Laura Ferrés’ “El Auge Del Humano 3” to Have Its World Premiere at Locarno Film Festival

Laura Ferrés’ latest project will have its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival.

The 34-year-old Spanish filmmaker’s La Image Permanent is among the titles that have been added to the international competition for the upcoming 76th edition of the festival, running August 2 and 12.

Laura FerrésThe film will contend for the festival’s Golden Leopard award.

El Auge Del Humano 3, from director Eduardo Williams, will also compete at the festival in its world premiere.

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

Another 15 titles by emerging directors will play in the festival’s Filmmakers of The Present competition, including Mexican director Mauricio Calderón Rico’s Todos Los Incendios, Spanish director Colectivo Negu’s Negu Hurbilak and María Gisèle Royo and Julia de Castro’s On The Go.

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.”

Here’s a complete list of the films set to be featured at the festival:

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

Albert Serra Developing Bullfighting Documentary “Afternoons of Solitude”

Albert Serra is in a (bull)fighting mood…

The 47-year-old Spanish independent filmmaker plans to follow up his 2022 breakout film Pacifiction with Afternoons of Solitude, an impressionistic documentary that’ll explore bullfighting from the tormented perspective of the man in the ring.

Albert SerraBullfighting is one of the most excessive examples of the primitive origins of Southern European civilization,” Serra says of his longtime passion project. “It has a kind of showmanship on the edge of being art, and I like that idea. I like the violence of it. I like the pressure.”

“The film is about the spiritual pain of the torero,” he continues. “Of course we know about the animals’ suffering, but the humans involved suffer as well. I’m more focused on that than on the social debate about the practice.”

Produced by Serra’s longtime partners Luís Ferrón, Montse Triola and Pierre-Olivier Barde through their Andergraun Films banner, Afternoons of Solitude quietly began shooting last summer, and will pick up again in Seville, among other bullfighting meccas, once the season begins come spring.

Though Serra and crew will continue shooting through to fall, don’t expect the doc – which will recreate a series of acute mental states – to follow any kind of conventional production schedule.

“This is not a documentary where we follow the subjects for three days here and 10 days there, and then again three months later,” Serra says of his particular brand of slow cinema. “Instead, I want to be present, in the moment, living something unique while being able to manipulate, in a good sense, those feelings that intensify over this short period of time.”

“For me, this is where fantasy and fiction can evolve into something else,” he adds. “When you spend your time simply following people, it’s difficult to create that kind of fantasy, this kind of engagement. And I want to evolve the subject toward something very rough and wild and real. It’s a performance, after all.”

2022 proved to be something of a banner year for the Catalan auteur, who cracked the Cannes Film Festival competition for the first time, and later won France’s most prestigious film trophy, the Prix Louis-Delluc. Now banking on that greater renown, Serra is developing an English-language feature with international partners.

If many firm details remain distant and undefined (“My inspiration comes from being on set,” says Serra), the filmmaker envisions an English-language project with the same scope as Pacifiction and the same singular sensibility. “I will not renounce any elements of my style,” he promises. “And anyway, the new producers don’t want me to!”

Serra’s credits also include Story of My Death (2013), winner of the Golden Leopard at Locarno, Last Days of Louis XIV (2016), which won a Lumiere Award for best actor for Jean-Pierre Léaud, and Liberty (2019), which won the Special Jury Prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section.

Dominga Sotomayor to Write & Direct “Niebla”

Dominga Sotomayor has locked up her next project…

The 36-year-old Chilean filmmaker, one of the directors on Neon’s anthology movie The Year of the Everlasting Storm, will write and direct Niebla for RT Features’ Rodrigo Teixeira.

Dominga Sotomayor

The film takes place on a cruise ship heading towards a distant nondescript coastline. In the middle of the ocean, the large and eclectic group of international passengers, all seem to be escaping their own realities. Among them Julia, a 35-year-old woman who won the cruise as a raffle prize at work, embarks on what she believes to be a simple vacation and finds herself stuck in a physical and emotional purgatory.

Teixeira and Lourenço Sant’Anna will produce with Alan Terpins executive producing.

The project is planning to shoot next year.

Sotomayor previously directed Too Late to Die, which won Locarno’s Golden Leopard for Best Direction in 2018, making Sotomayor the first woman to win that prize.

“A Febre” Star Regis Myrupu Wins Best Actor Prize at Locarno Film Festival in Acting Debut

Regis Myrupu is making a memorable debut…

The Brazilian actor was named Best Actor at this year’s Locarno Film Festival for his beautifully understated performance as a security guard at Manaus Harbor in Brazilian filmmaker Maya Da-Rin’s The Fever.

A Febre Maya Da-Rin

“I never thought this would happen,” said Myrupu of his win for his performance in the film, which earned Da-Rin the FIPRESCI Prize.

Carlos Lenintook home the Peace Hotel Award for his film La Paloma y El Lobo. The 36-year-old Mexican filmmaker’s earned the award for his “future promise in world cinema.”

The international jury was headed by French filmmaker and novelist Catherine Breillat.

TheGolden Leopard, the Locarno Film Festival’s top honor, went to Portuguese directorPedro Costa, for his latest feature Vitalina Varelawhich had its world premiere in the Swiss festival’s international competition.

The 2020 Locarno Film Festival will be from August 5-15.

This year’s winners are below:

International competition

Golden Leopard: Vitalina Varela by Pedro Costa, Portugal
Special Jury Prize: Pa-Go (Height Of The Wave) by Park Jung-Bum, South Korea
Leopard For Best Direction: Damien Manivel for Les Enfants D’isadora, France/South Korea
Leopard For Best Actress: Vitalina Varela for Vitalina Varela by Pedro Costa, Portugal
Leopard For Best Actor: Regis Myrupu for A Febre by Maya Da-Rin, Brazil/France/Germany
Special Mentions: Hiruk-Pikuk Si Al-Kisah (The Science Of Fictions) by Yosep Anggi Noen, Indonesia/Malaysia/France, Maternal by Maura Delpero, Italy/Argentina

Filmmakers Of The Present Competition

Cineasti Del Presente Golden Leopard: Baamum Nafi (Nafi’s Father) by Mamadou Dia, Senegal
Best Emerging Director Award: 143 Rue Du Désert by Hassen Ferhani, Algeria/France/Qatar
Special Jury Prize: Ivana Cea Groaznica (Ivana The Terrible) by Ivana Mladenović, Romania/Serbia
Special Mention: Here For Life by Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Adrian Jackson, United Kingdom

Moving Ahead

Moving Ahead Award: The Giverny Document (Single Channel) by Ja’tovia M. Gary, Usa/France
Special Mentions: Those That, At A Distance, Resemble Another by Jessica Sarah Rinland, United Kingdom/Argentina/Spain, Shān Zhī Běi (Osmosis) by Zhou Tao.

First Feature

First Feature Award: Baamum Nafi (Nafi’s Father) by Mamadou Dia, Senegal
Peace Hotel Award: La Paloma Y El Lobo (The Dove And The Wolf) by Carlos Lenin, Mexico
Special Mentions: Instinct by Halina Reijn, Netherlands, Fi Al-Thawra (During Revolution) by Maya Khoury, Syria/Sweden

Leopards Of Tomorrow – International Competition

Pardino D’oro For The Best International Short Film: Siyah Güneş (Black Sun) by Arda Çiltepe, Turkey/Germany (Locarno Short Film Nominee For The European Film Awards 2019)
Pardino D’argento: Umbilical by Danski Tang, Usa
Pardi Di Domani Best Direction Prize: Otpusk (Leave Of Absence) by Anton Sazonov, Russia
Premio Medien Patent Verwaltung Ag Prize: White Afro by Akosua Adoma Owusu, Ghana/USA

Leopards Of Tomorrow – National Competition

Pardino D’oro For The Best Swiss Short Film: Mama Rosa by Dejan Barac, Switzerland
Pardino D’argento Swiss Life: Tempête Silencieuse by Anaïs Moog, Switzerland
Best Swiss Newcomer Prize: Terminal by Kim Allamand, Switzerland
Piazza Grande Award: Instinct by Halina Reijn, Netherlands

Other awards

Ecumenical Jury Prize: Maternal by Maura Delpero, Italy/Argenti
Special Mention: Vitalina Varela by Pedro Costa, Portugal
FIPRESCI Prize: A Febre by Maya Da-Rin, Brazil/France/Germany
Europa Cinemas Label: Maternal by Maura Delpero, Italy/Argentina