Locarno's critics award 'Far from the Trees', by Meritxell Colell

LocarnoThere were no clear favorites for the Golden Leopard at this 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, which also did not feature already recognized names, except for the recurring Hong Sang-soo. The jury, presided over by Belgian Fabrice Du Welz, honored two films: the Romanian You don’t belong here by Florin Șerban, Golden Leopard winner, and the Brazilian The Riverbank (A margem do rio) by Matheus Farias and Enock Carvalho, Special Jury Prize, both of which address the worrying global increase in hate speech and violence against those considered different. It also excluded films that were more stimulating in terms of their stylistic risks, artistic concerns, or expository sobriety. This is the case of Lejos de los árboles, by Meritxell Colell, which, however, has thrilled critics: it has won, outside the official awards, the FIPRESCI prize awarded by the International Federation of Film Critics, and the Golden Boccalino for best film, presented by Swiss independent critics.

The Catalan director's fourth feature film represents a culmination of the concerns that run through her filmography in an artistically ambitious proposal where we accompany the journey of Adela (Angélica Castelló), a Mexican sound artist based in Vienna, and her local guide, Lucho (José Luis López Cama), through Peru in search of minority languages, a passion that allows her to connect with the memory of her grandparents, Catalan exiles. Colell thus explores a transnational concept of identity that integrates class, postcolonial, historical, artistic, and generational perspectives. It is a fully contemporary film that gives special centrality to the sonic dimension in weaving together the different layers of the protagonist's intimate experience in relation to her environment and to family and historical memory. Lejos de los árboles manages to unfold as a fascinating and unusual journey that moves away from certain narrative conventions while also connecting emotionally with the audience. A further demonstration of the artistic maturity of recent Catalan cinema.

The winner of the Golden Leopard, You don’t belong here by Florin Serban, connects with the most recognizable traits of Romanian cinema, such as the critical commitment to imminent reality, the use of long sequence shots to record it, and a certain observational distance, to portray the relationship between a provincial surgeon and his son, who gets involved in a hate crime against Roma people. Questionable in some of its formal and ethical decisions, You don’t belong here addresses a burning issue from the perspective of the middle-aged man who sees his life goals failing. While the victims, the Roma people and the teenager who embraces ultra ideology, are relegated to a secondary and utilitarian level.

A 'thriller' about evangelism in Brazil

The jury's special prize, The riverbank (A margem do rio) by Matheus Farias and Enock Carvalho, approaches an issue that has become present in recent years in Brazilian cinema and that became an international debate following the men's football World Cup: how evangelism has infiltrated the country's structures to the point of changing the character of an entire people. Here it does so by focusing on the homophobia of this ideology, which translates into concrete violence against LGTBIQ+ people. Farias and Carvalho lean their film towards the thriller, both because of the latent threat that the queer characters experience and the desire for revenge that drives the protagonist from a certain moment on. And they give a fantastic tone, close to the cinema of Alain Guiraudie and Kleber Mendonça Filho, to the liberating riverside escapes of the main character.

The usual Hong sang-soo has returned to Locarno with his 35th feature film, Nowhere to lay my ryes, recognized twice in the awards with the Leopard for Best Direction (he already had one for Our Sunhi, from 2013) and with one of the awards for Best Performance for Kim Min-hee, who already received this same award at the Swiss festival in 2024 for By the Current. It is always appropriate to celebrate this pair of filmmakers, who in Nowhere to lay my eyes address the issue of legacy, memory, and intergenerational connection, both within the family and within a community, in a feature that does not stop reflecting on the role of "small" cinema in our lives. The other award for Best Performance has been won by Monica Bellucci for Giovanni Tortorici's Ketticè. The award celebrates an actress who experiments with new registers, in the supporting role of the young protagonist's mother, a teenager who makes her life difficult. Tortorici grants Bellucci a scene of brilliance where her character unleashes with full Italian expressiveness all the resentment accumulated by a northern woman like her, stuck in Sicily with a traditional husband and mother-in-law. And, to close the awards, Blanca Camell Galí's First Fire has received a special mention from the Young Jury in the short film section Pardi di domani.