Locarno79's retrospective reopens the case of the blacklist

The retrospective of the 79th edition is titled "Red & Black - The Hollywood Left and the Blacklist". It brings together fifty titles, spanning fiction, documentary, newsreels and short films.

The works come from the United States, Britain, Spain, Italy, France, Mexico and Argentina. They were made by filmmakers and creative professionals persecuted or placed on the blacklist during Senator McCarthy's witch hunt, or they are dedicated to them.

The selection is curated by the Iranian critic Ehsan Khoshbakht, who lives in London. The programme arrives at a political moment the festival has not concealed, with the Trump presidency in the United States.

The rest of the programme

The most visible change in this edition concerns the structure. The experimental section "Moving Ahead" has been dropped. The festival has not given up on exploratory cinema for that reason: it has opened the other sections, including the main competition, to bolder work.

Artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro describes his approach as continuity, with sections and side events that remain as they were. He refuses to sort films by genre, in keeping with an omnivorous taste rooted in punk-rock aesthetics.

Among the documentary offerings is "Der Engelmacher" by Marina Klauser, about the Swiss religious community Methernitha, its founder Paul Baumann and the allegations of child abuse made by people who grew up there.

The festival is also paying tribute to the Swiss pioneer Isa Hesse-Rabinovitch, who died in 2003, with "Geister und Gäste" from 1989 and "Sirenen-Eiland" from 1981. Further tributes cover Roger Corman's "Frankenstein Unbound" from 1990, John Landis's "An American Werewolf in London" from 1981 and Safi Faye's "Kaddu Beykat" from 1975.

The presidency has been held since 2023 by Maja Hoffmann, heir to the Roche pharmaceutical fortune and a well-known patron of contemporary art. Her arrival has strengthened the event's international profile without launching a rebrand.

The positioning remains what it was. Cannes operates as a global multi-billion circuit, Berlin has lost two senior figures in two years after political controversies, and Venice retains its prestige while orienting itself towards the Hollywood industry. Locarno meanwhile attracts a growing number of professionals, more than four thousand in 2025, at an event where, in Nazzaro's words, the real stars are the films.