Asia Argento is to receive Locarno Film Festival’s Life Achievement Award, recognising a career that has spanned acting, filmmaking and music since her child-screen debut in 1986. She said the honour was unexpected and emotionally significant, viewing it as validation for work that has often challenged expectations of women in cinema.

At the festival’s 79th edition, Argento will also present Jorge Thielen Armand’s postcolonial thriller Death Has No Master, which premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. The award ceremony is scheduled for Locarno’s Piazza Grande before about 8,000 people, while Argento has also joined a documentary on late American supermodel Gia Carangi as an executive producer.