"Rule 34" and "Tengo Suenos Electricos" win big at Locarno

by Nathaniel R

the sexually charged "Rule 34" wins Locarno

Our favourite film festival correspondent, Elisa Giudici, couldn't make it to Locarno this year so we are here to just report on the winners! The top prize went to a sexually provocative drama from Brazil called Rule 34 (only the second Brazilian film to ever win Locarno) while a Costa Rican film called Tengo Suenos Electricos won three prizes from the jury.

Will any of the following titles show up as Oscar submissions for International Feature Film? Who can say. A little bit about each winner after the jump...

MAIN COMPETITION

GOLDEN LEOPARD Rule 34 (Julia Murat, Brazil) A drama about a law student who works in abuse cases but her own sexual proclivities lead her into sex-cams and violent eroticism.

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE The Adventures Of Gigi The Law (Alessandro Comodin, Italy) This magic realist movie is about a rural traffic officer and a wave of suicides near the Italian border.

Tengo Suenos Eléctricos
DIRECTOR Valentina Maurel, Tengo Suenos Eléctricos  (Costa Rica) Involving a contentious family, two sisters and their parents (who live apart), a home renovation, and the family cat who pees everywhere. 

BEST ACTRESS Daniel Martin Navarro, Tengo Suenos Electricos (Valentina Maurel, Costa Rica)

BEST ACTOR Reinaldo Amien Gutiérrez, Tengo Suenos Electricos (Valentina Maurel, Costa Rica)

FILMMAKERS OF THE PRESENT COMPETITION
This section is devoted to emerging filmmakers so they run from debuts to third features.

Nightsiren

GOLDEN LEOPARD Nightsiren (Tereza Nvotova, Slovakia) A woman is accused of witchcraft in the remote mountain village where she grew up years earlier.

How is Katia?
SPECIAL JURY PRIZE How is Katia? (Christina Tynkevych, Ukraine) A drama about a single mother having a moral crisis

EMERGING DIRECTOR Juraj Lerotić, Safe Place (Croatia) Taking place over a single day it's about a suicidal man and his family

SPECIAL MENTION Franciska Eliassen, Sister, What Grows Where Land is Sick? (Norway) A young girl begins to read her older sister's diary in hopes of better understanding her and discovers a stranger universe there than she expected. The Norwegian title is extremely different though it's very vague. It translates to "This past spring"

PARDO, BEST ACTRESS Anastasia Karpenko, How is Katia? (Christina Tynkevych, Ukraine)

PARDO, BEST ACTOR Goran Marković, Safe Place

OTHER JURIES / PRIZES

FIRST FEATURE Juraj Lerotić, Safe Place (Croatia)

FIRST FEATURE SPECIAL MENTION [tie]
Bianca Lucas, Love Dog (Poland/Mexico) A man returns home to Mississippi who has been avoiding grieving for his dead girlfriend.

De Noche Los Gatos Son Pardos

Valentin Mertz, De Noche Los Gatos Son Pardos (Switzerland)
The director of a costume drama disappears. While police investigate his lover, the cinematographer continues shooting the film. The director says "It is about the big drives in my life: filmmaking, love, sex and death."

WWF SPONSORED PRIZE
"Films that best adress the topis relating to sustainability, ecology, and interspecies relationship" 

WINNER Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Matter Out of Place (Austria)
A documentary which observes  "the Sisyphus-like work of garbage collectors and waste managers around the world."

SPECIAL MENTIONS [tie]
Ana Vaz, It Is Night in America (Brazil) Described as wildlife eco-horror this avant-garde documentary asks "are animals invading our cities, or are we occupying their habitat?”

Hilal Baydarov, Sermon to the Fish (Azerbaijan) A drama about a soldier who returns to his village to find that all but one of them, his sister, has died of an illness and decomposed.