Five-time Academy Award-winning Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award, given to film personalities with extraordinary careers, at this year’s 77th Locarno Film Festival.
This will be accompanied by the screening of Alain Tanner’s Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1976) (Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l’an 2000), personally selected by Cuarón. Before the screening of Tanner’s film, Cuarón will discuss its significance both for his own work and film history in general. The conversation will be moderated by Frédéric Maire, director of Cinémathèque suisse, and is organized in collaboration with Les Films du Camélia.
Alfonso Cuarón is a five-time Academy Award-winner who has written and directed acclaimed films including Roma, Gravity, Children of Men, and Y tu mamá también. Cuarón’s upcoming project is Disclaimer for Apple TV+, a series starring Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline, set to launch on October 11th. In 2022, he produced Alice Rohrwacher’s Oscar-nominated short film Le pupille, making him the second person recognized in seven different Oscar categories. Cuarón’s other credits include Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Great Expectations, A Little Princess, and his directorial debut, Sólo con tu pareja. Cuarón continues to collaborate with longtime partner Anonymous Content.
Giona A. Nazzaro, Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival: “Alfonso Cuarón is a visionary author of agile and liberated imaginaries. Combining an experimental spirit with the sweep of great popular writers, he has managed to capture the imagination and hearts of millions of viewers, passing on the same wonder that he himself experienced as a child and teenager basking in the glow of classic Mexican cinema. From coming-of-age novels to science fiction, from melodrama to grand sagas like Harry Potter, Alfonso Cuarón has reinvented himself as an artist with each new film, always in the service of the pleasure of cinema, and has thus created a truly multifaceted body of work.”
The 77th Locarno Film Festival will take place from 7 to 17 August 2024.