At L'immagine e la parola an encounter with the cinema of Alice Diop

From 16 to 17 March, L’immagine e la parola, the Locarno Film Festival’s spring event, will celebrate the cinema of French filmmaker Alice Diop at the Rialto theater in Locarno, in a program titled “Noi e gli altri” and produced in collaboration with CISA and RSI-Radiotelevisione svizzera and with the support of the Ticino Film Commission. There the public will have a chance to explore the work of a celebrated artist of our current moment, a filmmaker of the margins whose recent successes have propelled her into the center of the international filmmaking conversation.

After a decade spent making intimate documentaries with working people in the banlieues of Paris, Alice Diop produced two remarkable features – one a documentary and one a fiction film – that together cemented her as one of the most quietly assertive voices of contemporary filmmaking: Nous (We, 2021), which won the Encounters prize in Berlin, and Saint Omer (2022), which won the Silver Lion - Grand Jury Prize at Venice just one year later. Shortly thereafter, she became the first Black woman to represent France as a director at the Academy Awards – a major achievement.

The films of Alice Diop spring from the intersections of fiction and reality, narrative fabrication and documentary realism. It is these knotty contradictions of filmic form that will provide a backbone for Diop’s masterclass. This public meeting with Diop and her films, curated by Giona A. Nazzaro in collaboration with Daniela Persico, will take place against the backdrop of the Spring Academy, where the French filmmaker will work with young directors from Switzerland and around the world on projects shot at and centered around the Hotel Belvedere Locarno, our official Location Partner.

On Saturday 16 March, the day will start with the masterclass “Social Confrontations and the Cinema of Alice Diop” by Kevin B. Lee, Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), supported by Swisscom, as well as a presentation of video essays on Alice Diop from his project “Video Essay: Memories, Ecologies, Bodies,” in cooperation with Università della Svizzera italiana, Hochschule Luzern and the Swiss National Science Foundation. It will be followed first by a screening of short films by participants of the Spring Academy, as well as Alice Diop’s memorable Vers la tendresse (2016), and in the evening by Saint Omer, the courtroom masterpiece that brought her international acclaim in the wake of her Venice win.
The following morning will feature a public masterclass at 10:30am with Alice Diop, followed by a screening of the award-winning Nous at 3:30pm at the Rialto.

Rounding off the program on Sunday morning will be a screening of the animated feature Titina (2022), about a hair-raising 1926 trip to the North Pole in an airship by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen and Italian Umberto Nobile. Preceding it will be a short documentary on cinema made by the children of Scuola media Locarno 2. This aspect of L’immagine e la parola is for families and younger moviegoers and will take place at Cinema Rialto at 10am, with the support of Locarno Kids la Mobiliare and the collaboration of Cinemagia. The screenings will be accompanied in the afternoon by a workshop about cultivating friendship and overcoming conflict organized for children by the gruppo genitori locarnese (limited places).

Admission to all screenings and events is free, but for masterclasses participants must register by writing to workshop@locarnofestival.ch.

Complete program of events at L’immagine e la parola.

Together with FestivaLLibro (28.02-3.03) and Eventi letterari Monte Verità (21-24.03), L’immagine e la parola is part of the “Primavera Locarnese” and is made possible thanks to UBS, Swisscom, la Mobiliare, Swatch, and the support of Enjoy Arena, Hotel du Lac and Hertz.

2024 will undoubtedly be a Swiss year for Alice Diop since Visions du Réel will also welcome the French director this April for a masterclass and a retrospective.