It was widely accepted, before the festival even began, that the Locarno Film Festival 2024 would be marked by change, due to Maja Hoffmann taking over as President after the two-decade tenure of Marco Solari.
And while the event itself didn’t stray too far from the usual proceedings, Hoffmann did hint at major future developments, with the suggestion that perhaps Locarno could move its dates from its usual August slot to a different window (presumably mid-July). The topic will be up for discussion in the coming months, although, as explained to local media by Vice President Luigi Pedrazzini, any such shift would not be implemented before 2028.
One transformation has already occurred, with some grumblings from Swiss press on social media. It is the disproportionate predominance of English across all communication channels, including the festival’s in-house daily magazine, the newly rebranded Pardo. While this certainly highlights the event’s international nature, Locarno’s success is also deeply rooted in local Ticinese culture, along with the use of the national languages like Italian and, to some extent, French, whose apparent sidelining is a justifiable cause for concern.
And yet, despite the linguistic imbalance, when it came to the films themselves, English was largely absent from the official selection, with a notable lack of big American studio releases in Piazza Grande. Presumably this was a dual side effect of last year’s strikes and an unfavorable release calendar, as the Hollywood giants are famously reluctant to use the Piazza for world premieres. In the end, there was more independent fare in the competitions. As the artistic director Giona Nazzaro explained in interviews, it’s hard to get smaller American movies to debut in the competitive sections when Sundance exists.
Then again, the Columbia Pictures centenary retrospective, brilliantly curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht, offered everyone the required dose of studio fare, with its 44-title overview of the company’s output during its so-called Golden Age (1929-1959), a healthy mix of classics and underseen gems that filled the seats in the GranRex screening venue on a regular basis. The same venue also hosted a sold-out screening of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, lovingly introduced by its sound designer Ben Burtt, whose name warranted applause during the closing credits.
The main competition included big names and established directors like Hong Sang-soo and Wang Bing, but when it came time for the awards, the official jury was primarily impressed by younger talents. In particular, there was a double whammy coming from Lithuania: the teen model drama/horror Toxic won the Golden Leopard as well as the Best First Feature prize from a separate jury, and the family drama Drowning Dry won Best Director and Best Performance, the latter shared by all four lead actors. The Jury Prize went to Kurdwin Ayub for Mond, highlighting, alongside Toxic’s Saulé Bliuvaité, the vision and skill of a new generation of women in film.
This was also reflected in the public’s response to the Piazza offerings, with the Audience Award going to Reinas, the third feature by Peruvian-born Swiss director Klaudia Reynicke. Latin America was also at the center of the documentary Gaucho Gaucho, which received the inaugural Letterboxd Piazza Grande Award, replacing the previous critics’ prize voted for by Variety reviewers.
Other new initiatives like partnerships with Letterboxd and, since 2020, MUBI advanced the festival’s post-pandemic strategy to connect with cinephiles worldwide, beyond the scope of the eleven days of the even, and giving film buffs a taste of the red carpet from afar.
Some may have scoffed at the idea of having Indian superstar Shah Rukh Khan as a guest of honor, given his relative lack of fame in Switzerland, but the social media videos featuring him were the only ones to consistently have four-figure views, with comments emphasizing how much India’s moviegoing community – one of the largest in the world – was enjoying the attention from an A-list festival of Locarno’s caliber.
Of course, for all the festival’s online expansion, the key element remained the shared cinematic experience on the ground. The final press release mentioned an increase in attendance compared to 2023, suggesting the festival is progressively regaining the viewers it lost during the global health crisis (the Piazza alone had a 23% increase during the first week). In spite of all the changes, including the opening animation featuring the leopard mascot, Locarno regulars and newcomers all agree with what has become the event’s official motto in the Nazzaro era: Cinema Forever.
