Locarno International Film Festival

About the Locarno Film Festival

The Locarno Film Festival is one of the oldest and most distinctive film festivals in the world. Founded in 1946 in the Swiss Canton of Ticino, Locarno has been an FIAPF Class A festival since 1957, placing it among the elite tier of competitive international film events alongside Cannes, Venice, and Berlin. What sets Locarno apart from every other festival of its stature is the Piazza Grande: an 8,000-seat open-air cinema in the center of town where the entire community gathers under the night sky to watch cinema projected on one of the largest screens in the world. In a film festival landscape increasingly dominated by industry transactions, Locarno remains the festival most genuinely built around the experience of watching films.

The Golden Leopard is Locarno's top prize and carries genuine prestige. Past winners include Tsai Ming-liang's What Time Is It There? (2001), Carlos Reygadas's Japón (2002), Andrea Arnold's Red Road (2006), Corneliu Porumboiu's 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006), and a long tradition of honoring work that pushes against mainstream cinema. The festival has a particular affinity for formally adventurous, politically engaged, and geographically diverse cinema. Filmmakers whose work has been too uncompromising for Cannes or too peripheral for Berlin have frequently found their home at Locarno.

The festival runs for eleven days each August. The town of Locarno itself is transformed: screening rooms throughout the town, industry meetings on the waterfront, and the nightly Piazza Grande screenings that draw audiences of up to 8,000 people. The combination of an intimate Swiss mountain-lake setting and serious cinematic programming has made Locarno a filmmaker's festival in the truest sense, a place where directors want to be rather than simply where they go to make deals.

Competition Sections

Locarno programs several distinct sections with separate juries and prize structures:

Concorso Internazionale is the main competition and the most prestigious section. It typically programs 16 to 18 feature films from around the world, with a strong preference for world premieres and formally ambitious work. The jury awards the Golden Leopard and a suite of supporting prizes. Films selected here tend to be the work of established directors making distinctive statements, or debut filmmakers whose vision is fully formed. The section actively programs across continents and is one of the most geographically diverse major competitions in festival cinema.

Cineasti del Presente ("Filmmakers of the Present") is dedicated to first and second features and is one of the most important debut platforms in world cinema. This is where Locarno actively invests in discovering and launching careers. Past alumni who passed through Cineasti del Presente before going on to international recognition include directors whose subsequent work appeared in Cannes and Venice competitions. If your debut feature is finished and has genuine artistic ambition, Cineasti del Presente is the correct target section.

Pardi di Domani ("Leopards of Tomorrow") is the short film section, with both national and international programs. Short films compete for dedicated prizes and the section is taken seriously as a platform. Unlike many major festivals where short films are an afterthought, Locarno's short program is genuinely curated and programmed by the same team with the same standards.

Fuori Concorso programs films outside competition, including retrospectives, special presentations, and works that don't fit neatly into the competitive sections. A Fuori Concorso slot at Locarno can still be a significant platform, particularly for films already traveling the circuit that want the Locarno audience and the Piazza Grande experience.

Open Doors is a unique initiative within Locarno that provides production support, training, and visibility for filmmakers from regions that are underrepresented in international cinema. The program focuses on different geographic regions on a rotating basis. For filmmakers from these regions, Open Doors is a meaningful entry point into the international festival circuit.

The Piazza Grande

The Piazza Grande is the soul of the Locarno Film Festival and the experience that makes it unlike anything else in world cinema. The main public square of Locarno is transformed each August into one of the largest outdoor cinemas in existence, with 8,000 seats, a screen 26 meters wide, and a projection setup that has to be seen to be appreciated. Screenings begin at sunset and the audience, a mix of local residents, Italian-speaking Swiss, and international festival visitors, watches together under the Alpine sky.

A Piazza Grande selection can mean different things for different films. Some are world-premiere competition films, some are major international productions with star-studded premieres, and some are special screenings of classic or repertory titles. The experience of 8,000 people reacting together to a film is something that most directors describe as one of the most memorable screenings of their careers. Filmmakers have traveled from across the world specifically to have their work screened in the Piazza.

The Piazza Grande also programs the Pardo d'onore, the honorary award presented to significant figures in world cinema, and these ceremonies become major public events in themselves. The combination of genuine cinephile culture in the town, the scale of the Piazza, and the intimacy of the surrounding venue makes Locarno's nighttime screenings genuinely irreplaceable.

What Programmers Look For

Locarno's programming philosophy is perhaps the most clearly articulated of any major festival: the festival values cinema that is visually distinct, formally considered, and resistant to easy categorization. The selection team, under artistic director Marco Solari and successive artistic directors, has consistently chosen films that push against convention whether in narrative structure, visual style, political engagement, or subject matter.

In practical terms, this means that festival films likely to thrive at Locarno share certain qualities. Films that are visually authored, where the camera is doing something intentional and specific, have an advantage. Films that deal with their subjects through observation and implication rather than exposition. Films from underrepresented regions and cultural contexts. Films that ask something of their audience rather than explaining themselves. Locarno is not a festival for polished crowd-pleasers; it is a festival for films that have something to say and find unexpected ways to say it.

The Cineasti del Presente section in particular is actively seeking debut and sophomore filmmakers with a genuine point of view. Locarno has historically been willing to take risks on emerging filmmakers in ways that Cannes and Venice more rarely do at comparable prestige levels.

Submission Guide

Locarno accepts submissions through its official portal and through FilmFreeway. The submission window typically opens in early spring, with deadlines running through April and May for the August festival. Short film submissions have separate deadlines that generally align with the feature film timeline.

Feature films must be world or international premieres for competition sections. The festival is strict about premiere status, and films that have screened publicly elsewhere will typically not qualify for Concorso Internazionale or Cineasti del Presente. Fuori Concorso and some parallel sections are more flexible on premiere requirements.

Submission fees for features are in the range of CHF 80 to CHF 120 depending on deadline tier. Short films carry lower fees. The festival does not advertise a formal fee waiver program but filmmakers from Open Doors regions may have access to reduced-fee or waiver submission pathways through that program.

The project notes field matters at Locarno. The programming team is reading submissions from filmmakers they may have no prior knowledge of, often in languages other than English, from production contexts they may be unfamiliar with. Notes that explain the creative intent of the film, the production context, and the premiere ambitions clearly are genuinely useful to the selection process.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes Locarno different from Cannes, Venice, and Berlin?

Locarno is the most cinema-centered of the Class A festivals in terms of its relationship to its audience and location. The Piazza Grande, where the whole town watches films together under the night sky, is unique in world cinema. The festival also has the strongest consistent orientation toward formally adventurous and globally diverse filmmaking of the four major European festivals. It is smaller, less commercially oriented, and in many ways more cinephile-focused than its larger peers.

Is Locarno invite-only or can filmmakers submit directly?

Locarno accepts direct submissions through FilmFreeway and its own portal. Unlike Cannes' main competition, you do not need sales agent representation to submit. The selection process is competitive but accessible. Films in Cineasti del Presente and Pardi di Domani regularly come from filmmakers who submitted without industry intermediaries.

Does Locarno help with career development beyond the festival?

Yes. The Locarno Filmmakers Academy, associated with the festival, offers training and mentorship for early-career filmmakers. Open Doors specifically provides production support for filmmakers from underrepresented regions. And a selection in any official Locarno section carries significant weight in subsequent funding applications, co-production negotiations, and festival submissions. The festival has a track record of discoveries: directors who debuted or broke through at Locarno and went on to major international careers.

What is the Golden Leopard and how significant is it?

The Golden Leopard is Locarno's top prize, awarded by an international jury to the best film in the Concorso Internazionale. It is a recognized and respected prize in world cinema, carrying real weight in international distribution and subsequent festival submissions. The Leopard for Best Director and Special Jury Prizes are also significant. For a film in Cineasti del Presente, the Leopard for a First Film or the Special Jury Prize from that section are considered strong career accelerators.

Can I submit a work-in-progress?

Locarno, like most major festivals, prefers to see a finished or near-finished film. However, the festival does evaluate rough cuts in certain circumstances, particularly for Cineasti del Presente where the relationship with emerging filmmakers is more developmental. If you are submitting a rough cut, note this clearly in your project materials and describe the state of post-production work remaining.

What is the Open Doors program and who qualifies?

Open Doors is a special initiative within Locarno dedicated to supporting filmmaking from specific regions that rotate on a multi-year cycle. Past focus regions have included Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia. The program includes a Hub (training and co-production meetings), dedicated screenings of selected films from the region, and access to the broader festival industry. If your country is in the current Open Doors focus region, this is a meaningful pathway for both submission and professional development.

When does the festival take place and where?

The Locarno Film Festival takes place each year in August, running for eleven days. The festival is centered in Locarno, a city in the Italian-speaking Canton of Ticino in southern Switzerland, on the northern shore of Lake Maggiore. The location is accessible from Milan (approximately 1.5 hours by train) and Zurich (approximately 2.5 hours). The climate in August is warm, which is essential to the outdoor Piazza Grande experience that defines the festival.

Submit Your Film

Submissions to the Locarno Film Festival open each spring at filmfreeway.com/LocarnoFilmFestival and through the festival's official submission portal at locarnofestival.ch. Feature films compete in Concorso Internazionale and Cineasti del Presente; short films in Pardi di Domani. For questions about eligibility, premiere status, or the Open Doors program, contact the festival directly at info@locarnofestival.ch.