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Locarno Film Festival · 2025

Locarno Film Festival 2025

Concorso Internazionale

Programme

17 films · 8 reviews

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Desire Lines (Linije želje)

Branko obsessively trails his brother through neon-lit Belgrade nights, trying to fathom his unusual behaviour. On this path, Branko realises that he is the strange one, an observer, an apparition. Branko keeps walking and leaves the city behind, crossing landscapes and borders on his way to a very special place where everyone and every thing has a story to share.

(Country: Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Netherlands, Croatia, Germany; Year: 2025; Director: Dane Komljen; Writer: Dane Komljen, Tanja Šljivar; Stars: Ivan Čuić, Branka Katić, Petja Golec Horvat, Rok Juričić)

World premiere

Donkey Days

Sisters Anna and Charlotte have always fought for their mother’s attention. As old wounds reopen and suck them back to their family home, they unravel mesmerising mysteries, including anonymous ashes and their mother’s love for a donkey. Will they come to terms with each other?

(Country: Netherlands, Germany; Year: 2025; Director: Rosanne Pel; Writer: Rosanne Pel; Stars: Jil Krammer, Susanne Wolff, Hildegard Schmahl, Amke Wegner, Carla Juri)

World premiere

Dracula

Review preview for Dracula

Somewhere between the low brow cock jokes and the high stakes – by which, I mean the sharp wooden pointy ones – Radu Jude serves up a sharp edged critique of populism, capitalism and the modern world.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
Gonzo exploration of the Vlad the Impaler mythos.

(Country: Romania, Austria, Luxembourg; Year: 2025; Director: Radu Jude; Writer: Radu Jude; Stars: Adonis Tanța, Oana Maria Zaharia, Gabriel Spahiu, Ilinca Manolache, Alexandru Dabija, Andrada Balea, Doru Talos, Serban Pavlu, Lukas Miko, Neil Young. Alexandra .Harapu.)

Full review

World premiere

Dry Leaf

Review preview for Dry Leaf

The blurry, hazy images recorded entirely on a discontinued Sony Ericsson cellphone – frequently in long takes – make it a hardly digestible slow cinema challenge, yet rewarding as an aesthetic experience.

Lucija Furac · 3.5 out of 5
A father goes looking for his missing photographer daughter across rural Georgia.

(Country: Germany, Georgia; Year: 2025; Director: Alexandre Koberidze; Writer: Alexandre Koberidze; Stars: David Koberidze, Irina Chelidze, Giorgi Bochorishvili, Otar Nijaradze, Vakhtang Panchulidze)

Full review

World premiere

God Will Not Help (Bog neće pomoći)

Review preview for God Will Not Help

An extremely unnerving viewing experience

Marko Stojiljkovic · 3.5 out of 5
A Chilean woman acts as a catalyst in a Croatian shepherd family after she arrives claiming to be the wife of their dead brother.

(Country: Croatia, Italy, Romania, Greece, France, Slovenia; Year: 2025; Director: Hana Jušić; Writer: Hana Jušić; Stars: Manuela Martelli, Ana Marija Veselčić, Filip Đurić, Mauro Ercegović Gracin, Nikša Butijer)

Full review See: Hana Jušić and her crew on the themes and craft of God Will Not Help

World premiere

The Lake (Le Lac)

With everything they’ve got, a couple throws themselves into a sailing race lasting several days and nights on a large lake.

(Country: Switzerland; Year: 2025; Director: Fabrice Aragno; Writer: Fabrice Aragno; Stars: Clotilde Courau, Bernard Stamm)

World premiere

Mare's Nest

Review preview for Mare's Nest

Rivers' dreamlike approach has the quality of memory in places, full of figments and fragments, although that inevitably means some episodes are more engaging than others.

Amber Wilkinson · 3 out of 5
A child's adventures in an adult-free world.

(Country: UK, France; Year: 2025; Director: Ben Rivers; Writer: Ben Rivers, based on play The Word for Snow by Don DeLillo; Stars: Aonan Yang, Andreas Mendritzki, Fabrizio Polpettini, François Bonenfant)

Full review

World premiere

Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due

Review preview for Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due

When the twist, or better said, something actually resembling a plot, arrives, it is too late and the mechanics of it are too illogical, while the ending comes abruptly.

Marko Stojiljkovic · 2.5 out of 5
Third in the Mektoub, My Love trilogy sees a soap star and her husband thrown into the mix.

(Year: 2025; Director: Abdellatif Kechiche; Writer: Abdellatif Kechiche)

Full review

World premiere

Mosquitoes (Le Bambini)

Review preview for Mosquitoes

Shot in squared off 1.85:1 ratio – except for a handful of ‘world expanding’ moments – the choice is fitting for the intensity of the children’s gaze.

Amber Wilkinson · 3 out of 5
1997 Linda is eight years old, has few teeth, a very rich grandmother and a beautiful, dangerous and disruptive mother. It will be the encounter with two peers, sisters Azzurra and Marta, that will teach her how to become a child.

(Country: Italy, Switzerland, France; Year: 2025; Director: Valentina Bertani, Nicole Bertani; Writer: Maria Sole Limodio, Valentina Bertani, Nicole Bertani; Stars: Mia Ferricelli, Agnese Scazza, Petra Scheggia, Clara Tramontano, Milutin Dapčević, Cristina Donadio, Jessica Piccolo Valerani, Matteo Martari)

Full review See: Nicole and Valentina Bertani on getting down with the kids in Mosquitoes

World premiere

Phantoms Of July (Sehnsucht in Sangerhausen)

An East German waitress with a broken heart and an Iranian YouTuber with a broken arm dream of another life and end up on a ghost hunt in the mountains.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2025; Director: Julian Radlmaier; Writer: Julian Radlmaier; Stars: Clara Schwinning, Maral Keshavarz, Henriette Confurius, Paula Schindler, Ghazal Shojaei, Kyung-Taek Lie, Buksori Lie, Marlene Hauser, Jérémie Galiana)

World premiere

The Seasons (As Estações)

The film travels, through the seasons, through the real and invented history of a region of Portugal, Alentejo, and the people who inhabited it. It begins in the present of childhood without memory and ends in an immemorial time before writing.

(Country: Portugal, France, Spain, Austria; Year: 2025; Director: Maureen Fazendeiro; Writer: Maureen Fazendeiro; Stars: Simão Ramalho, Cláudio da Silva, Ana Potra, Manuel Leitão, António Sozinho)

World premiere

Solomamma

Review preview for Solomamma

Askevold’s refusal to offer easy answers is compelling.

Saba Osanadze · 3 out of 5
When a single mother discovers the identity of her sperm donor, her pursuit of truth blurs the boundaries between love, ethics, and self-deception.

(Country: Norway, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark, Finland; Year: 2025; Director: Janicke Askevold; Writer: Janicke Askevold; Stars: Lisa Loven Kongsli, Herbert Nordrum, Trude-Sofie Olavsrud Anthonsen, Celine Engebrigtsen, Stine Fevik, Nasrin Khusrawi, Rolf Kristian Larsen, Pål Richard Lunderby, Kaveh Tehrani)

Full review

World premiere

Sorella Di Clausura

Romantic melodrama parody set against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis.

(Country: Romania, Serbia, Italy, Spain; Year: 2025; Director: Ivana Mladenović; Writer: Ivana Mladenović, Adrian Schiop, Momir Milošević; Stars: Katia Pascariu, Cendana Trifan, Miodrag Mladenović, Arnold Kelsch, Cătălin Dordea, Adrian Radu)

World premiere

Tales Of The Wounded Land

Details to follow...

(Country: Lebanon; Year: 2025; Director: Abbas Fahdel)

World premiere

Two Seasons, Two Strangers

Review preview for Two Seasons, Two Strangers

The summer-winter dynamic may lean a tad on the obvious side, but the structure primes us to meditate on the way friendships form during different stages of life, and which lives they’re most likely to change.

Jeremy Mathews · 4 out of 5
A scriptwriter is processing what is happening in her life. She meets an innkeeper while traveling.

(Year: 2025; Director: Sho Miyake; Writer: Sho Miyake, based on the manga Mr. Ben and his Igloo, A View of the Seaside by Yoshiharu Tsuge.; Stars: Eun Kyung Shim, Yuumi Kawai, Mansaku Takada, Shiro Sano, Shinichi Tsutsumi)

Full review See: Shô Miyake on adding 'pure cinema' to Tsuge classics in Two Seasons, Two Strangers

World premiere

White Snail

A Belarusian model dreaming of a career in China finds herself drawn to a mysterious loner who works the night shift at a morgue. A fragile love story.

(Country: Austria, Germany; Year: 2025; Director: Elsa Kremser, Levin Peter; Writer: Elsa Kremser, Levin Peter; Stars: Marya Imbro, Mikhail Senkov)

World premiere

With Hasan In Gaza

What began as a search for a former prison mate from 1989 - a man lost to time and war - led to an unexpected road trip from the north to the south of Gaza, accompanied by Hasan, a local guide whose fate remains unknown. Documentary made from footage shot by the documentarian 21 years ago.

(Country: Palestine, Germany, France, Switzerland; Year: 2025; Director: Kamal Aljafari)

World premiere