The Locarno Film Festival will honor James Gray, awarding the American director with the Pardo alla Carriera Award and the Career Leopard Award presented by Ascona-Locarno Tourism, during its 79th session.y edition.
Gray will receive the award in Piazza Grande Square in the Swiss city on Sunday, August 9, and will present his latest film. paper tigerafter the ceremony. Two headlines by Gray, We own the night (2007) and Two lovers (2008) will also be shown in the festival programme.
“Since winning the Silver Lion in Venice Little Odessa (1994) At the age of 25, James Gray has built a unique career rooted, with raw realism, in his upbringing in New York’s Russian Jewish community,” Locarno explained. Squares (2000), We own the night (2007), Two lovers (2008), and migrant (2013), cements Gray’s position as one of the most artistically distinct voices in American cinema – a filmmaker interested in criminal underworlds, rendered in meticulous detail, as well as meticulous family portraits, often set within the Brighton Beach setting of his youth and shaped by dialogue with classic American and European auteur cinema.
“As he established himself in the upper echelon of U.S. filmmakers,” Locarno organizers continued, “Gray’s explorations of the often elusive promise of the American Dream have expanded over the past decade to include more diverse thematic areas—colonial exploration, space travel, racial prejudice—that have reshaped popular understandings of his work while remaining distinctively his own: Lost City Z (2016) with Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson, Ad Astra (2019) with Brad Pitt, and Armageddon time (2022) with Anthony Hopkins.
paper tiger It premiered in competition at Cannes this year and will open the 2026 New York Film Festival.
“James Gray is the last great novelist of American cinema,” said Giona Nazzaro, artistic director of the Locarno Theater. “His films form a rich body of work that echoes the Jewish diaspora, black cinema, Russian literature as well as North American literature. A director with a human sensitivity and deep knowledge of cinephiles, he has experimented with genres such as science fiction and adventure while retaining his own artistic identity and voice. To celebrate James Gray at the Locarno Film Festival is to honor a unique and unmistakable artist, a filmmaker who speaks the language of cinema and knows how to pass it on. to future generations.”
The Pardo alla Carriera Award is delivered with the support of Ascona-Locarno Tourism, the tourism partner of the Locarno Film Festival, which focuses on developing and promoting tourism in the region. Previous winners of the award include Francesco Rosi, Claude Goretta, Bruno Ganz, Claudia Cardinale, Johnny To, Harry Belafonte, Peter Christian Futter, Sergio Castellitto, Otar Iosegliani, Victor Eres, Marlene Khotsiev, Paul Ogier, Mario Adorf, Jane Birkin, Freddie M. Maurer, Dante Spinotti, Costa-Gavras, Tsai Ming-liang, Shah Rukh Khan, and last year Jackie Chan.
The 79thy The Locarno edition takes place from August 5 to 15.
