Locarno Diary #4: Good cop, bad cop

by Elisa Giudici

Locarno Film Festival's symbol is a leopard: before any screening a "pardo" (italian for pard) walks across the screen roaring, just before the edition's motto appears (2021's motto is "Cinema is back"). All prizes are shapes as small, stylized felines, the most important one being Pardo d'Oro, the Golden Leopard. Pardo is for Locarno what Lion is for Venice and Palms are for Cannes...with some interesting results.

The main colours of Locarno Film Festival are yellow and black, as in pard's coat. Pard spot motif can be seen everywhere: window shops, café, restaurants. Everyone in Locarno wants to celebrate the main event of the summer season. So during the Festival there is a little "pard mania" everywhere...

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Would you rather?

Would you rather...

• grab a hot dog w/ Margo Martindale in Iceland?
• soak in Iceland's geothermal Blue Lagoon w/ Michelle Yeoh?
• feed raccoons w/ Liev Schreiber?
• relax between reps w/ Lupita Nyong'o?
• referee an arm-wrestling match between Brie Larson & Jacob Tremblay?
• accompany Jessica Chastain to the fruit market?
• indulge Charles Melton in Matrix cosplay?
• visit Bulgaria with Maria Bakalova?
• take a swim in Capri, Italy with Eiza González?
• ...or think about Chester on Genera+ions with Justice Smith? (Seriously why aren't you watching that show? It's phenomenal. I'm going to be gutted if HBOMax cancels it)

Pictures are after the jump to help you decide. 

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International Oscar - will we have a record number of competing films?

Since the Thanksgiving Eve update we've had the following films join the competition for Oscar's Best International Feature Film bringing the current number up to 84.

• Bangladesh - Sincerely Yours, Dhaka which is an anthology from multiple directors about life in Dhaka (streaming on Netflix)
• Belarus - Persian Lessons
• Hong Kong - Better Days which is  teen crime drama about a bully victim and a street thug who protects her (for rent on Amazon | more on Hong Kong and Oscar)
• Iceland - Agnes Joy a mother daughter drama
• Pakistan - Zindagi Tamasha / Circus of Life is about an elderly man who loves music whose life is changed by a social media post which brings him in conflict with the strict Muslim society in which he lives. 
• Serbia - Dara in Jasenovac  *sniffle* Was really hoping it'd be Father which I looooved at CIFF but perhaps this Holocaust drama about two kids in a concentration camp is stellar, too?
• Uruguay - Aleli in which three adult siblings fight over their father's home when he dies (streaming on Netflix)

The record for most competitors for Best International Feature Film is 92 (the 2017 competition). 2019 tried to break that with 93 submissions but two were disqualified, which allowed 2017 to keep the record. We're just 8 titles short (if none of the ones we've heard about are disqualified) of a new record for 2020. You can follow this list on the charts here or at letterboxd.

Posterized: The Best of Icelandic Cinema

by Nathaniel R

A few weeks back we celebrated Romanian cinema due to Whistlers, their most recent Oscar submission, hitting VOD. Why not follow suit today as Iceland's latest Oscar submission, A White White Day, arrives for home viewing? A White White Day is a moving character study about a widower dealing with new revelations about his wife after her death in a car accident. Meanwhile he's building a home for his daughter against the Icelandic landscape which makes for memorable recurring tableaus. We reviewed it at TIFF last year and it's worth checking out. Especially if you love Nordic cinema or are familiar with the work of Iceland's greatest movie star Ingvar E Sigurdsson, who is typically perfect here. We imagine that this film would have ruled this year's Edda Awards (Iceland's Oscars essentially) but the Eddas have been postponed indefinitely (they were originally scheduled for March) due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

And on that note let's look back at the most essential, famous, acclaimed, influential (or some combo thereof) Icelandic films of the past 40 years via our Posterized series. We've put asterisks beside all the titles that star Sigurdsson since we love him and you will too after screening A White White Day.

How many of these 18 Icelandic films have you seen? 

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TIFF: "A White White Day"

by Nathaniel R

In the middle of the stylish grief-stricken Icelandic drama, what appears to be an amateur children's play is airing on the television. The camera drifts to it and stays far longer than is natural for "background" atmosphere in a movie. An astronaut and assorted spacesuit wearing children, have experienced some kind of spacecraft crash. As we zero in on the television, the lone adult onscreen. after finding out that each of his charges are still alive (for now), launches into a hysteric speech about how 'we're all going to die. Including your parents and siblings. Yes, even you.' Salka, an eight year-old towhead granddaughter of the the film's protagonist, watches the television with her cheerio-sucking baby brother, entirely unfazed by this truth. Obviously children's entertainment like this would only fly in Scandinavia or maybe France, where young'uns can also drink wine with their parents and learn their existential nihilism young.  

Which is not to snarkily say that A White White Day is nihilistic. Just that it's pragmatically clear-eyed even when it should be crying. Far from callous and cold, despite the temperatures suggested by that omnipresent fog, thick-maned Icelandic horses, and all the heavy sweaters, the film is warm when it counts. This is a compassionate drama about grief and the sideways behaviour that will out if you keep stifling the main thing...

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