Out of Place at the Locarno Film Festival

A few days after becom­ing home­less I was invit­ed to the Locarno Film Fes­ti­val. I knew it only by its art­sy, glam­orous rep­u­ta­tion and I wasn’t even real­ly sure where Locarno was (the south of Switzer­land, Google informed me). But when I was asked to be a mem­ber of the inau­gur­al Let­ter­boxd Grande Piaz­za jury, judg­ing the films play­ing on the large out­door screen, I, of course, said yes. I took it as a sign that I made the right choice to move back to Lon­don and throw away the last remains of the life I had been build­ing for the pre­vi­ous eigh­teen months.

But soon enough I found myself at Gatwick air­port, feel­ing unwor­thy and use­less. A week before I had to call up a friend and ask them to come sit with me while I belat­ed­ly booked my flights and freak out about every detail. I hadn’t found a new job or a per­ma­nent place to live and I’d hard­ly watched any movies, nonethe­less writ­ten about them. I wasn’t sure what I was doing going to a major film festival.

After a seam­less flight and an almost relax­ing jour­ney from Milan into a land­scape ever green­er and more moun­tain­ous, I didn’t have more than a few sec­onds to appre­ci­ate Locarno – except to note the pic­turesque Lake Mag­giore that it points towards – before run­ning onto a bus to get to the next town over, Ascona, where I was staying.

The trains were per­fect­ly air-con­di­tioned, but the bus­es less so; I hadn’t realised just how hot it was. Dur­ing the film­ing of The Walk­ing Hills, a fair­ly mid­dling Trea­sure of the Sier­ra Madre rip-off I saw as part of the festival’s ret­ro­spec­tive strand explor­ing the his­to­ry of Colum­bia Pic­tures, the desert was so hot that sweat evap­o­rat­ed off of the actors’ faces and had to be sim­u­lat­ed with oil. It was nev­er quite that hot though, so I just sweat the reg­u­lar way – and did so pret­ty much non­stop for the next 10 days, except for when tak­ing one of my thrice dai­ly cold showers.

That evening I went to Par­do bar, a place crit­ics fre­quent, I would assume, most­ly out of habit. Cer­tain­ly not for its charms. To reach the claus­tro­pho­bic out­side area, sur­round­ed by high brick walls and bright yel­low scaf­fold­ing, you have to walk under peo­ple play­ing darts. Fairy lights limply ges­ture towards a cosi­ness that’s impos­si­ble to feel on the most­ly bro­ken stools or out­side of the small reach of the sin­gle work­ing fan. There I met the rest of the jury, and every­one seemed anx­ious and love­ly. We decid­ed to go to a press screen­ing, to start the fes­ti­val off on the right foot.

All the press screen­ings were held in the bizarre Teatro Kur­saal, a com­bi­na­tion cin­e­ma, restau­rant and casi­no. On a small screen above the entrance nov­el­ty ori­en­tal­ist imagery of drag­ons and seals and beau­ti­ful Chi­nese maid­ens flashed by, I assume to con­vey the unimag­in­able, exot­ic wealth that could be won there­in. A jury mem­ber from Nan­jing had to look away. It was a fit­ting set­ting to lat­er watch Radu Jude’s Eight Post­cards from Utopia, a col­lage of Roman­ian adverts that com­i­cal­ly – if a lit­tle redun­dant­ly, over sev­en­ty min­utes – reveal the car­nal desires of their soci­ety; sex and plea­sure and dom­i­na­tion and, above all, mon­ey. It’s a reminder that every­thing is awful, and awful in the stu­pid­est way pos­si­ble (so it’s a Radu Jude film).

And, at the fes­ti­val, there is no bet­ter exam­ple of this than the Cam­pari Lounge, a hideous open-air stain of nov­el­ty over­sized Cam­pari bot­tles and gaudy red every­thing else. It sat behind the Piaz­za and at the end of a fake, cut-out street where they sold fes­ti­val brand­ed Swatch­es. I wasn’t quite sure who was allowed in, or why they would want to be. One night, after spend­ing near­ly fours hours in Wang Bing’s sharp and ground­ing Youth (Hard Times), the sec­ond in his tril­o­gy of doc­u­men­taries about Chi­nese gar­ment work­ers, which was often painful and gru­elling, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the end­less scenes of pay nego­ti­a­tions, I saw a DJ play­ing to a full lounge and an emp­ty dance floor. He looked deject­ed and mis­er­able. I tried to snap an (admit­ted­ly sneer­ing) pho­to, but, because of his total lack of oth­er stim­u­la­tion, he noticed instant­ly and looked haunt­ing­ly down the lens of my phone cam­era. I guilti­ly saun­tered onto the late-night bus back to Ascona.

Mon­ey always hangs strange­ly over film fes­ti­vals. Whether in omnipresent spon­sor­ships or in the fact that all the worst films I saw had either a Swiss pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny or a sus­pi­cious­ly touris­tic Alpine set­ting. Or in the casu­al con­ver­sa­tions about trav­el and how many fes­ti­vals you were going to this year, which weren’t always easy to have as some­one who often had to opt not to eat any of the city’s over­priced and mediocre food. It’s some­thing you can for­get about briefly, for a few hours dur­ing a movie, but, when the fes­ti­val con­sumes the entire city and your every wak­ing moment, cre­ates an alien­at­ing, almost sur­re­al atmosphere.

A feel­ing of unre­al­i­ty that is per­fect­ly cap­tured in Vir­gil Vernier’s 100,000,000,000,000, in which a sex work­er, who can only dream of mon­ey and com­fort, finds him­self amongst a fam­i­ly of opu­lent wealth and the glis­ten­ing Christ­mas lights of Mona­co. It shows a world that is not just emp­ty but absent; the still-glow­ing light of an already extin­guished star. It cut sharply through the noise sur­round­ing it, which smoth­ered so many oth­er films.

It cer­tain­ly didn’t feel appro­pri­ate to pref­ace The Seed of the Sacred Fig, an increas­ing­ly metaphor­i­cal (to its detri­ment, in my opin­ion) dra­ma about the Mah­sa Ami­ni protests in Iran, fea­tur­ing real footage of police bru­tal­i­ty, with a crowd cam­era pro­ject­ing fun­ny face fil­ters than looked like an AI-gen­er­at­ed Frozen Elsa onto an embar­rass­ing­ly amused piaz­za audi­ence. Maybe worse, when direc­tor Moham­mad Rasoulof, who had to flee his home coun­try after mak­ing this film, was brought on stage by two of the most insuf­fer­ably phoney show­biz hosts I have ever seen, he was accom­pa­nied by the music from E.T.

I also felt alien­at­ed by my queer­ness. I was get­ting far more sus­pi­cious, if not out­right dis­gust­ed looks from the locals than I was used to back home, which made me increas­ing­ly aware of how few trans peo­ple I saw any­where. At an induc­tion cer­e­mo­ny, unsure what else to say for myself, I joked about being here because I was one of the only trans peo­ple in Lon­don who can work to a dead­line (the irony of which will not be lost on my edi­tor); I made a joke of my dif­fer­ence and peo­ple laughed. Maybe a lit­tle too hard. So, unsur­pris­ing­ly, Mo Matton’s Gen­der Reveal, where a trans throuple’s mere queer pres­ence brings vio­lent chaos to a gen­der reveal par­ty, burst through the shorts pro­gramme. But my queer­ness brought no chaos. Most­ly it brought quiet­ness, or a self-con­scious, some­what clown­ish loudness.

I think every mem­ber of the jury felt dis­lo­cat­ed, in their own way. If by noth­ing else, then the jury itself’s place at the edge of the fes­ti­val. We were tan­gen­tial­ly con­nect­ed to the critic’s acad­e­my, we could go to some of their events, and to Base Camp, who we were stay­ing with in Ascona, but we weren’t quite a part of either. And there were tech­ni­cal prob­lems with our badges specif­i­cal­ly, which were some­times looked at by staff with increduli­ty and con­fu­sion. It didn’t feel great to try and explain that we were on some jury they’d obvi­ous­ly nev­er heard of. But, far away from the dif­fer­ent cor­ners of the world and vari­ably mar­gin­al posi­tions we’d been pulled from, we found a space to real­ly bond.

We jok­ing­ly called it trau­ma bond­ing, but as the fes­ti­val went on, and the movies got expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter (I think the last five movies I saw were the best five) it felt like some­thing deep­er than that. At least to me. As beau­ti­ful as many of the movies were, they don’t com­pare to the sit­ting by the lake in the mid­dle of the night, shar­ing things it would usu­al­ly take months to open up about, or sprawl­ing out on the desk in our room, because it was too hot to go up the step-lad­der to the bunk beds, shar­ing the music we loved. That was what made it all start to make sense. Even though many of our places in the indus­try remained uncer­tain, and per­haps became more so, we had found a lit­tle com­mu­ni­ty on its edges.

It was like the stand­out scene of Hong Sang-soo’s By The Stream, where a group of uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents, after fin­ish­ing a short stage per­for­mance, each share the kind of per­son they want to become, all of a sud­den bear­ing their dreams and their scars. Like when you’re away at a film fes­ti­val, far from any oth­er real­i­ty, work­ing on this play made space for a unique kind of inti­ma­cy, even if only in this brief moment, that would soon go away, with peo­ple they may nev­er see again. All of us who were at that screen­ing wept together.

On the day we chose Gau­cho Gau­cho – an ele­giac doc­u­men­tary about anoth­er, per­haps more mean­ing­ful­ly mar­gin­al com­mu­ni­ty, a small group of Gau­chos in Argenti­na, fight­ing for their fad­ing way of life – as the win­ner of our award (a choice I think we were all pret­ty hap­py with) Gena Row­lands died, and the moments of still-grow­ing con­nec­tion start­ed to be tinged with sad­ness. I won­dered when we’d see each oth­er again.

After­wards, peo­ple start to slip away, into their exhaus­tion or into the writ­ing they need­ed to fin­ish. But, strange­ly, I found myself cling­ing on. I went to the beach with the critic’s acad­e­my, mak­ing new con­nec­tions as if they had any space to grow, and I tried to catch some of the hyped films I’d missed. The fes­ti­val had been so all-con­sum­ing (and so for all intents and pur­pos­es with­out end), but now it had clear lim­its, it felt sud­den­ly finite and pre­cious. Maybe it was because I didn’t know when I would be able to afford some­thing like this again, or maybe it was because I had said good­bye to so many things and so many peo­ple in these last few months and I wasn’t ready to do it again.

But after a tear­ful two-and-a-half-hour train ride to Milan air­port, I had to say good­bye to the final jury mem­ber, the one I’d got­ten clos­est to. I tried to express myself, I tried to say some­thing, but I just bab­bled. Then I got on the plane back to Lon­don. As it took off I start­ed to cry again, as I always do see­ing the world shrink so small below me. I looked down, to try and see Locarno one more time. But of course, I couldn’t. The air­port was miles away. It was already long gone.

A film fes­ti­val is a dream­like palace and I was start­ing to wake up. Its con­tours – the frus­tra­tion, the con­nec­tions, the lone­li­ness, the beau­ty – were start­ing to blur into a painful long­ing, into only a warm mem­o­ry of some­thing lost. I guess writ­ing this is a way to try and keep it sharp, to remem­ber the bad parts as much as the good, to try and grab ahold of some elu­sive thing. But in that moment, I didn’t want to look any­more. Through my tears, I paid £4.99 for in-flight Wi-Fi and logged onto Indeed. I tried to go back to my nor­mal life.