Riz Ahmed To Be Feted By Locarno; Swiss Summer Fest Unveils Full Line-Up With Competition Slots For Quentin Dupieux, Lav Diaz & Sofia Exarchou

Melanie Goodfellow
·5 min read
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UK star Riz Ahmed will be feted with a career achievement award at the upcoming 76th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, running August 2 and 12.

The Sound Of Metal actor will be presented with the Excellence Award Davide Campari at the opening night ceremony on the festival’s landmark Piazza Grande open-air cinema.

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The ceremony will premiere Yann Mounir Demange’s semi-autobiographical short film Dammi, in which Ahmed participated alongside Isabelle Adjani, Souheila Yacoub, Sandor Funtek and Suzy Bemba.

The tribute will also screen Bassam Tariq’s 2020 rapper drama Mughal Mowgli, which Ahmed starred in and also produced and co-wrote, as part of it program.

Locarno announced the tribute during its announcement on Wednesday of its full 2023 line-up.

French directorial duo Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel’s The Falling Star will open the festival as part of the Piazza Grande program, which also features Justine Triet’s 2023 Cannes d’Or Winner Anatomy of a Fall, Ken Loach’s Palme d’Or contender The Old Oak and the world premiere of Luc Jacquet’s Antarctica Calling.

The festival’s main International Competition will showcase 17 films this year, 16 of them world premieres.

Golden Leopard contenders include French director Quentin Dupieux’s secretly-shot film Yannick, which will be released simultaneously in France; Filipino director Lav Diaz’s Essential Truths Of The Lake and Greek director Sofia Exarchou’s Animal, her second film after San Sebastian New Directors Award winner Park.

Another 15 titles by emerging directors will play in the festival’s Filmmakers of The Present Competition (Concorso Cineasti del presente), including Singaporean filmmaker Nelson Yeo’s Dreaming And Dying, U.S. director Lucy Kerr’s Family Portrait and Mexican director Mauricio Calderón Rico’s Todos Los Incendios.

Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro said the selection offered a dialogue-provoking snap-shot of the world today.

“While recent events certainly do not leave much room for optimism, cinema helps us to imagine – literally “put into images” – a possibility of the world,” he said, in a written statement on the selection.

“For this reason, while being aware of the historical moment in which our work has plunged, we have searched and looked in many directions, trying to grasp the meaning of a present that, despite everything, offers itself rich and exciting. A moment that we have attempted to grasp and recount by dialoguing with the films we have selected.”

International Competition Titles

Animal
Dir. Sofia Exarchou
Greece/Austria/Romania/Cyprus/Bulgaria
World premiere

Baan (Home) (Portugal)
Dir. Leonor Teles
Portugal
World premiere, First Feature

El Auge Del Humano 3
Dir. Eduardo Williams
Argentina/Portugal/Netherlands/Taiwan/Brazil/Hong Kong/Sri Lanka/ Peru)
World premiere

Essential Truths Of The Lake
Dir. Lav Diaz
Philippines/France/Portugal/Singapore/Italy/Switzerland/United Kingdom
World premiere

La Image Permanent (The Permanent Picture)
Dir. Laura Ferrés
France/Spain
World premiere, First Feature

Lousy Carter
Dir. Bob Byington
US
World premiere

Manga d’Terra (Switzerland/Portugal)
Dir.Basil Da Cunha
Switzerland/Portugal
World premiere

Mantagheye Bohrani (Critical Zone)
DirAli Ahmadzadeh
Iran/Germany
World premiere

Nähtamatu Võitlus (The Invisible Fight)
Dir. Rainer Sarnet
Estonia/Latvia/Greece/Finland
World premiere

Nuit Obscure – Au Revoir Ici, N’Importe Où
Dir. Sylvain George
France/Switzerland
World premiere

Nu Aștepta Prea Mult De La Sfârșitul Lumii (Do Not Expect Too Much Of The End Of The World)
Dir. Radu Jude
Romania/Luxembourg/France/Croatia
World premiere

Patagonia
Dir. Simone Bozzelli
Italy
World premiere, First Feature

Rossosperanza
Dir. Annarita Zambrano
Italy/France
World premiere

Stepne
Dir.Maryna Vroda
Ukraine/Germany/Poland/Slovakia
World premiere, First Feature

Sweet dreams
Dir. Ena Sendijarević
Netherlands/Sweden/Indonesia/Réunion – 2023
World premiere

The Vanishing Soldier
Dir.Dani Rosenberg
Israel
World premiere

Yannick
Dir. Quentin Dupieux
France
International premiere

Piazza Grande Line-up

Anatomy Of A Fall
Dir. Justine Triet
France

Antarctica Calling (Continent Magnétique)
Dir. Luc Jacquet
France
World premiere

Guardians of the Formula (Čuvari Formule)
Dir. Dragan Bjelogrlić
Serbia/Slovenia/Montenegro/North Macedonia
World premiere

Dammi
Dir. Yann Mounir Demange
France
World premiere

Falling Stars
Dir. Richard Karpala, Gabriel Bienczycki
US
World premiere, First Feature

The Falling Star
Dir. Fiona Gordon, Dominique Abel
France/Belgium
World premiere

The Beautiful Summer
Dir. Laura Luchetti
Italy
World premiere

City of Women (1980)
Dir. by Federico Fellini
Italy/France

La Paloma (1974)
Dir. Daniel Schmid
Switzerland/France

La Voie Royale
Dir. by Frédéric Mermoud
France/Switzerland
World premiere

Smugglers (Milsu)
Dir. RYOO Seung-wan
South Korea
European premiere

Filmmakers of The Present Competition

Camping du Lac
Dir. Eléonore Saintagnan
Belgium/France
World premiere, First Feature

Ein Schöner Ort
Dir. Katharina Huber
Germany
World premiere, First Feature

Excursion (Ekskurzija)
Dir. Una Gunjak
Bosnia-Herzegovina/Croatia/ Serbia/France/Norway/Qatar
World premiere, First Feature

Family Portrait
Dir. Lucy Kerr
USA
World premiere, First Feature

Dreaming & Dying (Hao Jiu Bu Jian)
Dir. Nelson Yeo
Singapore/Indonesia
World premiere, First Feature

La Morsure
Dir. Romain de Saint-Blanquat
France
World premiere, First Feature

Negu Hurbilak
Dir. Colectivo Negu
Spain
World premiere, First Feature

On The Go
Dir. María Gisèle Royo, Julia de Castro
Spain
World premiere, First Feature

Rapture (Rimdogittanga)
Dir. Dominic Sangma
India/China/Switzerland/Netherlands/Qatar
World premiere

Rivière
Dir. Hugues Hariche
Switzerland/France
World premiere, First Feature

Todos Los Incendios
Dir. Mauricio Calderón Rico
Mexico
World premiere, First Feature

Touched
Dir. Claudia Rorarius
Germany
World premiere

Und Dass Man Ohne Täuschung Zu Leben Vermag
Dir. Katharina Lüdin
Germany/Switzerland
World premiere, First Feature

Whispers Of Fire & Water
Dir. Lubdhak Chatterjee
India  
World premiere, First Feature

West Border (Xi Du)
Dir. Yan Luo
ChinaWorld premiere, First Feature

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