The Locarno International Film Festival will pay tribute to the Egyptian director Youssef Chahine, who died last weekend at the age of 82,with a special screening of his film Destiny (Al Massir) on the Piazza Grande on August 7.
This film had also been shown eleven years ago at the festival as part of the Piazza Grande nightly open-air programme in 1997.
'We were greatly saddened at the passing away of Locarno's dear friend, Youssef Chahine', the festival's artistic director Frederic Maire said. 'This extraordinary storyteller, who ranged across film genres so brilliantly, commanded admiration also for the courage of the positions he took, insisting on the importance of tolerance. Throughout the length of his career and his rich oeuvre, Chahine displayed a unique combination of political outrage and pleasure in narrative. He was a great auteur and a formidable provocateur.'
In 1996, a complete retrospective had been dedicated by the Locarno festival to Chahine's work with the filmmaker in attendance.

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