MUMBAI: A Chinese film has bagged the top honour at the Locarno Film Festival. Li Hongqi ‘s Han Jia (Winter Vacation), a coming-of-age story set it small town China won the Festival‘s Golden Leopard prize. This is the second consecutive year that a film from a Chinese director has bagged the festival‘s top prize.
Last year, it was Xiaolu Guo-directed She, a Chinese that had won the Golden Leopard. Combined with this year‘s winning film, this marks the first time since 1995-96 when the same country won back-to-back Golden Leopards.
Among the festival‘s other top prizes: Morgen, a border drama set on the boundary between Romania and Hungary from Marian Crisan won a Special Jury Prize while Denis Cote was given the Prize of the City and Region of Locarno for Best Director for the Canadian thriller Curling.
Emmanuel Bilodeau, who played the male lead in Curling won the best actor award while Jasna Duricic won the best actress honor for her work in Beli Belisvet (White White World).
The top prize carries an award of 90,000 Swiss francs ($85,000), while the Jury Prize and Best Director award are worth 30,000 Swiss francs ($28,000) each.
The award ceremony was followed by the world premiere of Sommervogel (Little Paradise), a first feature film from 64-year-old Swiss director Paul Riniker, a veteran of more than 70 documentaries.
Saturday, that was the closing day of the festival also saw the closing of the Open Doors co-production laboratory, which focused on films from Central Asia, and the final screenings of the well-received Ernst Lubitsch retrospective.
