Locarno: Hong Sang-Soo And Wang Bing To Debut New Works, Mélanie Laurent & Guillaume Canet Set For Honors

Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival will debut 17 world premieres, including new works by Hong Sang-soo and Wang Bing, as part of its 2024 competition program. This year’s event runs from August 7 – 17. 

The festival announced its competition lineups this morning. The Hong Sang-soo feature is titled Suyoocheon (By The Stream) and stars Kim Minhee, Kwon Haehyo, and Cho Yunhee. The Wang Bing feature is a France, Luxembourg, and Netherlands co-production titled Hard Times. Scroll down to see the full Locarno competition lineup, which also includes new titles from Ben Rivers, Mar Coll, and Christoph Hochhäusler. 

The festival today also announced that French acting veterans Mélanie Laurent and Guillaume Canet will receive the event’s honorary Excellence Award Davide Campari at the opening ceremony on August 7. Previous recipients of the award include Riz Ahmed and Aaron Taylor Johnson. 

Locarno’s separate Piazza Grande lineup features 18 titles, including Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Savages by Claude Barras, and Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. 

Discussing this year’s edition, Locarno head Giona A. Nazzaro described his competition lineup as “ambitious” and “consciously, critically” engaged while seeking “a dialogue with the audience at a time in which both history and all its stories are imperiously knocking on the doors of cinema.”

“From well–established film directors, such as Hong Sang-soo, Wang Bing, Ben Rivers, Pia Marais, Silvia Luzi, and Luca Bellino, including Ala Eddine Slim, Gürcan Keltek and Kurdwin Ayub, Christoph Hochhäusler, the Zürcher brothers and Laurynas Bareiša, to Mar Coll and Sara Fgaier, Marta Mateus, Sylvie Ballyot, and Virgil Vernier, the competition is a deep immersion into the possibilities of contemporary film language,” he said. 

Check out the lineups below. 

Piazza Grande Program

E.T. L’EXTRA-TERRESTRE by Steven Spielberg – USA – 1982 Prefestival

FIORE MIO by Paolo Cognetti – Italy, Belgium – 2024 Prefestival

LE DÉLUGE by Gianluca Jodice – Italy, France – 2024
Opening Ceremony
Excellence Award Davide Campari to Mélanie Laurent and Guillaume Canet

REINAS by Klaudia Reynicke – Switzerland, Peru, Spain –