Thoughts on the Locarno 2025 Lineup

As part of my work for the Latin American Film Festival of Dallas (LAFFD), I’m obliged to keep up with a lot of films and festivals from all over the world. We haven’t played a film that premiered at Locarno yet, but I always check them out given their track record. I thought it would be interesting to go through the lineup and give some thoughts about some of the films and directors represented. Maybe this will be a recurring feature of this newsletter… Maybe not!

Concorso Internazionale

As Estações (Maureen Fazendeiro) / God Will Not Help (Hana Jušić) / Donkey Days (Rosanne Pei) / Dracula (Radu Jude) / Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze) / Le Bambine (Valentina Bertani + Nicole Bertani) / Le Lac (Fabrice Aragno) / Desire Lines (Dane Komljen) / Mare’s Nest (Ben Rivers) / Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due (Abdellatif Kechiche) / Phantoms of July (Julian Radlmaier) / Solomamma (Janicke Askevold) / Sorella de Clausura (Ivana Mladenović) / Two Seasons, Two Strangers (Sho Miyake) / Tales of the Wounded Land (Abbas Fahdel) / White Snail (Elsa Kremser + Levin Peter) / With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari)

The big ticket item is, of course, the new Abdellatif Kechiche film. The Mektoub series has been in legal limbo over the last six years after the disastrous Cannes premiere of the now-phantom film Intermezzo and, it should be noted, the accusations against Kechiche and his working methods. The first Mektoub film was a truly radical proposal, an experiment in dead time which luxuriated in the rhythms of the everyday, giving itself over to the pleasure of filming (an eroticized gaze, definitely, but not just for bodies, it’s the entire world it is after). The original Mektoub ran around 180 minutes (and Intermezzo was even longer) so I’m very curious what Kechiche does with a much shorter runtime - what will he be after with this film?

The other film that calls my attention is Two Seasons, Two Strangers by Sho Miyake. His previous film, All the Long Nights, was absolutely gorgeous, but it seemed allergic to any sort of dramatic heft or confrontation. It’s not what that film was about, it’s true, but it struck me as a little too nice, too pleased with itself. Compared to his 2022 film Small, Slow But Steady, the effort was too lightweight. But, I remain onboard and curious what he does with this new film.

The rest of the competition has a lot of names that are familiar but that I haven’t spent much time with - Radu Jude (too much talking about TikTok); Dane Komljen (too many sources, too many footnotes); Alexandre Koberidze (competition in the phone auteur sweepstakes); Fabrice Aragno (Godard leftovers?); Abbas Fahdel (documentaries). It’s nice to know that there’s so much cinema to discover (and so much cinema to brusquely dismiss!)

Anyway, no Latin American films here. Let’s move on.

Concorso Cineasti del Presente

Affection Affection (Alexia Walther + Maxime Matray), Balearic (Ion de Sosa), Becoming (Zhannat Aishanova), Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari), Don’t Let the Sun (Jacqueline Zünd), Fantasy (Kukla), Follies (Eric K. Boulianne), Sweetheart (Marguerita Spampinato), Hijo mayor (Cecilia Kang), Don’t Let Me Die (Andrei Epure), Olivia (Sofía Petersen), The Fin (Syeyoung Park), The Plant from the Canaries (Ruan Lan-Xi), Hair, Paper, Water… (Nicolas Graux, Trương Minh Quý), A Balcony in Limoges (Jérôme Reybaud)

Traditionally, this section is the place for debuts or early-career filmmakers who have yet to make the leap to bigger and more prestigious sections (or festivals). The name that caught my eye immediately was Cecilia Kang. She had a film a couple of years ago called Partió de mí un barco llevándome that unfortunately I couldn’t make the time for, but now she’s here and the film looks quite interesting (it appears to be her fiction debut). Aside from that one, the new Jérôme Reybaud is definitely on my radar (a good marker for quality - is Fabienne Babe in it?). There’s also a name I learned about recently thanks to a BAFICI retro dedicated to him (and also his work as producer and cinematographer), Ion de Sosa.

In my corner of the film world, the debut by Sophy Romvari is an event. After many, many shorts that premiered in Toronto and then got showcased on the Criterion Channel, she’s now something of a name in English-speaking cinephilia. I admit that her shorts have never quite convinced me as they felt quite limited in scope (girls in rooms on their laptops, or movies about dogs or something). But, hey, I like to keep an open mind. Most likely, I will never see this though. As for the other Latin American film in this section, Olivia - well, shot on 16mm, a father who works at a slaughterhouse, Hubert Bals funded… It could be good! Who knows! I always hope things are good, but it’s best to know what’s meant for me and what’s meant for others.

Back in 2021, before the first edition at the helm of Giona A. Nazzaro, there were many statements regarding the change in the line of the festival, broadening it and exploring “uncharted territory such as digging deeper into genre cinema.” After that first edition, Daniel Kasman wrote for Mubi that in an industry and festival circuit “dominated by a hysterical emphasis on commercial viability and audience accessibility, this aim for an entire festival can only be seen [as] an acquiescence to the status quo.” Looking at the lineup above, I think it’s safe to say that the bread and butter of Locarno still remains art cinema. But the gestures of the last couple of years have been interesting (a talk with Shah Rukh Khan, and this year with Jackie Chan), even if these remain separate from the competitions. The problem perhaps is that this open-mindedness regarding world cinema only extends retroactively (here’s one showing of Police Story for you!) rather than find its way to the programming in the competitions. What would it mean for Locarno to play a Mari Selvaraj film in its competition?

Let’s stop here with the obvious caveat that I’ve seen none of these films. These are just my dumb opinions. Tomorrow there will be other ones.

Text by Jhon Hernandez