Actor, Riz Ahmed who was set to receive the Davide Campari Excellence Award at the upcoming Locarno Film Festival will no longer be in attendance. His world premiere of Dammi (Yann Mounir Demange, 2023) will still take place on Opening Night in Piazza Grande and the screening of Mughal Mowgli (Mogul Mowgli, Bassam Tariq, 2020) in the Histoire(s) du cinéma section is also confirmed.
Stellan Skarsgård, recipient of the Leopard Club Award, will forgo the award in solidarity with the strike. He will be in Locarno for the screening of his new film What Remains (Ran Huang, 2022) in the Fuori concorso section. The Award ceremony on the Piazza Grande and the Conversation with the audience on August 5th have been cancelled.
The screening of Theater Camp (2023) in the Piazza Grande on August 11th accompanied by co-director Nick Lieberman will continue as planned but co-director and actor Molly Gordon, as well as actors Ben Platt and Noah Galvin, will no longer be in attendance.
The Festival is also working with the team of the film Shayda (Noora Niasari, 2023), for which Cate Blanchett is executive producer, to finalize the terms of her participation.
In their statement, the festival said, “The Locarno Film Festival sees the ongoing strike as a sign of the problems troubling the contemporary film industry. We support a constructive discussion and resolution between the parties involved and respectfully accept the decisions of our guests.”
The 76th Locarno Film Festival will take place from August 2 to 12, 2023.