The 10 best films from the 2018 Locarno Film Festival

As an indi­ca­tion of its ever-grow­ing stature on the inter­na­tion­al film fes­ti­val cir­cuit, the cur­rent artis­tic direc­tor of Switzerland’s Locarno Fes­ti­val for many years, Car­lo Cha­tri­an, has been snapped up to help pro­gramme the big­ger Berlin Film Fes­ti­val from 2020. As such, the 71^st edi­tion of Locarno seemed to have a bit­ter­sweet qual­i­ty for the talk­a­tive fes­ti­val vet­er­ans, as things might be very dif­fer­ent next year. Even so, 2018 lived up to expec­ta­tions of the event as an excit­ing space for new art­house fare and as a cel­e­bra­tion of old­er cin­e­ma that takes more off­beat choic­es in terms of pay­ing trib­ute. We were par­tic­u­lar­ly touched by the inspired choice to give the hon­orary Vision Award to title sequence design­er Kyle Coop­er (Se7en, among many cred­its), and not just because it gave pro­gram­mers an excuse to screen Sam Raimi’s first Spi­der-Man film from a 35mm print.

Our per­son­al high­light was the wealth of delights in the festival’s exten­sive ret­ro­spec­tive of Amer­i­can film­mak­er Leo McCarey, par­tic­u­lar­ly a screen­ing of The Awful Truth (1937) that had a packed audi­ence in hys­ter­ics. That said, the new films on offer were hard­ly lack­ing in qual­i­ty. In an unranked order, here are nine pre­mier­ing fea­ture high­lights, plus one short. We should men­tion we were sad­ly unable to catch Mar­i­ano Llinás’ 14-hour La Flor, per­haps the most pub­li­cised title in com­pe­ti­tion this year.

With Too Late to Die Young, Chilean writer/​director Domin­ga Sotomay­or makes her first hour-plus fea­ture since promis­ing call­ing card Thurs­day Till Sun­day (2012), and it’s well worth the wait. Tak­ing place in the ear­ly 90s after the end of the Pinochet régime, the film is set in a com­mu­ni­ty liv­ing out in nature just below the Andes, where logis­ti­cal con­cerns wor­ry the adults, and yearn­ings for parts of life left out­side the com­mune — includ­ing absent pets and par­ents –plague the younger res­i­dents. Although a col­lec­tive por­trait, the film is large­ly anchored by new­com­er Demi­an Hernán­dez as 16-year-old Sofia, whose per­for­mance epit­o­mis­es Sotomayor’s skill both with direct­ing actors and weav­ing char­ac­ter details grad­u­al­ly and dis­creet­ly into her nar­ra­tive. The film­mak­er received the Leop­ard for Best Direc­tion in this year’s Inter­na­tion­al Competition.

One of the few non-world pre­mieres in this roundup, Ethan Hawke’s lat­est effort as a direc­tor and co-writer, Blaze, had already picked up pos­i­tive notices since a bow at Sun­dance, before receiv­ing its inter­na­tion­al pre­mière as part of Locarno’s night­ly out­door screen­ings in the Piaz­za Grande. A num­ber of atten­dees like­ly turned up for the star wattage of Hawke intro­duc­ing the film and receiv­ing an hon­orary award before­hand. A biopic of a bare­ly record­ed musi­cian still not well known near­ly 30 years after his death, it’s a time-hop­ping por­trait of coun­try singer-song­writer Blaze Foley (played by Ben Dick­ey) that has an organ­ic slice of life feel. As in Hawke’s col­lab­o­ra­tions with Richard Lin­klater, the dis­parate moments and small details are all part of the big­ger pic­ture of com­pre­hend­ing this fre­quent­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry figure.

Hong Sang-soo’s sec­ond film this year alone picked up a Best Actor award for star Ki Joo-Bong. He plays a poet, Young-hwan, stay­ing for free at a river­side hotel at the invi­ta­tion of the own­er. While there, he has the feel­ing he is not long for this world, and so calls for his estranged, bick­er­ing sons Kyung-soo (Kwon Hae-hyo) and Byung-soo (Yu Jun-sang), a film direc­tor, to vis­it him. Mean­while, a young woman, Sang-hee (Kim Min-hee), is also pass­ing days at the hotel, hav­ing recent­ly bro­ken up with her part­ner, and receiv­ing sup­port from friend Yeon-ju (Song Seon-mi). Young-hwan cross­es paths with the two women, becom­ing inspired by them for his poet­ic mus­ings. Shot in gor­geous black and white with snowy back­drops, this hits all the comedic and dra­mat­ic sweet spots estab­lished Hong fans will appre­ci­ate, though a quite off-brand devel­op­ment in the final few min­utes means it sticks out among the high­ly pro­lif­ic filmmaker’s recent efforts.

While a num­ber of the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal films scat­tered in the Locarno line-up focused on alter­nate ver­sions of a director’s youth­ful expe­ri­ences (such as Too Late to Die Young), A Fam­i­ly Tour oper­ates as a par­al­lel to its Chi­nese director’s very recent past. Six years ago, Ying Liang made When Night Falls, a drama­ti­za­tion of a mis­han­dled tri­al that had sparked protests on behalf of the man wronged by rough jus­tice. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the film was not well-liked by the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, and the dis­si­dent direc­tor exiled him­self to Hong Kong. In his fol­low-up fea­ture, a female inde­pen­dent film­mak­er has been work­ing in exile in Hong Kong for five years after she is sim­i­lar­ly tar­get­ed for gov­ern­ment sup­pres­sion. Invit­ed to a film fes­ti­val in Tai­wan, she uses this pre­text to bring her ill moth­er over from the main­land, so that she can covert­ly meet the grand­child she’s nev­er seen. A film imbued with restrained pain.

A high­light of Locarno’s exper­i­men­tal Signs of Life strand, Jodie Mack’s fea­ture debut is bare­ly an hour in length but takes you around the world in that time in such a way quite unlike any­thing else out there. A trav­el­ogue stop-motion ani­ma­tion shot on 16mm, it is, to describe it some­what reduc­tive­ly, an extend­ed mon­tage of mun­dane objects – most­ly tex­tiles – brought to life through move­ment against back­drops in the real world, set to a rhyth­mic mix­tape. This might sound like an exces­sive­ly long music video, but there’s a for­mi­da­ble gen­eros­i­ty of spir­it to the film, which con­veys so much about the pat­terns and con­struc­tion of the world with nary a human face or sound to be seen or heard. It might also be one of the most dance­able movies ever made. The toe-tap­ping qual­i­ties are pow­er­ful enough while sat in a screen­ing room, but any enter­pris­ing pro­gram­mers would be wise to put this on in a club.

Richard Billingham’s debut fea­ture brings to life his cel­e­brat­ed pho­to series of his par­ents and trou­bled child­hood spent in Thatch­er-era Birm­ing­ham. Billing­ham as a young man isn’t the pro­tag­o­nist though, and, despite the title, nor are par­ents Ray & Liz, even though there’s a fram­ing device with an elder­ly Ray con­fined to a tow­er-block bed­room, get­ting soz­zled off bot­tles of an uniden­ti­fi­able brown sub­stance. The film is a series of time-hop­ping vignettes that com­bine gal­lows com­e­dy with tense dra­ma, with both modes con­cern­ing the loom­ing threat of phys­i­cal dan­ger for both adult and child par­ties. One of the most rhyth­mi­cal­ly inter­est­ing and visu­al­ly tex­tured kitchen sink titles in quite some time, the film’s over­all tone resem­bles a com­bi­na­tion of the seem­ing­ly incom­pat­i­ble styles of Ter­ence Davies and Jonathan Glaz­er, the latter’s reg­u­lar DoP Daniel Landin evok­ing a mem­o­rable scene of baby per­il from Under the Skin at cer­tain points in Ray & Liz.

Québé­cois writer/​director Philippe Lesage fol­lows his well-regard­ed The Demons (2015) with anoth­er struc­tural­ly play­ful nar­ra­tive about young pro­tag­o­nists. For the major­i­ty of the film, we fol­low the sep­a­rate sto­ries of two teenage step-sib­lings – Guil­laume (Théodore Pel­lerin) and Char­lotte (Noée Abi­ta) – as they nav­i­gate roman­tic tra­vails; she with a suc­ces­sion of unful­fill­ing male suit­ors, he with com­ing to terms with his sex­u­al­i­ty in an all-boys board­ing school. Then, a curve­ball, as Lesage’s final act focus­es on com­plete­ly new, even younger char­ac­ters at a sum­mer camp. Not every step he takes is agree­able: to name one, the har­row­ing note Charlotte’s sto­ry ends on is trou­bling in light of the lack of explo­ration of its con­se­quences, espe­cial­ly giv­en the inti­ma­cy and empa­thy inher­ent in the film’s exe­cu­tion before­hand. Despite this sour note, there is still much to enjoy in the film as a whole, par­tic­u­lar­ly its exam­i­na­tion of self-com­pro­mise in the pur­suit of desire.

The title describes lead char­ac­ter Janne’s approach to most incon­ve­niences pre­sent­ed to her; you won’t have prob­lems if you don’t go turn­ing things into prob­lems. Dis­turbing­ly, this atti­tude extends to Janne’s rape by an ex-class­mate after a school reunion. The rape, half-heart­ed­ly resist­ed in the moment, is almost not an incit­ing event in a way, as to Janne it seems like a strange­ly fit­ting nadir to the myr­i­ad frac­tured rela­tion­ships with men in her life; almost like it was bound to hap­pen. She keeps qui­et, but she can only repress her grow­ing dis­gust and fury for so long, espe­cial­ly as her apolo­getic rapist con­tin­ues to appear in her life, turn­ing out to the be the broth­er-in-law of her boss. A wor­thy win­ner of the Best First Fea­ture prize, Ger­man direc­tor Eva Trobisch’s dra­ma burns with pal­pa­ble anger, anchored by a nuanced, intel­li­gent turn from Aenne Schwarz that helps swerve any con­cerns of plau­si­bil­i­ty about cer­tain con­ve­niences in its plotting.

In light of the still rel­a­tive­ly short run­ning times of the fea­tures show­ing in the festival’s Signs of Life strand, many were paired up in dou­ble bills. Mack’s The Grand Bizarre was pre­ced­ed by A Room with a Coconut View, ​‘a video by’ Thai film­mak­er Tulapop Saen­jaroen. The pair­ing proved very appro­pri­ate, as Coconut View is also a trav­el­ogue con­veyed through uncon­ven­tion­al means. Visu­al­ly pre­sent­ed in the guise of an inter­ac­tive hotel video or soft­ware, with the odd sur­re­al flour­ish, it fol­lows the rap­port between a hotel rep’s auto­mat­ed voice and a for­eign guest look­ing to dis­cov­er more about the Thai beach town of Bang Saen than is avail­able to them in the reg­i­ment­ed tour they’re being pro­vid­ed. Thanks in part to both ​‘char­ac­ters’ sound­ing like com­put­ers, this short pro­vid­ed some of the fun­ni­est dead­pan com­e­dy across the whole festival.

Win­ner of the Gold­en Leop­ard for Best Film, Yeo Siew Hua’s A Land Imag­ined proved to be one of the more slip­pery nar­ra­tive titles in com­pe­ti­tion. At first it seems a fair­ly stan­dard, neon-soaked indus­tri­al noir set in Sin­ga­pore. It starts with a police detec­tive, Lok (Peter Yu), inves­ti­gat­ing the dis­ap­pear­ance of Chi­nese migrant Wang (Liu Xiaoyi), who had been work­ing on a land recla­ma­tion site. Lok starts hav­ing dreams as though he is Wang, and the film then either jumps back in time or swaps plane of real­i­ty to fol­low Wang’s per­spec­tive up until his sup­posed dis­ap­pear­ance. It’s prob­a­bly unwise to assume a director’s affin­i­ty for another’s work based on sim­i­lar­i­ties to their own, but we sus­pect jury pres­i­dent Jia Zhang-ke may have been espe­cial­ly fond of this film’s mix of vague­ly dystopi­an fic­tion and look at how a country’s progress screws over the work­ers who get lost in the shuffle.