Monica Bellucci is part of the Locarno Film Festival conversation as Giona A. Nazzaro unveiled a lineup of more than 200 titles on Thursday, with almost half set as world premieres. For a festival built around discovery, that is a heavy lift: it gives programmers more room to launch new work while keeping established names in the frame.
Giona A. Nazzaro’s 200-plus slate
More than 200 titles is the headline number, and almost half of them being world premieres turns the program into a first-look market as much as a festival slate. Nazzaro, the festival’s artistic director, described the approach as “curated diversity,” a phrase that matches the scale here better than a narrow prestige selection would.
Hong Sangsoo, Gurvinder Singh, Denis Côté, Florin Șerban, and Isabelle Stever are all in the lineup, which means the draw is not built around a single marquee title. Instead, the festival is spreading attention across a wide field of filmmakers, from familiar auteurs to newer voices.
The Green Eyes opens Locarno
Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh’s The Green Eyes opens the festival, and Nazzaro called it a film for a large audience that is also very ambitious and has something to say. The film follows a refugee child dealing with trauma after his father leaves the family home to escape deportation and falls into a deep sleep, with fantasy elements layered onto social-issue material.
That is the contradiction running through this lineup: the festival wants to bring back unpredictability and surprise, while also relying on a curated process designed to make deliberate choices. Nazzaro’s own line about algorithms shaping everyday life gives the program’s stance a sharper edge; the festival is betting that audiences still want films they did not arrive expecting.
Ketticè and the named projects
Giovanni Tortorici’s sophomore feature Ketticè is in the mix, with Luca Guadagnino attached as producer. You Don’t Belong Here, directed by Florin Șerban, centers on a teenage boy who kills an old Romani man, while I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming is credited to Isabelle Stever and The Green Eyes comes from Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh.
Isabella Rossellini, Darren Aronofsky, Olivia Wilde, and Caleb Landry Jones are among the big names Nazzaro has recruited to trek to Locarno, but the lineup details here stop short of matching each of them to a specific work. That leaves the sharpest practical question for attendees and buyers: which titles will actually carry those names into Locarno’s rooms.
