The Italian auteur is to receive the Pardo d’onore at the Locarno Film Festival in August.

Italian director Marco Bellocchio is to be honored with the Pardo d’onore Swisscom at this year’s Locarno Film Festival.

Bellocchio’s debut feature Fists In The Pocket screened at Locarno in 1965, winning the Vela d’argento, and the film will play again this year as a special Piazza Grande screening on August 14. The restored print is being sold internationally by The Match Factory.

Bellocchio will also take part in a masterclass in the Spazio Cinema.

A regular visitor to Locarno, the Italian auteur’s Victory March played in competition in 1976. He was president of the jury in 1997 and in 1998, the Festival featured a major retrospective of his work.

Previous recipients of the Pardo d’onore include Jean-Luc Godard, Ken Loach, Sidney Pollack, William Friedkin, JIA Zhang-ke, Alain Tanner, Werner Herzog and, in 2014, Agnès Varda.

The 68th edition of Locarno runs August 5-15.

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