Asia Argento, the Italian actress, filmmaker, and musician, is set to receive the Life Achievement Award at the 79th Locarno Film Festival, taking place from August 5 to 15 in Switzerland.
Argento will be honored on August 13, where she will also present her latest film, Jorge Thielen Armand’s Death Has No Master (La muerte no tiene dueño), which premiered earlier this year at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight (Quinzaine des cinéastes).
Argento made her debut in 1986 as a child in Lamberto Bava’s Demons 2, and later went on to star in Nanni Moretti’s Palombella rossa in 1989. The actress has made a name for herself by featuring in genre films, auteur cinema, and self-portraiture, playing a role in both Italiana and international ensembles. She has received two David di Donatello awards for Best Actress for Carlo Verdone’s Perdiamoci di vista (1994) and Peter Del Monte’s Traveling Companion (1996).
Argento has performed alongside many notable directors, including her father, Dario Argento, in the films Trauma (1993) and The Stendhal Syndrome (1996). She has also worked with Patrice Chéreau (Queen Margot, 1994), Abel Ferrara (New Rose Hotel, 1998 and Go Go Tales, 2007), Gus Van Sant (Last Days, 2005), George A. Romero (Land of the Dead, 2005), Sofia Coppola (Marie Antoinette, 2006), Olivier Assayas (Boarding Gate, 2007), Catherine Breillat (The Last Mistress, 2007), Bertrand Bonello (On War, 2008), and Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel (Vera, 2022). Aside from her career as an actress, she has also served as a director in the films Scarlet Diva (2000), The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004), and Misunderstood (2014).
Giona A. Nazzaro, Locarno’s artistic director, describes Argento as “an artist who has always managed to reimagine what it means to make films, constantly challenging herself and taking personal risks. Driven by a radical creative calling, through which she has probed the limits and explored the possibilities of cinema, both as an actress and as a director, Asia Argento embodies a vitality, generosity, and restlessness that stands as among the most vivid representations of all that cinema still has to offer.”
The Life Achievement Award at the Locarno Film Festival was created in 2011 to honor individuals with an outstanding film career. Previous winners of the award include Alfonso Cuarón, Renzo Rossellini, and Matt Dillon.
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