Locarno 2026 opens with French premiere and Rossellini tribute
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The 79th Locarno Film Festival has taken place in Switzerland, opening with the world premiere of "The Green Eyes", a French co-directed feature, screened to an audience of around 8,000 at the festival's lakeside Piazza Grande venue. The opening ceremony also saw actor Isabella Rossellini presented with the festival's Excellence Award, setting the tone for a programme organisers say celebrates the artistic and cultural significance of cinema.
The line-up included the second edition of the Open Doors initiative, spotlighting emerging African filmmakers with particular emphasis on female directors and producers, curated by Suzsi Bankuti. The festival also featured a retrospective titled "Red & Black: Hollywood Left and the Blacklist", curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht, examining the anti-communist purges of Hollywood's McCarthy era and their impact on filmmakers and other creative professionals.
- Locarno Film Festival's 79th edition opened with "The Green Eyes" premiere
- Isabella Rossellini received the festival's Excellence Award
- Programme featured African cinema showcase and Hollywood Blacklist retrospective
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The 79th Locarno Film Festival is one of the world's oldest and most respected film festivals, held each summer in the Swiss town of Locarno on the shore of Lake Maggiore. It is known for screening films outdoors to huge crowds at the Piazza Grande, and for balancing high-profile premieres with support for lesser-known and independent cinema.
This year's edition features two notable strands alongside its main programme. Open Doors, now in its second year, is a scheme dedicated to promoting emerging filmmakers from Africa, with a particular emphasis on female directors and producers. Separately, a retrospective looks back at the "Hollywood Blacklist," the period during the McCarthy era in the United States when filmmakers and other industry figures were investigated, blacklisted or driven out of work over suspected communist sympathies.
The festival also presents honorary awards to established figures in cinema, recognising their body of work, and opens with a red-carpet world premiere that draws international attention to the event each year.
Coverage
- Deadline — Locarno Film Festival Head Giona A. Nazzaro Talks Mission To Liberate Spectators In The Age Of The Algorithm As 79th Edition Kicks Off
- Variety — Locarno Open Doors 2026: Next Gen African Tales of Miraculous Snowfalls, Lost Dreams, an African Keyboard Prodigy and New Heroes
- Variety — ‘The Blacklist was a Plague’ — Locarno Retrospective Curator Ehsan Khoshbakht Talks About What We Can Learn from the Intolerance of the Past