The prestigious Locarno Film Festival (3 – 13 August 2022) will present for the first time ever four Slovak films in their world premiere. In addition to these, Slovak cinema will also be represented in the non-competitive programme for kids.
The Nightsiren by Tereza Nvotová will be screened in the Concorso Cineasti del presente, a section of first and second feature-length films. Years after having fled under mysterious circumstances, Charlotte, a thirty year old woman, returns to her native village in the Slovak mountains. Her presence raises the suspicions of the local villagers who thought her dead for years. They fear her arrival has awakened the witch that they believe resides on the mountain.
The Pardi di domani is a territory for expressive experimentation and innovative formal poetry and consists of three competitions. Ana Nedeljković and Nikola Majdak Jr. will vie for the awards with their animated short Money and Happiness in the Concorso internazionale competition. Thematically and technologically, the film follows i footsteps of their previous works Rabbitland (2013) and Untravel (2018). The hamsters live and work in Hamsterland, a perfect state with a perfect economy. The GDP grows steadily, there is no unemployment, and 100 % of the population declare themselves to be happy. Of course, just as in any attempt to arrange a perfect society by force, the world of the hamsters also has its dark side, which we gradually discover in the course of the film. The Concorso Corti d’autore competition will present Asterión, a short experimental film by Francesco Montagner, who won the main prize of the Concorso Cineasti del presente last year for his feature-length film Brotherhood. Under the burning sun, a solitary bull awaits tireless, whilst a man jumps deep into the darkest waters of his persona, in their common attempt to defeat death.
The Semaine de la critique is an independent section, created in 1990 by the Swiss Association of Film Journalists in partnership with the Locarno Film Festival. Every year, it showcases seven documentary features. This year’s selection includes The Visitors (d. Veronika Lišková), in which a young anthropologist, Zdenka, moves with her family to Svalbard, Norway, to study how life is changing in polar regions. After falling in love with her new home, she discovers that not just icebergs and permafrost are vanishing in the Arctic. She has to work out to what extent she can get involved in the local community that she originally only intended to observe.
The selection for children and teenagers Locarno Kids: Screenings will present How I Learned to Fly (d. Radivoje Andrić), that won the ECFA Award for Best European Film at the BUFF Malmö festival.
