Tasks from Austria, Switzerland, Canada and Italy have been among the many winners eventually night time’s Locarno Professional Awards (Sunday 10 August).
Locarno Professional, the trade platform of the Locarno Movie Pageant, handed out prizes to initiatives in its work-in-progress part First Look, co-development programme Alliance 4 Improvement, the Antaviana Spanish Previews Award and the Locarno Heritage Restoration Contest.
First Look
The 14th version of Locarno Professional’s works-in-progress part First Look centered this yr on six function movies in post-production from Canada.
Geneviève Dulude-De Celles’ Nina Roza picked up two awards: Toronto-based City Put up Manufacturing’s First Look Award, which covers post-production companies as much as a price of CHF50,000, and the Jannuzzi Smith Award for the design of a global poster value €10,000.
The jury mentioned the challenge “stood out for its lovely integration of music and artwork, its performances and a charming narrative that explores identification, exile and the thought of dwelling and household”.
Nina Roza was represented in Locarno by the movie’s gross sales agent Marc Nauleau of Finest Buddy Perpetually, who attended Locarno for the very first time this yr and revealed after the ceremony that the screening within the First Look showcase had additionally been his first expertise of seeing the movie on the large display screen.
In the meantime, the Music Library & SFX/Acorde Award providing €45,000 in music supervision companies at Music Library & SFX’s labs was offered to writer-producer-director Bryce Hodgson for his queer-love fantasy Thanks To The Exhausting Work Of The Elephants. Nick Butler’s second function Lunar Sway picked up the Cineground Award, value CHF15,000 of picture ending companies, in addition to Le Movie Français’s award of promoting area to a price of €5,600.
Alliance 4 Improvement
Alliance 4 Improvement (A4D), for initiatives in improvement from Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, offered two awards for the primary time by the Geneva-based Masé sound postproduction studios.
The Masé Studio Postproduction Award, value CHF25,000 in postproduction companies, went to Goran Rebić’s In The Hidden, based mostly on Ljuba Arnautović’s eponymous first novel from 2018 about her grandmother and her circle of relatives historical past, to be produced by the Amour Fou Group with Zuzana Mistriková of Slovakia’s PubRes.
Accepting the award with Rebić, producer Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu of Amour Fou Vienna careworn the challenge’s topical relevance “in these instances the place authoritarian populist regimes are gaining energy all over the place”.
“It is rather essential to look again on the historical past of Europe and the rise of fascism within the Nineteen Thirties and on the individuals who resisted,” he mentioned. “This award is empowering us to maneuver ahead with the story of a powerful lady who mentioned ‘No’ to fascism and confirmed resistance for greater than 11 years.”
The Masé Studio Award, value CHF3,000, went to Swiss director Valentin Merz for his thriller drama Darkish Chocolate which follows on from his debut function De Noches Los Gatos Son Pardos that premiered in Locarno’s worldwide competitors in 2022.
The sound studio gave an extra particular award – CHF10,000 value of postproduction companies – to Portuguese-Swiss filmmaker-actress Jenna Hasse for her second function Snow.
The atmospheric drama set towards the spectacular backdrop of the Zermatt ski and mountain resort throughout one Christmas will see Hasse reunited with Langfilm’s Oliver Zobrist, who beforehand produced her debut Longing For The World which premiered on the Berlinale in 2023.
In the meantime, Austrian writer-director Simon Maria Kubiena’s debut function The Flowering Of A Chimera – described by the producers of the just lately launched Vienna-based Chimera Movie as “a delicate, intimate story of therapeutic between two males throughout generations” – took dwelling two prizes: the Alphapanda Market Breakout Award of consultancy companies to the worth of €3,500 and the MIDPOINT Consulting Award for an in-depth on-line script consultancy.
French writer-director Anne Zinn-Justin’s debut function, the female-driven eco-thriller Najma And Salomé, was awarded DreamAgo’s CHF5,000 script consultancy residency sponsored by the Valais Movie Fee and together with script doctoring by Christopher Hampton, whereas the experimental movie Solastalgia by the directing duo Yoer Gasmi and Mauro Mazzocchi obtained the Ticino Movie Fee Residence Award consisting of two days of location scouting value CHF4,000 and a Letter of Intent for monetary assist of as much as CHF 12,000 if all or a part of the movie is shot within the Canton of Ticino.
Tasks offered as a part of the A4D platform in previous years have included Mo Harawe’s Un Sure Regard 2024 premiere The Village Subsequent To Paradise, and Willy Hans’ Der Fleck which had its world premiere at Locarno final yr.
As well as, two initiatives from A4D’s 2023 line-up have gone into manufacturing this yr.
Schuldenberg Movies’ manufacturing of Ann Oren’s thriller drama Objet just lately accomplished principal images at places in Germany and Luxembourg on the finish of July, and an October begin is scheduled for the taking pictures of the primary co-production between Austria and Slovenia with Andrina Mracnikar’s Mila/Marija tracing a narrative of partisans’ armed resistance in Carinthia.
Spanish Previews
The primary version of a Spanish Previews showcase in Locarno wrapped with the Antaviana Spanish Previews Award going to Adrià Guxens’ hybrid documentary Lóngquán: The Dragon Spring consisting of a voucher value €10,000, together with modifying rooms, color grading suites, sound combine rooms and closing deliveries.
Heritage Restoration Contest
Sunday’s awards ceremony additionally noticed the announcement of the winner of the third version of Locarno’s Heritage Restoration Contest picked from greater than 30 purposes from all over the world of function movies that premiered in or earlier than 2010.
The 1975 movie Letter From My Village by the late Senegalese filmmaker Safi Faye will obtain a full restoration progress by the Cinegrell movie lab, with the newly restored model being proven at subsequent yr’s Locarno Movie Pageant.
“Due to this restoration, this highly effective and poetic first function will now be rediscovered by new generations,” the competition’s worldwide jury mentioned.
They added: “With this alternative, we rejoice not solely the movie’s enduring relevance, but additionally the legacy of a lady who paved the best way for African cinema.”
Final yr’s winner, Liliana Cavani’s 1969 movie I Cannibali (The Yr Of The Cannibals), was offered within the restored 4K model within the competition’s Histoire(s) du cinéma: Heritage On-line part on August 8 and 11.