On Monday 7 August 2017, Electric Sheep‘s Managing Editor Pamela Jahn, Allan Hunter (Screen International) and Boyd van Hoeij (The Hollywood Reporter) took part in a panel of international film journalists to discuss five Swiss productions in this year’s Locarno Festival programme with SWISS FILMS director Catherine Ann Berger. The films included:
The line-up for the 70th Locarno Festival promises a range of excting home-grown films amongst some big hitters and some hidden gems.
Electric Sheep will be at the Locarno Film Festival for the first time this year, and with its 16 title-strong Piazza Grande features and 11 world premieres, the 70th edition of the festival promises to be intriguing, fun and hugely exciting.
Opening tonight with Tomorrow and Every Other Day directed by Noemie Lvovsky, the Locarno competition line-up usually focuses on content rather than big names and this year is no exception. We are particularly looking forward to the new film by John Carroll Lynch, Lucky, starring Hary Dean Stanton and David Lynch, and other promising works by exciting new and established filmmakers such as Aaron Katz ( Gemini) and Jim McKay (En el Séptimo Día), Swiss director Dominik Locher ( Goliath, Quebec –based Denis Côté (A Skin So Soft), French auteur Serge Bozon ( Madame Hyde, starring Isabelle Huppert), Romanian director Andrei Cretulescu (Charlston) and Travis Wilkerson, whose latest work Did You Wonder Who Fired The Gun concerns a crime that has haunted his personal life since his childhood.
The Piazza Grande films in this 70th anniversary edition include Atomic Blonde with Charlize Theron, Cannes festival hit Good Time starring Robert Pattinson, Kumail Nanjiani’s refreshingly unusual romantic comedy The Big Sick, What Happened to Monday? with Glenn Close, Willem Dafoe and Noomi rapace, and the world premiere of Anup Singh’s The Song of Scorpions, starring Irrfan Khan, who will be one of the festival’s special guests this year.
Actor and director Mathieu Kassovitz, who stars in Samuel Jouy’s debut feature Sparring, will receive the festival’s 2017 excellence award, while Nastassja Kinski will be honoured with a lifetime achievement award and Adrien Brody will receive the honorary 2017 Leopard Club award.
The festival’s retrospective is dedicated to B-movie legend Jacques Tourneur (1904 – 1977), whose 1943 classic I Walked With A Zombie also plays in the Piazza Grande section.
Check out the line-up below, along with our reviews where available.
PIAZZA GRANDE Stories of Love That Cannot Belong to This World, Francesca Comencini, Italy Atomic Blonde, David Leitch, U.S. Chien, Samuel Benchetrit, France Tomorrow and Thereafter, Noemie Lvovsky, France Three Peaks, Jan Zabeil, Germany, Italy Good Time, Josh and Ben Safdie, U.S. Gotthard – One Life, One Soul, Kevin Merz, Italy I Walked With a Zombie, Jacques Tourneur, U.S. Iceman, Feliz Randau, Germany, Italy, Austria Let The Corpses Tan, Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani, Belgium, France Lola Pater, Nadir Mokneche, France Sicilia!, Jean-Marie Straub, Italy, France, Germany Sparring, Samuel Jouy, France The Big Sick, Michael Showalter, U.S. The Song of Scorpions, Anup Singh, Switzerland, France What Happened to Monday, Tommy Wirkola, U.K.
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION 9 Doigts, F.J. Ossang, France, Portugal Good Manners, Juliana Rojas & Marco Dutra, Brazil Charleston, Andrei Cretulescu, France, Romania Did You Wonder Who Fired The Gun, Travis Wilkerson, U.S. Freedom, Jan Speckenbach, Germany Gemini, Aaron Katz, U.S. Gli Asteroidi, Germano Maccioni, Italy Goliath, Dominik Locher, Switzerland Good Luck, Ben Russell, France, Germania La Telenovela Errante, Raul Ruiz, Chile Lucky, John Carroll Lynch, U.S. Madame Hyde, Serge Bozon, France Mrs. Fang, Wang Bing, China, Germany Dragonfly Eyes, Xu Bing, Cina A Skin So Soft, Denis Cote, Canada Winter Brothers, Hlynur Palmason, Denmark, Iceland Wajib, Annemarie Jacir, Palestine, France En el Séptimo Día (On the Seventh Day), Jim McKay, U.S.
For more Information about this year’s programme visit the Locarno website.
On Monday 7 August 2017, Electric Sheep‘s Managing Editor Pamela Jahn, Allan Hunter (Screen International) and Boyd van Hoeij (The Hollywood Reporter) took part in a panel of international film journalists to discuss five Swiss productions in this year’s Locarno Festival programme with SWISS FILMS director Catherine Ann Berger. The films included: