For the films that we saw at the Locarno Film Festival, the answer is clear: we wish them to land in cinema theatres soon. #BacktoCinema has been an important campaign of the festival!

A question mark
 
Concerning the evolution of the festival under the artistic direction of Giona A. Nazzaro, we cannot avoid noticing the disappearing of the artistic and avant-gardist section «Signs of Life», and observe the impressive presence of genre-cinema. More blood, more ghosts, more naked women (to quote from our article on swissinfo.ch) – and Nazzaro insisting on a popular commitment of the festival and on having fun at the cinema: is this the new entertainment identity of the Locarno Film Festival?
Why not – one could say. Actually, and hopefully, the 2021 edition of the festival has still hosted many films that perfectly match the joy of discovery and challenging experiences – which have always been “obvious” values in Locarno.

FILMEXPLORER's commitment

Those films have motivated us to propose an extremely generous production of 25 articles on FILMEXPLORER: they will show how we imagine the future of the Locarno Film Festival: a Swiss and international crossroads for films that express, and people that like, a cinema beyond the commercial constraints of entertainment.

 

 

A true discovery and a challenging experience are, respectively, the two films that we could discuss with their creators:

 

 
Public Toilet Africa, by Kofi Ofusu-Yeboah
INTERVIEW with Kofi Ofusu-Yeboah (coming soon)
Luzifer, by Peter Brunner
INTERVIEW with Peter Brunner and Franz Rogowsky
 

It is the 4^th year that FILMEXPLORER has been happy to collaborate with the Locarno Critics Academy. Thank you to Christopher Small and the young critics Cassiane Pfund, Mariana Queen, Karin Taglang, Alan Mattli, and Calin Boto for their texts and the participation in our podcast interview and…
 

...which has now developed through the creative expertise of Jeannette Wolf.
Here are 4 spontaneous discussions coming out of the cinema theatre:

 

Gerda, by Natalya Kudryashova
Actual People, by Kit Zauhar
Petite Solange, by Axelle Ropert
The Balcony Movie, by Pawel Lozinski
 

In an edition of the festival that has completely excluded documentary films, the outstanding selection of the Semaine de la critique has emerged as strong as ever.
Together with Pawel Lozinski’s The Balcony Movie, here are the other films that FILMEXPLORER has discussed:

The Bad Man, by Lee Yong-Chao
A Thousand Fires, by Saeed Taji Farouky
How to Kill a Cloud, by Tujia Haltunnen
 
To continue with documentary films, here are two discoveries from the section Panorama Suisse:
 

 
Apenas el sol, by Arami Ullón
Taming the Garden, by Salomé Jashi