Artistic director Giona A Nazzaro spoke to us with passion about this 2022 edition of the Locarno Film Festival (3-13 August), about the importance of (re)establishing fruitful dialogue with audiences who have been deprived of essential interactions with the world of the seventh art for too long, and about the focus the festival places on first works.

Cineuropa: How did you approach this 75th edition, post pandemic? What lessons have you learned?
Giona A Nazzaro: We approached this new edition in the same way we tackled all the others: by getting our heads down and trying to create the best programme possible. We’ve tried to develop effective dialogue with the public, both quantitively and qualitatively, because if there’s one thing cinemas have suffered from over the past two years, it’s distance from the public, an absence of interaction with human beings. As for the festival’s sections, we’ve confirmed the same ones as last year, including the new line-up dedicated to short arthouse films having experienced success beyond all expectations. In terms of the programme celebrating this year’s jubilee, we’ve created Postcards From The Future in collaboration with RSI, for which we asked filmmakers hailing from all over the world to send us a short “postcard” from the future, lasting between three and four minutes. Directors taking part in this project include Aleksandr Sokurov, Bertrand Mandico, Nadav Lapid, Claire Simon, etc.

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The festival’s programme has showcased scores of first works and young directors over the past two years; is this a stated aim on the part of the Locarno Film Festival as a privileged space for young and emerging cinema? Could you give us a few names of selectees?
For this year’s International Competition, we’ve selected De noche los gatos son pardos [+lire aussi :
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interview : Valentin Merz
fiche film] by Valentin Merz, a young and incredibly promising Swiss filmmaker, and Tengo sueños eléctricos [+lire aussi :
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bande-annonce
interview : Valentina Maurel
fiche film] by Valentina Maurel, a young Costa Rican director. In addition to these, we also have plenty of young directors in the Cineasti del Presente line-up. I’m likewise really pleased that a first film co-produced by Ireland and the UK, Andrew Legge’s LOLA [+lire aussi :
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interview : Andrew Legge
fiche film], a sci-fi work composed almost entirely of archive images, is taking part in the festival out of competition. I’m sure it will become cult film. We’ll be screening another first English work in the Piazza Grande called Medusa Deluxe by Thomas Hardiman, which is a thriller set within a hairstyling competition. It’s shot in a very unique style, and I think this is another film likely to acquire cult status. Ultimately, the Locarno Film Festival places heavy focus on first works.

Many of the selected films depict worlds relating to science fiction, horror or the thriller genre. Is this a type of cinema you find especially interesting?
I think it’s a tendency which is common among new filmmakers who want to try their hand at a different type of storytelling compared to traditional arthouse films. The genre film sphere is a really interesting one. Moreover, when we talk about young directors, we’re talking about young people who have grown up post-cinema, in the very literal sense of the word: they’ve watched a lot of TV series and their film education has come via social media.

Obviously, line-ups aren’t built up around underlying themes, but have you noticed any particular trends or themes since putting them together?
Obviously, we didn’t attempt to develop the programme in line with any guiding themes. But the trends we’ve picked up on post-event firstly concern the literary world - for example, the documentaries dedicated to Martin Suter (Alles über Martin Suter. Ausser die Wahrheit by André Schäfer) and Erica Jong (Erica Jong - Breaking The Wall [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
interview : Kaspar Kasics
fiche film] by Kaspar Kasics). Francesco Lagi’s film Il Pitaffio is also based on Luigi Malerba’s book of the same name. The other wholly coincidental tendency concerns films directed by women filmmakers which tackle the question of bodily self-determination. It’s quite a powerful theme. Another marked pattern we’ve noticed is the arrival of new documentary forms, ranging from Ana Vaz’s experimental offering (It Is Night In America) to Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s Matter Out of Place [+lire aussi :
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interview : Nikolaus Geyrhalter
fiche film], Abbas Fahdel’s Tales of the Purple House and Sylvain George’s Obscure Night - Wild Leaves (The Burning Ones, the Obstinate) [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film].

Could you tell us about the young Swiss films Locarno is showcasing?
New Swiss cinema is characterised by the great determination of highly diverse directors. It’s a characteristic which makes it very interesting. That said, we can’t speak about any real school or generation, it’s more of a passion which unites them, a new determination. There are a few filmmakers who are well-known in Europe among them, such as a Ramon and Silvan Zürcher, Cyril Schäublin and Katharina Wyss. And we asked Swiss-Rwandan director Kantarama Gahigiri to make a short film for the Postcards From The Future section.