Jane Campion will be honored this year by the Locarno Film Festival, which will present the New Zealand director with the Pardo d’Onore Manor Award for his entire career.
Campion will receive this tribute during the 77th edition of the Swiss festival on Friday August 16.
Locarno will also screen two of Campion’s best-known films, selected by the director herself for this tribute: Her 1990 feature film An angel at my table and his Palme d’Or-winning global breakthrough in 1993 The piano. The latter will be screened with great fanfare in a new 4K restoration on Locarno’s legendary Piazza Grande on the evening of its awards ceremony. Campion will also participate in a panel discussion at the festival on Saturday, August 17.
The Locarno Film Festival’s Pardo d’Onore Manor has already been awarded to filmmakers such as Agnès Varda, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ken Loach, Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Kelly Reichardt and, last year, to Harmony Korine.
Campion was the first female director to win Cannes’ top prize and, in 2021, the first woman to win the Venice Silver Lion for Best Director (for The power of the dog). She was the first woman to be nominated twice for Best Director at the Academy Awards – for The piano And The power of the dogwinning for the latter in 2022. She received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The piano.
In addition to his feature films, including the adaptation of Henry James The portrait of a lady (1996), Meg Ryan’s thriller In the cup (2003) and the John Keats/Fanny Brawne biopic Shining star (2009), Campion broke new ground on the small screen with the Emmy Award-winning miniseries Lake Summitwith Elisabeth Moss.
“With her debut as a director, my darling (1989), Jane Campion established herself from the beginning as a distinctive and inimitable voice,” said Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro, announcing the distinction. “More than thirty years later, the extraordinary values and qualities of his cinema remain intact. Campion has maintained a true complexity in her artistic practice, free to weave a dialogue with the public and with the film industry in which she works without ever compromising on her artistic vision and ambitions. His work, populated by tortured, fascinating characters and marked by an astonishing ability to address the most disturbing aspects of the human condition, represents one of the undisputed summits of contemporary cinema. Jane Campion’s artistic freedom and willingness to take risks to find new and deeper insight into the richness and complexity of the human experience make her an unparalleled reference for anyone who considers cinema as an instrument of expression and emancipation. Offering the Pardo d’Onore to Jane Campion is – today – welcoming cinema in all its infinite possibilities and looking to the future without fear.
The 77th Locarno Film Festival takes place from August 7 to 17.
