On 5 August, the 79th Locarno Film Festival will open with the film *Les yeux verts* by Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Troulin (France, Belgium, Sweden 2026). The Ecumenical Jury will award a prize of 10,000 CHF to a film from the International Competition.
The festival’s main attraction is the open-air screenings on the Piazza Grande, where also the opening film is shown. Alongside the international competition, there are other competition sections such as the Concorso Cineasti del Presente, dedicated to the ‘cinema of the future’, and the Pardi di Domani, featuring three competitions (international, national and short film) for emerging filmmakers. The retrospective, entitled “Red & Black – Hollywood Left and the Blacklist”, is dedicated to the American filmmakers who were suspected of communism during the paranoid McCarthy era and were either unable to work at all or could only continue under a pseudonym. The Histoire(s) du Cinéma section also showcases film history with newly restored classics. The festival’s honorary awards go to Isabella Rossellini (Excellence Award), Darren Aronovsky (Parda d’Onore), James Gray (Pardo alla Carriera) and Asia Argento (Life Achievement Award).