The Locarno Film Festival kicked off its 79th edition last night (August 5) with the world premiere of Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh’s The Green Eyes (Les Yeux Verts) and a tribute to legendary actress, model and filmmaker Isabella Rossellini.
Locarno’s famed Piazza Grande was packed with an audience of more than 8,000 seated on bright yellow chairs on a warm, humid evening.
Artistic director Giona A Nazzaro began by paying a warm tribute and leading a round of applause for two of his Locarno predecessors who died this year: Moritz de Hadeln and Lili Hinstin. “As you know, every year we meet a lot of films in great numbers,” he said. ”And with every film that we see, with every film we discuss, we try also to honour the path that has been set by our predecessors. This year we lost two of them, whose work was greatly influential in the history of the Locarno Film Festival.”
Rossellini, the Italian American star of films such as Blue Velvet, Conclave and La Chimera, was greeted with warm applause from the crowd on receiving the festival’s Excellence Award.
“This award fills me with pride,” she told the crowd, noting that her father, the Italian director Roberto Rossellini, won the top prize at Locarno in 1948 for his film Germania Anno Zero, while her producer brother Renzo received the Locarno Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023.
“To be on par with my father and my brother fills me with great emotion,” said Rossellini, who will take part in a conversation event at the festival today. Rossellini will also present her 2008-9 web series Green Porno, as well as shorts including the Guy Maddin-directed My Dad is 100 Years Old from 2005.
’The Green Eyes’ open
The directors and cast of Locarno opener The Green Eyes then took to the stage ahead of its premiere. The film is the story of an Iraqi refugee family whose claim for residency is rejected by French authorities, prompting the older son to fall into a deep and mysterious sleep, a rare condition known as resignation syndrome that can be triggered by the refusal of asylum applications.
It is the highly-anticipated second feature from French filmmaking duo Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh, whose directorial debut Gagarine was selected for the 2020 edition of Cannes.
Liatard told the audience The Green Eyes was doubly resonant as it was filmed in the Landes area of France, which has been badly affected by wildfires in recent weeks. He cited it as an example of a place where people can lose everything no matter where they live.
“We wanted to try to put faces to stories that are sometimes a bit dehumanised, or just numbers,” she said. “This is a single story that we filmed last year in the Landes region, where there were some major forest fires not long ago. Many people had to evacuate their homes, losing everything overnight. It was very close to home for us — we were there in the Landes. It made us realise that you can lose everything overnight.”
Festival president Maja Hoffmann earlier declared the festival open and said: “Thank you all for coming, it is really wonderful to see right now. This is a really special moment to see all the seats that are moving somehow in the light.”
The Locarno Film Festival runs until August 15.
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