This year, for the second time, the Locarno program was organized by a new team of artistic directors, Giona A. Nazzaro. However, the festival’s current reputation with significant space for aesthetically radical film art has been built between 2012 and 2018 by Carlo Chatrian, Berlinale’s current artistic director.

How Locarno’s profile has changed with Nazzaro’s arrival will be seen most clearly in the coming weeks. Among the seventeen world premieres of international competitions, we will not find any famous writer figures. Except for the experimental historical essay Skazka filmed by Alexander Sokurov.

Each year, the Piazza Grande section demands the same attention as the main competition, whose evening projection for eight thousand spectators takes place in the historic square in the heart of Locarno. Just a little arty, the genre selection is far more aimed at offering entertaining films that are widely accessible to viewers. Like David Leitch’s comedy thriller Bullet Train, which officially opened the festival on Wednesday, it has since hit theaters around the world, including the Czech Republic.

Giona A. Nazzaro described him as “a fantastic action actor full of great humor and energy, who proved that it is possible to make a blockbuster that is very entertaining, but also very intelligent”.

A group of eccentric assassins led by the incredibly fragile Brad Pitt, a speeding Japanese express train, a silver briefcase filled with money, and a big crook await him at the final station. But twists and turns don’t really matter. The occasional serious psychology of the story characters is a bit dangerous in this case, and Bullet Train, on the other hand, is at its strongest when it’s just toggling between crazy sitcoms and pure action.

In the 75th year of the Locarno Festival, three Czech tracks will also be abandoned. Director Tereza Nvotová will present his second feature film Světlonoc, a Slovak-Czech co-production, in the Cinesti del presente competition. After Veronika Lišková’s long-awaited documentary, Visitors, the parallel part of Criticism Week, organized by the Swiss Journalists Association, reached out. And with the short film Asterión, Francesco Montagner returns to Locarno, whose debut Brotherhood received one of the top prizes here last year.

IFF in Locarno will also commemorate the careers of important faces in the world of cinema. American actor Matt Dillon personally received the award for lifetime contribution to cinematography on Thursday, among other award recipients we can find iconic American director of independent film Kelly Reichardt or leading film and television producer Jason Blum (Whiplash, BlacKkKlansman, Uteč).

Festival judges will present their awards at the closing ceremony next Saturday, August 13.