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Festival coverage

Locarno Film Festival

3 August – 13 August 2016

The Girl With All The Gifts
The Girl With All The Gifts

The Swiss-Italian festival with a passion for auteur cinema returned for its 69th edition. It opened with zombie thriller The Girl With All The Gifts, showing outdoors in the Piazza Grandeto an audience of thousands, and will feature retrospectives dedicated to the work of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Abbas Kiarostami.

The festival ran from the August 3-13.

Other years (8)

Latest reviews

  • Endless Poetry
    Review preview for Endless Poetry

    Drawing on that particular quality of light that seems unique to Chile, Jodorowsky paints an alluring portrait of his homeland.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    Biographical tale of the director's own youth.
  • Glory
    Review preview for Glory

    This is black comedy at its best, subtle, confident in deadpan, as bleak and dry as a sun-scorched siding.

    Andrew Robertson · 4 out of 5
    A railway worker finds a large amount of money on the line and duly hands it over to the authorities, who give him a watch, which stops working.
  • Marija
    Review preview for Marija

    Margarita Breitkreiz gives a formidable performance.

    Jennie Kermode · 3.5 out of 5
    A young cleaning women, suddenly unemployed, is willing to do anything to fulfil her dream of owning her own hairdressing salon.
  • The Ornithologist
    Review preview for The Ornithologist

    In keeping with the hagiographic tradition, Hamy keeps his performance rather flat, but this is problematic for The Ornothologist as a film; its success as a piece of art is somewhat at odds with audience appeal.

    Jennie Kermode · 3.5 out of 5
    An ornithologist searching for black storks is swept away by rapids and awakens in a mysterious, dark forest.
  • The Girl With All The Gifts
    Review preview for The Girl With All The Gifts

    It's never easy to remain true to Armageddon while retaining a positive attitude towards life after life

    Angus Wolfe Murray · 3 out of 5
    A scientist and a child make a bid for survival in a world of zombies.
  • Jason Bourne
    Review preview for Jason Bourne

    The powerfully cathartic ending of The Bourne Ultimatum is a long shadow to get out of, and this film never quite manages it.

    Owen Van Spall · 3 out of 5
    Bourne tries to uncover the secrets from his past.
  • I, Daniel Blake
    Review preview for I, Daniel Blake

    The film preserves a sense of immediacy and is achingly relevant for our times much in the same way Cathy Come Home was for the Sixties.

    Richard Mowe · 4 out of 5
    A carpenter suffering from ill health and a young single mum find themselves facing a wall of welfare bureacracy.

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