At the Locarno Film Festival, director James Gray challenged the idea that men are barred from expressing tenderness, arguing that society constructs masculinity around earning money and providing rather than engaging with love or vulnerability. He made the comments during a press event where he also received the festival's Career Leopard honour and presented an outdoor screening of his new film Paper Tiger, starring Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller.

Gray explained that Paper Tiger is autobiographically inspired, drawing on the collapse of his own close but troubled family after his mother died of glioblastoma, his father faced legal trouble and he and his brother left home within the same two-month period. Reflecting on the film's characters, he argued that systems such as business negotiation reward coldness over care, a "cruelty" he suggested has historically excluded men from embracing emotional openness while women, despite facing their own oppression, have retained closer access to it.