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Festival coverage

Locarno Film Festival

2 August – 12 July 2023

This year the Swiss festival runs from August 2 to 12. It will open with The Falling Star. Riz Ahmed will received a career achievement award on the opening night.

Other years (8)

Latest reviews

  • Falling Stars
    Review preview for Falling Stars

    What’s missing in most folk horror tales –and indeed in many otherwise diligent historical films – is an understanding of the different perspectives of people with pre-enlightenment beliefs. It’s here that writer Karpala truly triumphs.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    On the night of first harvest, three brothers in the American West set out to see a dead witch buried by their friend and find themselves in a race to stop a curse.
  • What Remains
    Review preview for What Remains

    Its slow, observational style allows us to get much closer to the key figures and explore aspects of motive which are commonly lost.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    During the 1990s, at a Scandinavian psychiatric hospital, a man known as Mads Lake confessed to multiple murders and was convicted. However, the uneasy triumvirate of Mads, therapist Anna Rudebeck and policeman Soren Rank all have a vested interest in unearthing the truth, while a deepening co-dependency threatens to consume them all.
  • The Invisible Fight
    Review preview for The Invisible Fight

    Sometimes the rumblings are of the Shaw Brothers, at others the Marx Brothers.

    Andrew Robertson · 4 out of 5
    A kung-fu comedy set in an Orthodox Monastery in 1970s Soviet Union.
  • Sweet Dreams
    Review preview for Sweet Dreams

    More poem than conventional narrative, Sweet Dreams explores the tropes of the colonial fable with a romantic eye and a sharp wit.

    Jennie Kermode · 3.5 out of 5
    When Dutch patriarch and plantation owner Jan dies suddenly in Indonesia, his son arrives from Europe with plans for radical change. But when Jan’s will puts his Indonesian concubine Siti at the forefront of the family estate, ideals prove to be futile and blood thicker than water.
  • Yannick
    Review preview for Yannick

    This may be, ironically, rather stagey, but for all its artificiality and slightness, it packs an emotional punch.

    Jennie Kermode · 3.5 out of 5
    In the middle of a performance of The Cuckold, a very bad boulevard play, Yannick gets up and interrupts the show to take control of the evening...
  • Lousy Carter
    Review preview for Lousy Carter

    Lousy Carter provides pleasant enough distraction in the moment but gives viewers very little to take away.

    Jennie Kermode · 3 out of 5
    Variously labeled as a deadbeat by his ex, a failure by his mother, and a shell of himself by his best friend, Lousy Carter is falling apart, debt-ridden and cast adrift. As he interprets The Great Gatsby for an antipathetic graduate class, one of the students offers Lousy Carter one last chance at living the dream.
  • Shayda
    Review preview for Shayda

    What really drives the film is the quietly powerful central performance.

    Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
    Shayda, an Iranian mother, finds refuge in an Australian women’s shelter with her six-year-old daughter. Over Persian New Year, they take solace in Nowruz rituals and new beginnings, but when her estranged husband re-enters their lives, Shayda’s path to freedom is jeopardised.
  • Do Not Expect Too Much Of The End of the World
    Review preview for Do Not Expect Too Much Of The End of the World

    Jude masterfully keeps the audience attached to the screen for almost three hours without relying on heightened tensions or conventional plot twists.

    Liza Alpaidze · 5 out of 5
    Overworked and underpaid, Angela drives around the city of Bucharest to film the casting for a 'safety at work video' commissioned by a multinational company. When one of the interviewees reveals the company’s liability in his accident, a scandal erupts.
  • Anatomy Of A Fall
    Review preview for Anatomy Of A Fall

    Hüller has always been an unfussy actress, who allows a character's flaws to shine out in interesting ways.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    A woman is accused of her husband's murder.
  • All The Fires
    Review preview for All The Fires

    All The Fires is a film built out of contradictions from which meaning gradually emerges.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    Conflicted by his mother's new relationship and his best friend's crush on him, Bruno, a pyromaniac teenager, escapes from the city. He sets off on a journey in search of a girl he met online who will push him to confront his father's death and the doubts about his sexuality, but not before leaving all his fires behind.

A–Z of Locarno Film Festival 2023 reviews

Features

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    Sofia Exarchou on capitalism, identity and performance in her latest film
  • From reality to animation
    Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach on making room for happy accidents in Chicken For Linda!

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