Romanian filmmaker Florin Serban’s You Don’t Belong Here has won the top prize, the Golden Leopard, in the international competition at this year’s Locarno Film Festival.
The film tells the story of a physician who is devastated to learn the police suspect the teenage son he has raised alone of the murder of an old Romani man. The doctor discovers his son has another life at night, cycling through town vandalising cars with a gang of masked vigilantes.
Adrian Vancica and Teodor Butanescu lead the cast, with Butanescu also picking up a Locarno special mention prize for his role. You Don’t Belong Here also won the Europa Cinemas label prize.
Serban produced the film for Bucharest-based Fantascope Films while the UK’s Reason8 handles international sales. Serban’s debut feature If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle premiered in competition at the Berlinale in 2010, winning the Silver Bear.
Locarno’s Golden Leopard comes with a CHF 75,000 ($92,200) prize to be shared equally between the director and the producer. The international competition jury was headed by Belgian director Fabrice du Welz.
Meanwhile, the jury prize was won by Matheus Farias and Enock Carvalho’s The Riverbank. The erotic thriller, set in Recife in Brazil, follows young cleaner whose nightly search for intimacy leads him to a magnetic fisherman until violence closes in.
The Riverbank is a Brazilian-German co-production produced by Gatopardo Filmes, Mocambique Audiovisual, Vitrine Filmes, and Tama Filmproduktion.
The best director prize went to South Korean director Hong Sangsoo’s family drama Nowhere To Lay My Eyes, which also won a best performance Leopard award for lead Kim Minhee as well as the Ecumenical Jury prize.
Monica Bellucci also won a best performance prize for her role in Italian filmmaker Giovanni Tortorici’s coming-of-age drama Ketticè.
Among the international competition films, Far From The Trees by Meritxell Colell Aparicio won the Firpresci prize.
Meanwhile, Locarno’s Cinema of the Present competition, which showcases first and second features, was won by Alessandra Sanguinetti’s La Ilusión De Un Verano Sin Fin, which follows two Argentinian cousins as they grow up, fall in love, raise children and slowly drift toward separate lives over two and a half decades.
UK director Beatrice Gibson won the best emerging director prize for At Night, centring on a filmmaker scouting locations for her film.
The special jury prize went to Mohanad Yaqubi’s Revolutionaries Never Die. The performance prizes were won by Idrissu Tontie Jr. for Ego Reach We All (Our Time Will Come) by Amartei Armar and Manal Issa for L’estive by Naël Khleifi and Lisa Debauche. There was a special mention for Los Días Libres by Lucila Mariani and Hanabi by Ana Vaz.
Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro said: “A vital and contemporary slate of awards, in close dialogue with the transformations in the industry and in our world today. Whether in highlighting the Romania of You Don’t Belong Here, or the Brazil of The Riverbank, or the South Korea of Nowhere to Lay My Eyes, the jury upheld the primacy of form and of language, while remaining, in its choices, completely accessible, as the packed and engaged screenings of all competitions demonstrated throughout the festival.”
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