Filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, described as “one of the most original and independent voices in contemporary American filmmaking” will receive the Pardo d’onore Manor award at the Locarno Film Festival on Friday August 12 in Piazza Grande. On Saturday August 13, she will be at the center of a panel conversation with the audience, who will also have a chance to see two films from her career during Locarno75: Meek’s Cutoff (2010) and Night Moves (2013).

With First Cow (2019), the opening film at Locarno 2020, Kelly Reichardt’s cinema secured her definitive place as one of the most exciting formal and poetic innovators in U.S. filmmaking, an auteur who casts new light on America and its stories. The Locarno Film Festival celebrates this innovative figure with the award of the Pardo d’onore Manor given each year to an outstanding personality in filmmaking of all eras.

“We regard the Festival’s 75th anniversary not just as a moment when we look back over the years, but also as an opportunity to imagine the future. The decision to pay tribute to Kelly Reichardt, a benchmark for contemporary cinema that is alive and constantly developing, reflects our desire to look ahead, embracing diversity and change. As an expression of U.S. cinema’s inexhaustible capacity for reinventing itself, Kelly Reichardt is perhaps the most exciting filmmaker working today.” – Giona A. Nazzaro, artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival

The Locarno Film Festival’s Pard d’onore has been awarded to cineastes such as Manoel de Oliveira, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ken Loach, Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Agnès Varda, Michael Cimino, Marco Bellocchio, John Waters and, in 2021, John Landis.