Locarno Meets

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.