LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2024

 

The Locarno Film Festival is a major international film festival, held annually in Locarno, Switzerland.  It specializes in after-cinema, supposedly showcasing the best of auteur cinema,  Founded in 1946, the festival screens films in various competitive and non-competitive sections, including feature-length narrative, documentary, short, avant-garde, and retrospective programs. The Piazza Grande section is held in an open-air venue that seats 8,000 spectators.

The top prize of the festival is the Golden Leopard, awarded to the best film in the International Competition. Other awards include the Leopard of Honour for career achievement, and the Prix du Public, the public choice award.

This is the first year afro-toronto is covering the Locarno Film Festival.

The embargo for film reviews will be lifted 30 minutes after the first public screening Locarno time.  If a film is reviewed here before its Locarno opening, it means that the film has been screened at other festivals before such as Cannes and the Annoy Animation Film Festivals.

This article will be updated daily till August 31st, as reviews are added,  Capsule reviews only, with full reviews banked upon full release in Toronto.

 

CAPSULE REVIEWS OF SELECT FILMS:

 

BANG BANG (USA 2024) ***
Directed by Vincent Grashaw

After two moderate hits, WHAT JOSIAH SAW (2022) and COLDWATER (2013), writer/director Vincent Grashaw returns with a gritty boxing grandfather/grandson drama that pulls all the punches or the lying low life.  Tim Blake Nelson stars as "Bang Bang" Rozyski, an eccentric retired pugilist obsessed with rectifying the sins of his past who is forced to look after his grandson while his daughter needs to work for a living.  Nelson is an excellent actor with a fine C.V. including THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (the Cohen Brothers) which he again proves in the film, smart-talking and moving around in a wheelchair because his dick is too heavy to carry around,  Director Grashaw captures the atmosphere and mood of the city’s underbelly while showing that there is a glimmer of hope aided by the resilience of the human spirit,  Never has a feel-good themed film look so gloomy.  The film comes complete with smart-ass (merde de putain) French subtitles.  

FIORE MIO (A Flower of Mine)(Italy/Belgium 2024) ***
Directed by Paolo Cognetti

 

In the vein of the success of the Cannes Winner THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS in 2022, based on his novel of the same title arrives the much touted Paolo Cognetti’s new ‘mountain’ film A FLOWER OF MINE (Fiore Mio).  As the director saw the spring run completely dry at his home in Estoul, a small village about 1700 metres above the valley of Brusson, Cognetti tells the story of his mountain.  The film begins with stunning scenes of the mountain and valley as the audience sees a man (with skis to help him walk in the snow) and his dog take into the mountains during spring when the ice is melting.  This is a film about the beauty of the mountains, with not much story nor dialogue.  Singer-songwriter Vasco Brondi, a friend who is like a brother for Cognetti, wrote the entire original soundtrack for a film. also performing a new song, “Ascoltare gli alberi” (Listen to the Trees), which is the closing music to the documentary.

 

FOUL EVIL DEEDS (UK 2024) ***
Directed by Richard Hunter

 

Writer/director Richard Hunter’s feature debut intertwines a collection of stories involving FOUL EVIL DEEDS showcasing the wide variety of evil behaviour human beings are capable of.  Among them is a man coming to grips with his new life cleaning toilets, a family man dealing with a moment of weakness, an accountant submitting to his needs, a group of friends fumbling a prank, a vicar and his wife disposing of an accident, and a lawyer ending his marriage.  Director Hunter initially shows promise in the first 30 minutes displaying a wry sense of filmmaking similar to Roy Andersson.  However, the fire sizzles out fast for the prime reason that these stories are not foul or evil enough.  Do not expect anything as wild as the Argentine festival hit WILD TALES an anthology of wild tales told one after another.

 

LIVING LARGE (Czech/Slovakia.France 2024) ****

Directed by Kristina Dufkova 

(Premiered at Annecy)

 

A coming-of-age story of 12-year-old Papethca, as he juggles what paths are considered the most pressing at the time.  On the first day of school, he is bullied for his weight, and falls in love with a fellow classmate, while venturing into his career as a chef or as a rap band member with his buddy.  At the same time, he has to deal with his divorced parents - he is living and cooking for his mother and coping with his father and his new girlfriend.  All this is a lot to take in for a 12-year-old but director Kristina Dufkova blends all the issues effortlessly in an entertaining film that is both hilarious and emotional. You have to love a movie that has on its soundtrack classic opera, rap, ac/dc and piano.  The film shifts into full gear when Papethca decides to go on a diet.  The film is based on the novel ‘Ma Vie, En Gros’ and has the look of the Academy Award-nominated MA VIE EN COURGETTE, the recent animated claymation feature also on the topic of adolescence.  One of the strongest points of this best-animated feature is the positive and feel-good message it has for people living large.

https://mubi.com/en/films/living-large/trailer

 

MEXICO 86 (Mexico 2024) ***½

Directed by César Díaz

 

After winning Cannes' Camera d’Or with OUR MOTHERS (NUESTRAS MADRES) (2019), César Díaz returns with a very tense and intimate dramatic thriller MEXICO 86, inspired by his own story.  The film’s setting is 1976.  Death threats force Maria (Argentine-born actress, Berenice Bejo), a Guatemalan rebel activist fighting against the corrupt military dictatorship, to flee to Mexico, leaving her infant son behind with her mother.  It is 10 years later when the boy is forced to come to live with her when his grandmother is diagnosed with terminal cancer.   Maria is forced to choose between her duties as a mother and continuing her revolutionary activism.  Director Diaz is clearly an expert manipulator of moods and atmosphere, filming in the shadows when conversations become brutally for example, honest between Marianna and her son.  At one point, he shows that the cause Maria is fighting for has no sympathy for her former or her son.  Having worked prior in editing documentaries, Diaz also brings a credible reason to his tale aided by Bejo’s often mesmerizing performance.fould

LA MORT VIENDRA (DEATH WILL COME)(Germany/Luxembourg/Belgium 2024) ***
Directed by Christoph Hochhäusler 

 

Inspired by the crime films of Jean-Pierre Melville, Christoph Hochhäusler’ s crime thriller which contains stunning cinematography reminiscent of Melville, follows a hit man or rather hit woman who goes by the name of Tez.  LA MORT VIENDRA is shot in French.  Tez is not short for anything, says the girl with very little background.  Tez kills for money.  Charles Mahr, a legendary gangster, hires her to avenge the murder of one of his couriers.  Once in Brussels, Tez gets caught up in the thicket of intrigue in which she herself becomes the prey. Tez has to decide whose instrument she wants to be.  Director Hochhäusler displays his fascination for gangster films looking at how now can speak of fate and death, circumventing the realisms of contemporary cinema.  LA MORT VIENDRA achieves a good blend of action and realism.

SLEEP #2 (Romania 2024)**
Directed by Radu Jude

 

Romanian director Brady Jude returns to Locarno after his Award-Winning film last year DO NOT EXPECT MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD.  Jude is an award-winning director known best for the previous film and BAD LUCK BAGING OR LOONEY PORN.  Jude is what I would label a badass director.  SLEEP #2, his latest film, however, is rather tame and indescribable.  The film comes with the title of a desktop film by Radu Jude.  There is no plot or structure just camera work using timelapse photography.  The audience has to suffer through 10 minutes to watch objects on a hill slope at the beginning followed by an extended watch on the grave of Andy Warhol lasting from summer to winter and the entire film, including night photography in which one can see a deer nibbling by the grave.  Not a leaf was stirring.  An awesome Summer.”  come the words.  One has to sit through this hour and 1 minute film.