Isabella Rossellini followed in the footsteps of her legendary late director father Roberto Rossellini and producer half-brother Renzo Rossellini as she was feted by the Locarno Film Festival with an Honorary Leopard (Pardo) at its opening night ceremony on Wednesday.
“The prize I am receiving tonight is the excellence prize, which is something I haven’t heard very often, so I am very proud and above all moved because my father received this prize (the Pardo) for his film Germany, Year Zero in 1948,” Rossellini told an 8,000-strong crowd on Locarno’s Piazza Grande.
She also noted her brother Renzo Rossellini had received a Lifetime Achievement Award in Locarno in 1923. “Being on a par with my father and big brother fills me with emotion,” she said.
The Blue Velvet and Conclave star will participate in an onstage conversation devoted to her career on Thursday. The festival is also showcasing a series of shorts directed by Rossellini and inspired by her fascination with the natural world including Green Porno (2008), exploring the sexual dynamics of insects and invertebrates, and Seduce Me (2010), about seduction strategies in the animal kingdom.
The award ceremony was followed by the world premiere of The Green Eyes by Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh as the opening film.
It revolves around a young Iraqi refugee whose older brother is struck down by so-called resignation syndrome, a state first witnessed in refugee children in Sweden in the 1990s and thought to be a reaction to childhood trauma and insecurity.
Liatard told the audience the film currently had a double resonance due to the fact it was shot in France’s Landes region, parts of which have devastated by wildfires in recent weeks.
“It’s an area that is very dear to us and we were nearby at the time. It brought home to us what it means to lose everything overnight,” she said. The 79th Locarno Film Festival runs from August 5 to 15
