Locarno Meets

We sat down with Asia Argento this week on #LocarnoMeets to talk about Argento’s latest film, the Venezuela-set horror-thriller Death Has No Master her own directing work through to Misunderstood, the improvisatory spirit of Abel Ferrara’s classic New Rose Hotel, and how she prefers the riskier cinema of the shadows.

This week on #LocarnoMeets, we sit down with the actor Caleb Landry Jones, star and producer of the film "Down the Arm of God", which played on the Piazza Grande at #Locarno79. By some measures, one in every four people in America is unhoused, a subject confronted by this powerful new drama, which received considerable acclaim from the audience and press upon its premiere in Locarno. Landry Jones, best known for "Get Out", "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", and "Dogman", has always been a singular voice within his generation of actors. He joined us on the podcast to dive into this new work.

Winner of the Prix du Public UBS at #Locarno79, Petra Volpe’s unflinching and emotional prison drama “Frank & Louis”, her first English-language film and her sixth at Locarno, depicts prisoner Frank (Kingsley Ben-Adir) as takes a caregiving job looking after Louis (Rob Morgan), who has Alzheimer’s, mostly to improve his chances of release. This week on #LocarnoMeets, we take the chance to sit down with the two extraordinary lead actors to chat through the journey behind the film, their collaboration with director Volpe, and how they worked to craft this an expression of humanity.

At #Locarno79, Darren Aronofsky, one of Hollywood’s weirdest mainstream filmmakers and one of its undeniable mavericks, took home our highest honour, the Pardo d’Onore (Honorary Leopard). This week on #LocarnoMeets, we leapt at the chance to sit down with the man whose career started with a drum & bass maths movie (“Pi”), passed through the wrestling comeback flick (“The Wrestler”), and wound its way all the way to a Biblical home invasion horror film (“mother!”). Along the way, Aronofsky has never once compromised, even while winning Hollywood’s top prizes and earning the respect of cinephiles around the world.

This week on #LocarnoMeets, Isabelle Huppert joins us to talk Marc Fitoussi’s tender comedy “All About Corinne” (“Ni vue, ni connue”), the closing film of #Locarno79. Alongside Sandrine Kiberlain, Huppert plays the lead in a story that reunites her with Fitoussi, a director she has long trusted and often collaborated with. We talk about how she adapts to such different filmmakers, what keeps her artistic partnership with Fitoussi fresh, and her memories from collaborating with visionary filmmakers Claude Chabrol and Michael Haneke.

Isabella Rossellini has never settled on a single job title: actress, supermodel, fashion designer, farmer, holder of a master's degree in animal behaviour. Upon receiving the Excellence Award in Locarno, she joined us to talk the silence of "Conclave", how her fascination with animal courtship rituals turned into her cult series "Green Porno," the "nightmare" reputation that followed her after David Lynch's "Blue Velvet", and how director Robert Zemeckis proved just as experimental on set as her father, Roberto Rossellini.

This week on #LocarnoMeets, we sat down with Alexander Payne, the comedic genius behind some of the best films of the past three decades, including “The Holdovers”, “Election”, and “Sideways”. He joined us to discuss his career, working with George Clooney on “The Descendants”, and his low, low budgets.

Iraqi filmmaker Mohamed Al-Daradji’s latest film (“Irkalla: Gilgamesh's Dream”), which premiered on the Piazza Grande during Locarno78, was hailed as a major achievement, both in terms of its artistry and the circumstances of its production. He joined us to discuss the myth of Gilgamesh, shooting a movie in Baghdad, and being shot at in Baghdad.

When, in August 2025, we had the honour of awarding the Raimondo Rezzonico Award to the Lebanese independent company Abbout Productions – founded by Georges Schoucair and Myriam Sassine – we could never have imagined that, just a few months later, we would find ourselves facing the current dramatic international situation and that war would be raging harsher than ever in Lebanon.At the time, in Locarno, these two outstanding producers joined our podcast to discuss their careers and the future of Lebanese cinema. We spoke about the trauma of the Beirut explosion in 2020, the work of creative producing and the Arab film community, as well as their films “Costa Brava, Lebanon” and “Memory Box”.

Serving as head of the Locarno78 jury last year, Rithy Panh is a legend of Cambodian cinema. Over his thirty year career, he has tirelessly interrogated the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge with creativity and originality. He joined us on the latest episode of #LocarnoMeets to talk about movies, TikTok, and the demagogues of the tech world.