The Golden Leopard at Locarno Film Festival’s 75th anniversary edition (August 3-13) has gone to Julia Murat’s Rule 34 (Regra 34), which had its world premiere in the Swiss festival’s international competition.
The award includes a cash prize of CHF 75,000 ($79,763) to be shared equally between the film’s director and producer.
Rule 34 is the story of a young law student whose sexual desires lead her into a world of violence and eroticism. It was part of the 2019 Berlinale Co-Production Market and last year received an award of €35,600 from Göteborg Film Fund. It is the fourth film from Murat, whose debut feature Found Memories bowed in Venice.
This is the second time in the history of the Locarno Film Festival that the top honour has gone to a film from Brazil - in 1967, the festival’s Grand Prix (not known then as Golden Leopard) went to Glauber Rocha for hisEntranced Earth.
During the awards ceremony which was held for the second year running on Saturday afternoon at the GranRex cinema, the international jury headed by the Swiss producer and consultant Michel Merkt presented the Special Jury Prize to Italy’s Alessandro Comodin for The Adventures Of Gigi The Law and the Leopard for best direction to the Costa Rican first-time filmmaker Valentina Maurel for Tengo Suenos Eléctricos.
Maurel’s Tengo Suenos Eléctricos also picked up the Leopards for best actress and best actor for Daniela Marin Navarro and Reinaldo Amien Gutiérrez respectively.
Filmmakers of the Present
The jury for the Filmmakers of the Present competition - Swiss producer Annick Mahnert, Indian director Gitanjali Rao and former executive director of the Israel Film Fund Katriel Schory - gave its Golden Leopard for best film to Slovak filmmaker Tereza Nvotova’s second feature Nightsiren.
The Pardo for best actress went to Ukraine’s Anastasia Karpenko for her performance in How Is Katia?, while Goran Marković received the Pardo for best actor for his role in Safe Place.
The best emerging director award was presented to Juraj Lerotić for his first feature Safe Place, while the Special Jury Prize Ciné+ offering a promotional campaign worth CHF 25,000 ($26,550) at the time of its theatrical release in France went to Ukrainian director Christina Tynkevych’s debut feature How Is Katia?.
A special mention was also given by the jury to Norwegian first-time filmmaker Franciska Eliassen for her feature Sister, What Grows Where Land Is Sick?
Other awards
The First Feature jury gave two special mention to Love Dog by Bianca Lucas and De Noche Los Gatos Son Pardos by Valentin Merz, while the CHF 15,000 ($15,930) first feature award went to Safe Place by Juraj Lerotić which had its world premiere in the festival’s Filmmakers of the Present section.
The CHF 20,000 award ($21,240) - launched this year and the first film festival prize sponsored by the WWF - was presented to Austrian documentary filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter for Matter Out Of Place as being the film “that best addresses topics relating to sustainability, ecology and the interspecies relationship.”
Two special mentions were also given to It Is Night In America by Ana Vaz and Sermon To The Fish by Hilal Baydarov.
International guests attending the festival’s second edition under the artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro included Matt Dillon, Laurie Anderson, Costa Gavras, Juliette Binoche, Todd Haynes, Nadav Lapid, Sophie Marceau, Jason Blum, Alexander Sokurov, Kelly Reichardt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Daisy Edgar-Jones, and UN Commissioner-General Maher Nasser.
Saturday evening’s closing ceremony on the Piazza Grande will be followed by the world premiere of André Schäfer’s documentary portrait of the Swiss novelist Martin Suter, Everything About Martin Suter. Everything But The Truth. which will be distributed in Switzerland by DCM Film Distribution.
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