The summer film festival season is apparently not going to happen. We already saw Cannes move from the spring to the summer, to hopefully avoid the COVID-19 pandemic. However, that move didn’t help and it appears that the first film festivals of the year could be happening in September. That means, festivals such as Locarno, the Swiss festival (scheduled for August) that proudly features international indie films, is also dealing with unplanned cancellation. But Locarno isn’t going the route of other festivals such as Tribeca and SXSW. Instead, the forced cancellation is paving the way for Locarno to try something different for 2020.
According to Variety, the folks behind Locarno aren’t going to utilize the online screening technology that SXSW, Tribeca, and other festivals have been touting in an attempt to keep some sort of festival going. Instead, the event is looking for ways to help those independent filmmakers adversely affected by the lack of festival support.
For this year, the event will be dubbed “Locarno 2020 – For The Future of Films” and is now an initiative that will consist of a variety of monetary awards that will be given to filmmakers. The details are still being worked out, but we can expect categories such as a Special Leopard for an international director, a Special Leopard for a Swiss film, and other prizes and forms of support.
“We looked at a number of different scenarios,” Locarno artistic director Lili Hinstin said. “For us the priority was to save the physical aspect of the festival, which for us is very closely tied to its (setting) since Locarno audiences are in this amazing place between a lake and a mountain where you have the Piazza Grande with this gigantic screen.”
The monetary awards will be given to “directors whose movies have been blocked by the pandemic and are therefore suffering economic damage.” Those awards will be determined by two juries (composed of directors)—one for the international films and one for Swiss projects.
All of this is in an attempt for Locarno “to make our small contribution and maintain the festival’s spirit which is to support independent cinema, its directors and auteurs.”
Last year, the Golden Leopard prize went to the incredible film, “Vitalina Varela” from filmmaker Pedro Costa. The Special Jury Prize went to “Height of the Wave” by director Park Jung-bum.