Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has prompted a wealth of urgent nonfiction filmmaking documenting the harsh realities of life under siege, but comparatively little dramatic storytelling — a space that the new German-Ukrainian production “I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming” occupies with bold formal imagination and a commitment to illuminating lives neglected in wider views of
Arthouse movies are increasingly made for younger audiences who are replacing ageing stay-at-home baby boomers at Europe’s upscale cinema theaters. That impact is now working its way through new arthouse projects, seen at Locarno’s 2026 Match Me!, its vibrant co-production meet this year welcoming projects from Europe and Latin America, where a younger generation move
Thomas Heise‘s final film, “Übergang,” arrives at the Locarno Film Festival as both a portrait of one of Germany’s most influential documentary filmmakers and the completion of a project left unfinished by his death. Premiering in the festival’s out of competition section, the film traces Heise’s life through newly shot footage, archival material and photographs,
“My Father’s Kora” (“La Kora de Mon Père”), a Benin-Switzerland-Germany production, will have its world premiere Aug. 9 at Locarno’s Open Doors section, which has focused on 42 countries of the African continent since 2025. The film follows Souleymane Everston Adowo Freudenreich, an Afro-German trans man who travels to Dakar, Senegal, to repair his father’s
Boutique sales company Odd Slice Films has acquired worldwide rights to documentary “Concrete Land,” the debut feature of Palestinian-Jordanian director Asmahan Bkerat, ahead of its world premiere in Locarno Film Festival‘s Semaine de la Critique. Eight years in the making, “Concrete Land” follows one of the last Afro-Palestinian Bedouin families living on the outskirts of
Isabella Rossellini has received the Excellence Award at Locarno. “The prize I’m receiving tonight is for excellence, which is something I haven’t heard very often,” she said during the opening ceremony. “I’m very proud of it and, above all, so moved because my father received this back in 1948 for his film ‘Germany, Year Zero.’
