The Locarno Film Festival will pay tribute to James Gray, bestowing upon the U.S. filmmaker the Pardo alla Carriera, the Career Leopard, presented by Ascona-Locarno Tourism, during its 79thedition.
Gray will receive the awardinthe Swiss town’s Piazza Grandeon Sunday, Aug.9, and present his latest film,Paper Tiger, after the ceremony.Two keytitlesbyGray,We Own the Night(2007) and Two Lovers(2008),willalsoscreen in thefestivalprogram.
“Since winning the Silver Lion at Venice forLittle Odessa(1994) at age 25, James Gray has forged a singular career rooted, with piercing realism,in his upbringing in New York’s Russian-Jewishcommunity,” Locarno highlighted. “Films likeThe Yards(2000),We Own the Night(2007),Two Lovers(2008), andThe Immigrant(2013), cemented Gray’s place as one ofAmerican cinema’s most artistically distinctive voices – a filmmaker as concerned with criminal underworlds, rendered with exacting detail, as with meticulous family portraiture, often situated within theBrighton Beach of his youth and shaped by a dialogue with classic American and European auteur cinema.”
Continued Locarno organizers: “As he has established himself at the top tier of filmmakers in the United States,Gray’s explorations of theoften elusivepromise of the American dream have, over the past decade,expanded into more variedthematicterrain– colonial exploration, space travel, racial prejudice–that reshaped the popular understanding of his workwhileremainingdistinctively his own:The Lost City of Z(2016)with Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson,Ad Astra(2019)with Brad Pitt, andArmageddon Time(2022)with Anthony Hopkins.”
Paper Tiger premiered in competition at Cannes this year and will open the 2026 New York Film Festival.
“James Gray is the last great novelist of American cinema,” said Giona A. Nazzaro, Locarno’s artistic director. “His films form arichbody of work that echoes the Jewish diaspora, film noir, and Russian as well as North American literature. A filmmaker with a humanist sensibility and profound cinephile knowledge, he has experimented with genres such as science fiction and adventure while retaining his own artistic identity and voice. Celebrating James Gray at the Locarno Film Festival means paying tribute to a unique and unmistakable artist, a filmmaker who speaks the language of cinema and knows how to pass it on to future generations.”
The Pardo alla Carriera is being handed out with the support ofAscona-Locarno Tourism,the destination partner of the Locarno Film Festival, which focuses on the development and promotion of tourism inthe region. Previous winners of the award include Francesco Rosi, Claude Goretta, Bruno Ganz, Claudia Cardinale, Johnnie To, Harry Belafonte, Peter-Christian Fueter, Sergio Castellitto,Otar Iosseliani,Víctor Erice, Marlen Khutsiev, Bulle Ogier, Mario Adorf, Jane Birkin, Fredi M. Murer, Dante Spinotti, Costa-Gavras, Tsai Ming-liang,Shah Rukh Khan,and, last year,Jackie Chan.
The 79thedition of Locarno takes place Aug. 5-15.