Switzerland: 65th Locarno Film Festival From Aug. 1–11

The 65th edition of Festival del Film will be held in Locarno, Switzerland from August 1–11, 2012 and it will showcase all aspects of film.

Regarded as one of the seven “Top Events of Switzerland,” the Festival del Film in Locarno is one of the world’s most important film festivals. It offers you the opportunity to see world and European premieres including the best of contemporary art house cinema — with works, styles and genres from the widest variety of countries. There are film performances more or less round the clock. Thanks to its unique atmosphere and the fascinating backdrop, however, performances in the Piazza Grande are still the favorite. This famous Locarno piazza, which attracts around 8000 spectators every evening, is a magical place and it is almost as though it was specially created for revealing the previews of next season’s films on one of Europe’s biggest screens.

The jury for the International Competition will include the American screenwriter, producer and director Roger Avary (Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, 1994; The Laws of Attraction, 2002), Seoul filmmaker Sang-soo Im (A Good Lawyer’s Wife, 2003; The Housemaid, 2010), French director, screenwriter and actress Noémie Lvovsky (La vie ne me fait pas peur, Silver Leopard “Youth Cinema” at Locarno in 1999; Camille redouble, 2012; Benoît Jacquot’s Farewell, My Queen, 2012) and London-based Swiss curator and writer Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of the Serpentine Gallery in London since 2006.

French Director Leos Carax will receive Locarno Film Festival’s Pardo D’Onore. The festival will screen Carax’s repertoire of five features that includes Holy Motors, 1984′s Boy Meets Girl, 1986′s Bad Blood, 1991′s The Lovers On The Bridge and 1999′s Pola X. Portmanteau work, Tokyo!, to which Carax contributed a segment, will also run.