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With the submissions now open for Locarno79, we’ve put together this handy guide to the various strands of the festival program and the cash prizes awarded to the winners of each section. When submitting your new film, you only need to keep length in mind. If selected, our programmers would do the rest, finding the ideal home for it among the sections. Here are all the competitive sections and cash prizes:
Showcasing both established auteurs and emerging talents, classical form and experimentation, the Concorso Internazionale is a forum for the best of contemporary cinema, a competition that stakes out new territories for the art of film.
Eligible prizes: Pardo d’Oro (Golden Leopard – 75,000 CHF), Special Jury Prize (30,000 CHF), and Pardo for Best Direction (20,000 CHF)
The space for the filmmakers of the present and the cinema of tomorrow, existing beyond all distinctions of form and genre. Radical, uncompromising, adventurous, shot through with genuine curiosity about all the possibilities of cinema.
Eligible prizes: Pardo d’Oro – Cineasti del Presente (35,000 CHF), Best Emerging Director (20,000 CHF), Special Jury Prize CINÉ+ (promotion worth 25,000 CHF on the channels of CINÉ+).
Locarno is legendary for its support of first-time artists struggling against the odds to get their personal vision up on screen. The Swatch First Feature Award is a symbol of that grit and determination: a prestigious cross-section prize given to the most promising first feature.
Since 2022, we turned our signature leopard green to celebrate films that tackle the challenges facing a world in the grip of climate crisis. These need not be straight-up documentaries directly about the subject, but the Pardo Verde is pricipally awarded to a film across all sections of the festival that inspires serious change for a more environmentally sustainable future, defying defeatism.
On the final day of the Festival, Locarno gives a special prize to the winner of the Prix du Public UBS, voted on by the Festival’s audience of thousands on the 6,500-seat outdoor Piazza Grande. Winners have included the legendary likes of Bend It Like Beckham (2002), The Lives of Others (2005), BlacKkKlansman (2018), and two wins for Ken Loach, I, Daniel Blake (2016) and The Old Oak (2023).
There are seven awards – five of them with cash prizes – given to films in the short film competitions at the Locarno Film Festival, worth between 5,000 CHF and 15,000 CHF.
