Locarno’s industry platform Locarno Pro sits right at the heart of the Swiss film festival, housing all its activities for arthouse film professionals – from sales agents, distributors, exhibitors, producers through to filmmakers.
Running from August 7-12, Locarno Pro is home to initiatives including work-in-progress strand First Look, networking platform Match Me!, co-development programme Alliance 4 Development, financing strand Locarno Investment Community and the StepIn conference.
It also envelopes the wide-ranging co-production platform Open Doors and the classic film focus Heritage Online, as well as initiatives aimed at young professionals such as the U30 think tank and workshop programme Industry Academy.
Last year, some 1,900 people attended – around 1,750 in person, the remainder online – a 25% increase year-on-year, says the head of Locarno Pro, Markus Duffner, now in his fifth year running the industry platform.
“We’re aiming at having Locarno Pro highly populated again this year,” he says.
One of the key focuses, he explains, is supporting emerging producers and filmmakers through its Alliance 4 Development, Match Me!, First Look, Open Doors, U30 and the Industry Academy programmes.
“Through all these activities we incubate around 90-100 talents a year,” estimates Duffner. “It’s an impressive number.”
Many go on to achieve great things. For example, Match Me! alumni include Latvian producer and writer Matiss Kaza who won an Oscar last year for animation Flow, and Thomas Hakim, the French producer of the Payal Kapadia’ Cannes 2024 Grand Prix winner All We Imagine As Light.
Recent titles to have taken part in First Look include Karlovy Vary 2023 premiere Empty Nets by Behrooz Karamizade, and Venice Critics’ Week 2023 title Life Is Not A Competition, But I’m Winning by Julia Fuhr Mann.
Finance focus
A development for this year is the launch of the Locarno Investment Community, which aims to connect film financiers and philanthropists with the European film industry.
Locarno is inviting around 40-50 film financiers to industry events and networking opportunities, matching them with emerging filmmaking talent. Attendees are likely to include the Prada Film Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies through to Axio’s Together Fund.
The programme has been designed in collaboration with Oxbelly, a European nonprofit based in Greece that holds a year-round initiative for US film investors and philanthropists.
“We will talk a lot about private financing and alternatives to public funding,” says Duffner, who says a growing number of productions mean there is more competition for public finance – which itself is shrinking in some European countries.
Elsewhere, Alliance 4 Development (A4D) co-development programme is hosting 11 film projects from Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland for its 10th edition at Locarno. They include Primo Viaggio by Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman, the directors of Venice Horizons title Vittoria, which is produced by Nanni Moretti and Benedetta Barroero through Italy’s Sacher Film, and Love and Rebellion by Sarah Miro Fischer produced by Titus Kreyenberg and Nina Sophie Bayer-Seel through Germany’s Una Film. It follows Fischer’s well received debut The Good Sister, which played in Berlinale’s Panorama this year.
Projects previously presented as part of A4D include Mo Harawe’s The Village Next To Paradise, which premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard last year.
Works-in-progress initiative First Look will focus on Canadian cinema this year, showcasing six films currently in post-production in collaboration with Telefilm Canada. Each will be presented by their producers to sales agents, buyers, festival programmers, and representatives from post-production funds.
Meanwhile, Locarno Pro’s Open Doors co-production platform and talent development programme, is focusing on emerging African filmmakers and producers for its next four-year cycle. The previous three editions showcased emerging filmmakers from Latin America and the Caribbean.
The 14th edition of the StepIn think-tank, an invitation-only event for around 50 European and international industry execs, will again be held at the Hotel Belvedere. The day-long event will comprise panel, talks and roundtables, and will focus on four key themes: private versus public film financing; the avoidance of risk-taking in distribution; shrinking press coverage for arthouse films; and the gender, race and disability inequalities still plaguing the film industry.
The goal, says Duffner, is to offer an environment for industry professionals to openly and freely share their own experience – and to discover ways to implement different behaviours, practices and business models.
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