The award, presented by the city of Locarno in partnership with the film festival, aims to honor “figures in culture who have excelled in promoting peace, diplomacy, and dialogue among peoples,” as stated by the Locarno International Film Festival in a press release today.
In the first edition of the City of Peace Award, the jury honored Mohammad Rasoulof, “a notable creator of poetic and political cinema, whose work powerfully and deeply explores themes such as freedom, individual responsibility, and human dignity.”
The 52-year-old Iranian director was sentenced in January 2024 in Tehran to eight years in prison and flogging. The sentence was due to be carried out soon, prompting the director to flee the country.
That year, he won two awards at the Cannes Film Festival – the International Critics’ Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize – with ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig.’
Considered one of the voices of Iranian cinema opposing Tehran’s conservative Islamic regime, along with filmmakers like Jafar Panahi and Saeed Roustaee, Mohammad Rasoulof was able to present the film in Cannes after fleeing to Germany to avoid the impending prison and flogging sentence.
‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’ also earned the Iranian director the Grand Prize at the LEFFEST film festival in Lisbon, where he presented the film and engaged with the audience about it.
Mohammad Rasoulof’s filmography also includes ‘There Is No Evil,’ which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2020.
To be awarded biennially, the City of Peace Award was created “to reinforce Locarno’s role as a symbol of dialogue and peaceful coexistence and to mark the centennial of the Locarno Treaties of 1925, a crucial milestone in 20th-century European diplomacy.”
The 78th Locarno International Film Festival concludes on Saturday.
The film ‘As Estações’ by Maureen Fazendeiro had its world premiere today at the festival, where it is competing for the event’s top prize and the Green Leopard, an award for works mindful of the ecosystem.
The director’s first feature-length documentary, ‘As Estações,’ was filmed entirely in Alentejo, according to the producer O Som e a Fúria.
Also in international competition is ‘Mare’s Nest’ by Ben Rivers, supported by the Batalha – Center for Cinema in Porto, where the film will have its national premiere in December “in theater and exhibition,” according to the Porto institution.
Out of competition is the documentary ‘Nova ’78’ by Aaron Brookner and Rodrigo Areias, focusing on the convention that inspired its name, which took place in 1978 in New York, gathering an entire generation of American artists and intellectuals for “three days and nights of readings, discussions, film screenings, and various performances aimed at engaging with some implications of William S. Burroughs’ writing,” as reported by The New York Times at the time.
Within the Open Doors Screenings program, held in collaboration with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, are the films ‘Nome’ by Sana Na N’Hada (produced in Guinea-Bissau, France, Portugal, and Angola) and ‘Omi Nobu’ by Carlos Yuri Ceuninck (Cape Verde, Belgium, Germany, and Sudan).
