The 79th Locarno Film Festival, running from 5 to 15 August 2026, includes several films built around real-life figures, both celebrated and notorious. The Hollywood Reporter has highlighted a selection of these titles, noting how the festival's programme draws on true stories to explore fame and infamy across documentary, essay-film and fiction formats.

Among the standouts is Albert Serra's out-of-competition entry "Sixteen Moments of My Life", built around a concert performance by German actress and singer Ingrid Caven, known for her collaborations with former husband Rainer Werner Fassbinder and a role in Luca Guadagnino's "Suspiria". Also screening out of competition is "Bruton", director Vincent Grashaw's biopic starring Theo Rossi as Bryan Bruton, a man who served a decade in a Florida prison after a fatal hit-and-run and later found fame with a YouTube series about prison life. The festival's line-up also reportedly features works touching on a Lebanese documentarian and a fiction feature about Heinrich Himmler's masseur.