a 17-year-old student named Suzu
This year’s Locarno festival will not only be about films, but also about the environment, organizers have said. The festival presents the world premiere of Yaya e Lennie — The Walking Liberty , an animated film by Italian director Alessandro Rak about an apocalyptic future where nature has reclaimed the world and humans are trying to establish a new order.
Another animated film showing at Locarno is ‘Yaya e Lennie – The Walking Liberty’
Older films earmarked for honorary awards are also scheduled for screenings on Piazza Grande. They include Heat, a 1995 thriller classic starring Robert de Niro (honorary prize for cinematographer Dante Spinotti) and the 1984 science-fiction hit movie Terminator (honorary prize goes to the producer, Gale Anne Hurd). A film will be shown in the open-air cinema to 8,000 visitors every evening.
Al Pacino and Robert de Niro (right) starred in the 1995 film ‘Heat’
Excellence Award for Laetitia Casta
Two films starring French actress Laetitia Casta will also be screened in Piazza Grande: L’homme fidele (2018) by Louis Garrel and Joann Sfar’s Gainsbourg (2010). Casta, who played Brigitte Bardot in the latter movie, was nominated for a Cesar — the French national film award — for best supporting actress.
Laetitia Casta also attended the Cannes Film Festival in July
Casta is the recipient of the Locarno festival’s Excellence Award, a prize that honors personalities who have left their mark on contemporary cinema. Previous winners include South Korean actor Song Kang-ho, US actors Ethan Hawke and John Malkovich, and Juliette Binoche and Isabelle Huppert from France.
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A photo history of the Berlinale
Stars in a divided city
The Cold War was part of the picture at the Berlinale. Stars coming to the city, such as Italian diva Claudia Cardinale, would often pose in front of the Berlin Wall. A bizarre juxtaposition emerges from these shots, with the grinning glamour of Hollywood set against the backdrop of a divide that caused suffering for many people, not only in Berlin, but on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
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A photo history of the Berlinale
Selfies, stars and fans on the red carpet
Berlin’s film festival has upped the glitz and glamor in recent years, as attested by the timeline of fascinating images on show at the exhibition, “Between the Films — A Photo History of the Berlinale.” Here in 2010, Leonardo DiCaprio thrilled fans on the red carpet by stopping to take a few snapshots. In today’s smartphone era, the camera he’s holding already feels old school.
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A photo history of the Berlinale
Berlin invites the world
In 1955, the Berlinale was held for the fifth time. Great sums were investing in publicity and marketing. Ten years after the end of World War II, the German Federal Republic wanted to show it was culturally anchored in the West. Posters promoting the festival were also widely present in communist East Berlin. World stars such as Peter Ustinov (pictured) contributed to the hype of the event.
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A photo history of the Berlinale
Smiling despite the Cold War
In 1961, the Berlinale was still held at the end of June. While the instability of world politics was most directly felt in Berlin, Willy Brandt, then the city’s mayor and later West German chancellor, was still beaming as he shook hands with Hollywood icon Jayne Mansfield (accompanied by her husband, Mickey Hargitay). Five months later, the construction of the Berlin Wall would start.
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A photo history of the Berlinale
Freezing in the summer?
The Berlinale was also held in 1962, despite the recently constructed Berlin Wall newly dividing the city. Photographer Heinz Köster took this shot of Hollywood star James Stewart in front of the Telefunken-Haus on Ernst-Reuter Square, a skyscraper completed in 1960. Berlin can still be chilly in the summer — at least that’s the impression given by the way the actor is shivering.
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A photo history of the Berlinale
A fresh wind
In the wake of the revolutionary movements of 1968, the Berlin film festival would also be transformed by a leftward shift that celebrated daring, auteur filmmaking. Ten years later, film critic Wolf Donner (pictured center), who took on the direction of the Berlinale in 1976, moved the film festival from June to February, giving it an edge over Cannes, which is held in May.
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A photo history of the Berlinale
Preempting a new era
In 1988, the atmosphere of political change could again be felt in Berlin as Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika policies took hold, with Aleksandr Askoldov's “The Commissar” screening after a long ban in the Soviet Union. Also that year, filmmaker Agnes Varda premiered two films starring Jane Birkin (pictured), the drama “Kung Fu Master” and the docudrama “Jane B. par Agnès V.”
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A photo history of the Berlinale
Back in reunified Berlin
After filming “One Two Three” in West Berlin in 1961 while the Wall was being built, director Billy Wilder returned to the German capital and its film festival over three decades later. He is shown here with Horst Buchholz, the lead actor of his Cold War film, the two standing in the slush in front of the Brandenburg Gate in February, 1993.
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A photo history of the Berlinale
A new millennium on the red carpet
Dieter Kosslick became the festival director in 2001, giving a new impetus to the venerated celebration of film. A promoter of German cinema, he also boosted the level of glamour on the red carpet and brought more color to the festival. He personally accompanied guest stars to their film premieres, and often wore his trademark black hat — as he is pictured here alongside Judi Dench in 2007.
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A photo history of the Berlinale
The festival’s photographers
The “Between the Films – A Photo History of the Berlinale” exhibition — on show at the German Cinematheque in Berlin from September 28, 2018 through May 5, 2019 — is also a tribute to the work of the festival’s press photographers. Erika Rabau, shown here taking a well-earned nap at the 1995 festival, was the Berlinale’s official photographer from 1972 until shorty before her death in 2016.
Author: Jochen Kürten (eg)
This article has been translated from German
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