The Locarno Film Festival commenced its 79th edition with the world premiere of The Green Eyes, a drama following an 11-year-old whose family faces deportation in southwestern France. The opening ceremony at the lakeside Piazza Grande venue gathered thousands of spectators and honoured Isabella Rossellini with a prestige award, alongside other industry figures. The film's focus on resignation syndrome—a condition observed among asylum-seeking children—reflects the festival's engagement with contemporary migration debates.

Artistic Director Giona A. Nazzaro articulated his curatorial philosophy as a deliberate departure from algorithmic content recommendation, positioning the festival as a space where diverse cinematic forms operate with equal standing and audiences encounter unexpected work outside their predicted preferences. He frames cinema attendance as an interruption to consumer-driven viewing habits, drawing on his experience leading Venice Critics' Week to construct programming that challenges conventional audience expectations and liberates spectators from predictable curation patterns.