News

This article was produced as part of the Locarno Critics Academy, a workshop for aspiring journalists at the Locarno Film Festival, a collaboration between the Locarno Film Festival, IndieWire and the Film Society of Lincoln Center with the support of Film Comment and the Swiss Alliance of Film Journalists.

Audiences at the 2016 Locarno Film Festival got used to hearing a familiar statement: “I just saw a Portuguese film.” They were hard to ignore. Fourteen films of some 200 in the lineup were directed or produced by Portuguese people and were distributed across different sections of the festivals. Viewed together, they have a lot to say about the state of a country’s cinema and its ability to wrestle with broad historical concerns.

These included the so-called “blasphemous” biopic of a Lisbon patron saint in João Pedro Rodrigues’ “The Ornithologist” and “Correspondences,” directed by Rita Azevedo Gomes, which focuses on a letter...

This article was produced as part of the Locarno Critics Academy, a workshop for aspiring journalists at the Locarno Film Festival, a collaboration between the Locarno Film Festival, IndieWire and the Film Society of Lincoln Center with the support of Film Comment and the Swiss Alliance of Film Journalists.

While Ken Loach’s “I, Daniel Blake” was surprisingly awarded the Palme d’Or this May, many critics slammed the film (and Cannes judges) for its blunt portrayal of the disenfranchised worker. Few audiences dig being preached at, and Loach’s politics were seen to trump its storytelling. Regardless of how mawkish one may find Loach’s alleged swan song, his concern for a 59-year-old ex-carpenter from Newcastle battling to stay on welfare connected with the George Miller-led jury, highlighting the resonance of Loach’s timely social critique.

It should be no surprise then that the jobless were frequent fixtures at the 2016 Locarno Film Festival,...

For the fifth year, IndieWire is co-hosting the Locarno Critics Academy, giving a group of talented up-and-coming critics a chance to help their role in the current climate for film criticism and journalism at the Locarno International Film Festival. With assistance from Penske Media, the Swiss Alliance of Film Journalists and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, participants will engage in a series of activities and then get to work. They will spend the first half of the festival which begins today, in roundtable discussions with working critics and industry figures; beginning next week, they’ll write about films at this year’s festival, as well as topics ranging from television to digital media.

Before then, take a minute to get to know them, and find out what they’re looking forward to checking out. Keep up with their dispatches from this year’s festival here and follow them on Twitter.