Virginie Efira to Receive Locarno's Leopard Club Award
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- Locarno Film Festival will present Virginie Efira with its Leopard Club Award on Aug. 7, during the Swiss festival's 79th edition (Aug. 5-15).
- Virginie Efira played lead roles in two Cannes competition titles — Ryusuke Hamaguchi's "All of a Sudden" and Asghar Farhadi's "Parallel Tales" — and won acting honors for "All of a Sudden," for which she learned to act partly in Japanese.
- "All of a Sudden" will screen in Locarno's 6,500-seat outdoor Piazza Grande venue on the night Efira receives her award.
- Locarno cited Efira's provocative turns in Paul Verhoeven's "Elle" (2016) and "Benedetta" (2021), plus Justine Triet's "Victoria" (2016) and "Sibyl" (2019), as the body of work that earned her the honor.
- Artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro said Efira is "bold yet thoughtful, instinctive yet ironic," adding that she "captures the beauty of what it means to be an actress in today's cinema."
- Previous Leopard Club Award recipients include Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow, Andy Garcia, Adrien Brody, Meg Ryan, Hilary Swank and Daisy Edgar-Jones.
Why it matters: Efira's Cannes double — lead roles in two competition films from Hamaguchi and Farhadi, plus a Best Actress prize — cements her as one of European art-house cinema's most in-demand leads, and Locarno is staking its highest-profile honorary trophy of 2026 on her momentum by pairing the award with a 6,500-seat Piazza Grande screening.
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