Three films developed at the Rome market reach Locarno's line-up

The 79th Locarno Film Festival began on 5 August and runs until the 15th. Entries received passed seven thousand, a rise of 21% on 2025. From those, 233 films were selected, including 103 world premieres, from 69 countries.

Among this edition's honorees are Isabella Rossellini, Rick Baker, Asia Argento and Virginie Efira.

Three features in the programme passed through the MIA, the international audiovisual market in Rome, where they were developed before reaching production.

The three titles

"Alberi erranti" by Salvatore Mereu is in the international competition and is scheduled for 10 August. The film is drawn from Alberto Capitta's novel and set in Sardinia. It follows three very different families, whose stories intertwine around generational conflict and the question of identity. The cast includes Romeo Perrone, Giulia Maenza, Lorenzo Richelmy, Lupo Barbiero, Edoardo Raiola, Alessandro Haber and Massimo Popolizio.

"Lejos de los árboles" by the Catalan director Meritxell Colell Aparicio is also in the international competition, on 13 August. It follows a Mexican sound artist recording the sounds of threatened rainforests, between Peru and Catalonia. The cast features Angélica Castelló, Jose Luis López Cama, Teresita Sánchez and Caterina Ramirez Guallar.

"Il Cileno" by Sergio Castro-San Martín, by contrast, screens in Piazza Grande on 13 August at 9.30pm. It is set in 1976 and concerns a Chilean exile in Turin, in difficult and dangerous circumstances. The cast includes Camilo Arancibia, Sara Serraiocco, Gaetano Bruno, Andrew Bargsted and Lorenzo Richelmy.

The Italian presence does not end there. Piazza Grande is showing "Armony" by Dario Albertini, with Valerio Mastandrea and Asia Argento. In the international competition runs "Ketticè" by Giovanni Tortorici, produced by Luca Guadagnino and starring Monica Bellucci.

The route these films have taken says something about how the industry works. A market like the MIA exists to bring projects and financiers together while the film still only exists on paper, and Locarno is one of the places where that work becomes visible to an audience.