"The Green Eyes" ("Les Yeux Verts"), a refugee adventure drama by French writer-directors Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh, will open the 79th Locarno Film Festival on Wednesday evening with its world premiere on the Piazza Grande. The film matters as a rare attempt to tell a refugee story from a child's point of view, drawing on Resignation Syndrome, a real but rare condition in which traumatised refugee children fall into a coma-like withdrawal state, to explore themes of displacement and resilience.

The story follows 11-year-old Chaya and her family, refugees living in France's Landes region, whose brother Nour falls into a mysterious sleep when the family faces deportation; Chaya sets out to enter his dreams and wake him. The cast includes newcomer Douae Butarbuch M'Zaouki alongside Sayyid El Alami and Anamaria Vartolomei, with the screenplay co-written by the directors and Guillaume Laurant (Amélie). It is a France-Belgium-Sweden co-production, with Kinology handling international sales, and its Locarno premiere follows the presentation of an Excellence Award to Isabella Rossellini.