It wasn't among the favorites in a program featuring prestigious names in the film world such as Radu Jude, Abdellatif Kechiche, or Naomi Kawase. But the jury of the 78th Locarno Film Festival, chaired by Cambodian Rithy Panh, opted to ignore the better-known directors and award it the Golden Leopard. Tabi to hibi (Two seasons, two strangers) by Sho Miyake. A Japanese director who is by no means a debutant (one of his previous films, Keiko's fight, premiered on Filmin), but had not yet established himself as one of the filmmakers to watch on the contemporary scene. In Two seasons, two strangers, Miyake adapts two independent stories from Yoshiharu Tsuge, a pioneer of alternative manga and a cult author who stopped drawing decades ago. The stories feature lonely male characters who eventually connect with a woman at a specific moment. And in both cases, the detailed and exquisite descriptions of the respective natural and atmospheric environments help convey a state of profound yet restrained sadness. Two seasons, two strangers represents this new Japanese cinema with special sensitivity and subtlety when it comes to portraying characters on the fringes or those hiding deep pain.

Why has Romania, the country where the Dracula myth originated, not spawned any vampire films? This seems to be the thought driving the debate. Dracula, the new film by Radu Jude, responsible for essential titles such as An Unfortunate Nail or Crazy Porn and Don't expect too much from the end of the world. But, far from proposing a new adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic novel or a story more in line with the character's historical basis, Jude pushes for a deconstruction of the commercial appropriations (vampirizations?) of Dracula and vindicates vampire tales with a local stamp in a film that is at the same time many films made from traditions. This three-hour feature includes a popular fable about a tree that grows penises; a tragic love story between rural workers in communist Romania; a revisiting of the figure of Dr. Aslan, the first medical star in the fight against aging who attracted celebrities from all over the world to her Romanian clinic; ironic reinterpretations of the Nosferatu by FW Murnau and by Film by Samuel Beckett; an erotic vampire cabaret for tourists in the heart of Transylvania; and a science fiction story about a workers' revolt, among others. The film is structured as a play. Frankenstein built from diverse stories, served up by a screenwriter who asks an artificial intelligence program to generate different narratives surrounding the famous vampire.

Perhaps because we mostly associate her with British period dramas, it's surprising to see in person that Emma Thompson is one of the funniest stars on the scene today. In the conversation she shared with the audience this Saturday on the occasion of receiving the Leopard Club Award from the Locarno Film Festival, she recalled her beginnings in the world of comedy. "When I was young, I didn't want to be an actress like my mother (Phyllida Law) because it seemed like a very precarious job. But I became a comedian. I did stand-up comedy at political demonstrations, full of jokes about Margaret Thatcher. And about herpes. It was a bit of a fluke to get work as an actress. I hadn't sought it out, and sometimes what turns out best is exactly what you don't look for," she says.

Why so much expectation before the world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival of Mektoub, my love: Canto dueA decade ago, Mektoub, my love It was to be the great project of Abdellatif Kechiche, then the French director with the greatest impact thanks to the success of Blue is the Warmest Color, Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. The filmmaker set out to adapt La blessure la vraie by François Bégaudeau (co-writer and star of another Palme d'Or, The class by Laurent Cantet), an autobiographical novel about a teenager's sexual awakening over the course of a summer in the 1980s. Kechiche moved the action to Seta in the 1990s and focused on a film student, Amin (Shain Boumédine), who returns from Paris to his hometown to enjoy a vacation with his gang. What was supposed to be a standalone film begins to look like a saga whose complexity frightens the producers. Lacking financing, Kechiche sells the Palme d'Or to finish the first installment. Soaked in the Occitan sun, shaken by the sensual hedonism of youth and with the salty taste of summers spent at the beach, Mektoub, my love: Canto one (2017) stands as a hymn to the Mediterranean as a way of understanding life and the experience of time.