The Locarno Film Festival will be celebrating multiple Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón with a lifetime achievement award.
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The prominent Swiss fest dedicated to global indie cinema noted that Cuarón is a five-time Academy Award winner who has written and directed a wide range of movies, spanning from low-budget films in Mexico like his 1991 debut “Love in the Time of Hysteria” and road trip movie “Y tu mamá también” to Hollywood blockbusters such as “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” Cuarón embodies “the true spirit of a chameleonic contemporary artist able to master any assignment,” a Locarno statement said.
Three of Cuarón’s Oscar wins are for Netflix’s “Roma,” (2018), the director’s homage to the Mexico in which he grew up. The other two are for his direction and editing of Warner Bros.’ Sandra Bullock-starrer “Gravity” (2013), which he co-wrote with his son Jonás.
Cuarón’s upcoming project is the series “Disclaimer” for Apple TV+, starring Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline, that will launch on Oct. 11.
“Alfonso Cuarón is a visionary author of agile and liberated imaginaries,” said Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro in the statement, further noting that he combines “an experimental spirit with the sweep of great popular writers.” Nazzaro added that Cuarón “has managed to capture the imagination and hearts of millions of viewers, passing on the same wonder that he himself experienced as a child and teenager basking in the glow of classic Mexican cinema.”
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As part of its tribute to Cuarón – who will receive the award on Locarno’s open-air Piazza Grande on Aug. 11 – the fest will screen a film he personally chose, Swiss veteran Alain Tanner’s 1976 arthouse hit “Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000,” a rumination on time and history in which eight characters whose consciousness was molded by political events of 1968 faced the future with a utopian spirit. Cuaròn will discuss this film with Frédéric Maire, head of the Cinémathèque suisse, and also hold a separate conversation on his body of work with Italian critic and Locarno fest collaborator Manlio Gomarasca.
The 77th edition of Locarno will run Aug. 7-17.
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