Isabella Rossellini Feted With Honorary Leopard at Locarno
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- Isabella Rossellini was awarded an Honorary Leopard (Pardo) at the Locarno Film Festival's opening night ceremony on Wednesday, addressing an 8,000-strong crowd on the Piazza Grande
- Rossellini told the audience her father Roberto Rossellini received the Pardo for Germany, Year Zero in 1948 and her half-brother Renzo Rossellini received a Lifetime Achievement Award in Locarno in 1923, calling the parallel "moving"
- The festival is screening Rossellini's nature-themed shorts Green Porno (2008), about insect sexual dynamics, and Seduce Me (2010), on animal kingdom seduction strategies, with an onstage career conversation set for Thursday
- The Green Eyes, directed by Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh, had its world premiere as the opening film, following an Iraqi refugee whose brother suffers from resignation syndrome — first observed in refugee children in Sweden in the 1990s
- Director Liatard said the film carried "double resonance" because it was shot in France's Landes region, parts of which were devastated by wildfires in recent weeks, noting the cast and crew were nearby at the time
- The 79th Locarno Film Festival runs from August 5 to 15
Why it matters: Rossellini becomes the third member of her family honored at Locarno, cementing the festival's tradition of recognizing her cinematic lineage. The opening film choice — about trauma in displaced children, shot in a region freshly scarred by climate-driven wildfires — pairs a sociopolitical subject with a locale that gives the story visceral current relevance.
