For seven days in August, Locarno is the beating heart of the international independent industry. Screen looks at what Locarno Pro will focus on this year.
The international industry will be able to engage with Locarno Pro for a longer period this year, as professional activities are extended by two days (August 3-9).
“The Industry Screenings will run from August 3, the day when everyone is arriving in Locarno, as well as on the Monday [August 7] before people leave,” explains Markus Duffner, now in his third year as head of Locarno Pro.
The UK is the territory in focus this year for Locarno Pro’s First Look strand and aims to galvanise collaboration between the UK and Switzerland, both of which are outside the EU and therefore Creative Europe’s support programmes.
Six UK films in post-production will be presented to international buyers, sales agents, representatives of post-production support funds and festival programmers at the Rialto Cinema (August 4-6). Titles include Joy Wilkinson’s feature debut 7 Keys, a thriller starring Emma McDonald and Billy Postlethwaite, the late Mike Hodges’ biographical documentary feature All At Sea, and British Nigerian writer/director Joseph A Adesunloye’s third feature Vanilla, starring Yann Gael and James Smith.
The international jury comprises Ava Cahen, Cannes Critics’ Week artistic director; Gaia Furrer, artistic director of Venice’s Giornate degli Autori; and Eugene Hernandez, director of Sundance Film Festival and its head of public programming. The jury will pick the winners of two new awards sponsored by UK-based companies — the Creativity Media First Look Award, with postproduction services up to the value of $56,000 (€50,000), and the Jannuzzi Smith Award worth $9,500 (€8,500) for the design of an international poster — as well as advertising space to the value of $6,300 (€5,600) offered by Le Film Francais.
“The platform plays an important role for festivals and also in commercial terms,” Duffner notes. “Last year’s edition of First Look focused on German features; One Last Evening premiered in Rotterdam and is being sold by Beta Cinema, Elaha screened at the Berlinale, and now Empty Nets by Iranian filmmaker Behrooz Karamizade won prizes in Munich and Karlovy Vary and is being handled by Pluto Film.”
Perfect partners
Meanwhile, Match Me!’s networking platform is bringing 31 up-and-coming producers to meet with potential co-production partners from August 4-6. They include Ping-Yu Chiu of Taiwan’s Volos Films, Ico Abreu of iFILM from the Dominican Republic, Canary Islands-based Chémi Pérez of Cabo Sur Films, Lithuania’s Juste Michailinaite of Broom Films, and Germany’s Britta Strampe of Bandenfilm.
Locarno Pro’s Alliance 4 Development platform is showcasing 11 projects from Switzerland, France, Germany, Italy and Austria. Jela Hasler’s debut feature To Put Out One Fire, being produced by Langfilm’s Olivier Zobrist, is one of the three Swiss projects selected. The four other countries are represented by two projects each. Director Ann Oren and her producer Kristof Gerega of Berlin-based Schuldenberg Films are returning to Locarno with new feature project Objet A, after Oren’s debut feature Piaffe world premiered in Locarno’s International Competition last year.
Locarno Pro also offers young professionals a chance to gain greater insight into the workings of the international film industry through the Industry Academy training programme. The 10 participants this year include Claudio Maria Corsetti, acquisition manager at Media Luna New Films; Romain Leloux, marketing manager at Imagine Film Distribution; Daniel Woo, film distribution assistant at the UK’s Peccadillo Pictures; and Samantha Bennett, industry co-ordinator at Glasgow Film Festival.
Meanwhile, the 11th edition of the StepIn think tank, an invitation-only event held at Hotel Belvedere on August 3, will focus on the issues facing the indie film world under the title ‘What’s the deal with independent cinema?’.
US producer Ted Hope will deliver a speech titled “Indie film: 50 years of building the wrong thing”, followed by three further keynotes from film distribution and content strategist Arianna Bocco, the BFI’s head of research and insight Rishi Coupland, and the Berlinale’s executive director Mariette Rissenbeek.
Four closed-door roundtables will follow, and focus on issues including the production ecosystem, the role of film festivals, and gender equality and diversity representation.
Spotlight: Heritage cinema
Locarno’s commitment to help classic titles find a new commercial life and facilitate their distribution reaches the next level, as the Heritage Online digital service expands to stage Heritage Monday (August 7), a whole day dedicated to the heritage film industry. The festival is also launching the Heritage Online Contest for international classic and library films in need of restoration.
“Heritage Monday is the result of a process to translate what we are doing with Heritage Online digitally into a physical form in Locarno,” explains Locarno Pro head Markus Duffner. “It presents freshly restored films that are again ready to be exploited commercially and given a new life.
“We want this day to also serve as a networking event so there will be a lunch and cocktails for people active in the heritage film industry to meet and make contacts.” he adds.
In addition to panel discussions on the state of heritage film distribution — ranging from theatrical exhibition through festival programming to streaming — Heritage Monday will feature industry screenings of restored films. Yousry Nasrallah’s 279-minute epic The Gate Of Sun (La Porte Du Soleil, 2004) will be presented, newly restored by Locarno Film Festival thanks to Berlin and Zurich-based partners at Cinegrell, as well as Cinémathèque Suisse’s restoration of Claude Goretta’s If The Sun Never Returns (Si Le Soleil Ne Revenait Pas, 1987) based on the novel by Swiss author Charles Ferdinand Ramuz.
In addition, the festival has teamed with Cinegrell to launch the Heritage Restoration Contest for feature films from around the world that premiered in 2009 or earlier, and are now in need of complete or partial restoration.
“We are really happy with the results for the first year,” Duffner says. “We received around 30 entries from every continent and they come from the early days of sound in the 1930s through to African films from the early 2000s.
“What surprised us was the number of entries — about a quarter — coming from Brazil,” he continues. “That probably has something to do with the political situation there in recent years under the Bolsonaro government because there wasn’t any public funding for film restoration and the Cinemateca was at risk.”
The winning title will be selected by a jury of three international industry professionals and announced during the Locarno Pro awards ceremony on August 6.
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