Locarno 2019: Instinct review
★★★☆☆ Fans of Game of Thrones will be used to seeing Carice van Houten as a sexually powerful witch whose actions frequently cross moral lines, […]
Locarno 2019: The Girl with a Bracelet review
★★★☆☆ A young girl is accused of a terrible crime and her family must come to terms with how much they really know about her […]
Locarno 2018: Festival roundup
With the 71st Locarno Film Festival coming to a close at the weekend and the prizes awarded, our contributor John Bleasdale notes some of the […]
Locarno 2018: Golden Leopard goes to Yeo Siew Hua’s A Land Imagined
The 71st Locarno Film Festival came to a close today and the awards have been announced. The top prize was taken by Yeo Siew Hua’s […]
Locarno 2018: Our picks of the festival
One of the oldest European film festivals, Locarno celebrates its 71st edition with a vibrant programme of new films featuring 13 world premieres. Artistic director […]
Locarno 2017: Madame Hyde review
★★★☆☆ Isabelle Huppert stars as a beleaguered French science teacher who, following a lightning strike, sporadically transforms into a fire lady. Serge Bozon’s absurdist revision […]
Locarno 2017: The First Lap review
★★★★☆ A young couple Ji-young (Kim Sae-byeok) and Su-hyeon (Cho Hyun-chul) reach a decisive moment in their lives in South Korean Kim Dae-hwan’s impressive slow-burner […]
Locarno 2017: Stories of Love That Cannot Belong to This World review
★★☆☆☆ Italian writer-director Francesca Comencini adapts her own fraught, hysterical novel for the big screen in Stories of Love that Cannot Belong to this World, […]
Locarno 2017: Sparring review
★★★☆☆ Premiering at this year’s Locarno International Film Festival, Samuel Jouy’s feature debut Sparring sees Mathieu Kassovitz star as an ageing slugger in a boxing […]
Locarno 2017: Person to Person review
★★☆☆☆ Multiple New York stories interlace in Salt Lake City-born director Dustin Guy Defa’s Locarno 2017 select Person to Person, an ensemble piece which hails […]
Locarno 2017: Good Manners review
★★★☆☆ A beguiling, baffling and occasionally beautiful work which premiered at this year’s Locarno International Film Festival, Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra’s Good Manners is […]
Locarno 2017: Gemini review
★★★☆☆ Hollywood is never happier than when looking at Hollywood. From the polished, ironic magnificence of The Player to the lo-fi grunge of The Canyons, […]
Locarno 2017: Dog review
★★☆☆☆ When Jacques Blanchot (Vincent Macaigne) loses everything – his wife, his son, his house – he finds comfort first in buying a dog, before […]
Locarno 2017: A Skin So Soft review
★★☆☆☆ Entering the strange world of bodybuilders, Denis Côté’s documentary A Skin So Soft offers a meditative – if at times obtuse – take that […]
Locarno 2017: Three Peaks review
★★★★☆ Alexander Fehling and Bérénice Bejo play a couple trying to make their own personal European Union work against the stunning backdrop of the Italian […]
Locarno 2017: Lucky review
★★★★☆ Starring Harry Dean Stanton, John Carroll Lynch’s Lucky is an ornery meditation on old age and extinction in New Mexico. Screening at this year’s […]
Locarno 2017: Winter Brothers review
★★★☆☆ Premiering at this year’s 70th Locarno International Film Festival, Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason’s debut film Winter Brothers is a bold, chilly, dark work with […]
Locarno 2017: Freedom review
★★☆☆☆ Jan Speckenbach’s second film Freedom feels as trapped by its portentous one-word title – there’s a quote about the River Lethe at the beginning […]