The Locarno International Film Festival will be celebrating its 60th anniversary this year by dedicating its Retrospective, entitled Back In Locarno, to those filmmakers whose careers were significantly advanced by the initial exposure at the Swiss festival.

Among those directors expected to attend screenings in the Retrospective are Marco Bellocchio, Istvan Szabo, Raul Ruiz, Marco Tullio Giordana and Catherine Breillat who will be invited to present the original film that led to their discovery.

According to artistic director Frederic Maire, the aim of the Retrospective is 'to continue the Locarno Festival's tradition of stimulating exchange and bring together auteurs who we hold dear with the public and the films that have marked the history of this event.'

Meanwhile, past Leopard winners Diego Lerman, Saverio Costanzo and Kornel Mundruczo are among the members for juries at the festival between Aug 1-11.

The International Competition jury will include the filmmakers Jia Zhangke, winner of the 2006 Golden Lion in Venice for Still Life, and Saverio Costanzo who won the 2004 Locarno Golden Leopard with Private, while the Filmmakers of the Present Competition jury includes the Spanish journalist, film programmer and historian Nuria Vidal, and Argentina's Diego Lerman who won the 2002 Silver Leopard with Suddenly.

The Leopard for the Best First Feature, the best first film in the two main competitions, will be awarded by a jury composed of Tunisian film-maker Raja Amari, Portuguese producer Francisco Villa-Lobos, and Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo whose Pleasant Days won the Silver Leopard in 2002.

Moreover, the Leopards of Tomorrow jury for the Locarno's restructured short film section will include, among others, German actor-director Christopher Buchholz, French short filmmaker Lyes Salem, and Belgian director Olivier Masset-Depasse who twice won prizes in Locarno for his shorts and subsequently directed the feature film Cages.

Topics