Locarno’s Alliance 4 Development Welcomes Queer Musical, Eco Body Horror and Bruce LaBruce’s Melodrama With Monica Bellucci and Béatrice Dalle
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- Alliance 4 Development, Locarno's co-development platform for film projects from Austria, France, Germany and Switzerland, unveiled its 2025 lineup featuring nine projects from directors across those territories.
- Bruce LaBruce's first French-led feature, "Third Take," stars Monica Bellucci and Béatrice Dalle as two actresses reuniting for a film shoot that becomes "the epiphany of their decaying romance," according to the director.
- Tamer Ruggli's "Cuore Matto" is a queer and feminist coming-of-age musical set in 1969, following 17-year-old Matteo sent to Ticino for the harvest and his mother Giusi's "quiet emancipation" from an oppressive marriage.
- Jessica Puppo's debut feature "Reign of Silures" — produced by Rumble Fish Productions, the company behind "Vesper" and "Saloum" — is an ecological body horror set in a Lake Geneva thermal palace where giant catfish are burned as scapegoats for a plague that "cracks human skin like parched earth."
- Claudia Rorarius' "Humanoid" follows a 48-year-old female artist who builds an android of her dead partner and "challenges patriarchal structures" while pursuing what the producers call "independent motherhood."
- Florian Hoffmann's "Yazz" aims to depict "life inside UN camps" by blending intimate drama with political relevance, with producer Katrin Renz calling it "a timely arthouse film with strong international resonance."
- Hilal Baydarov, known for Locarno-premiering "Sermon to the Fish," returns with "Stone Over Stone," set in an unfinished high-rise in a divided Eastern European city and following characters "carrying the invisible ruins of war."
Why it matters: A4D is one of the primary European launchpads for arthouse co-productions, so the nine projects unveiled here represent the next wave of Locarno-adjacent cinema — and the slate signals the platform's continued appetite for politically engaged, formally ambitious work ranging from queer musical to eco-horror to UN-camp drama.
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