WEEK IN WOMEN: Isabella Rossellini gets Excellence Award @ Locarno Film Fest – Brandy McDonnell reports
The Locarno Film Festival will celebrate the iconic Italian-American actress, model, and filmmaker Isabella Rossellini with the Excellence Award at its upcoming 79th edition, set for Aug. 5-15 in Locarno, Switzerland. Rossellini will be honored with the Excellence Award on the opening night of the festival, Aug. 5, in Piazza Grande.
An icon of contemporary cinema, television, and fashion, Rossellini has long fused the technical brilliance of Hollywood with the European spirit of artistic fearlessness across her multi-faceted, decades-long career.
“Isabella Rossellini is a true legend of contemporary cinema. A singular talent who has always fully embraced the thrill of artistic risk, reinvention, and fearless creative transformation. Joyfully unconventional, consistently brilliant in her characterizations and choices, Rossellini has made unpredictability her ultimate artistic signature,” said Locarno Film Festival Artistic Director Giona A. Nazzaro in a statement.
“She remains a visionary and incomparable performer and self-deprecating genius whose profound presence has left an indelible mark on contemporary cinema through her boundless talent and deep humanity.”
Along with a public conversation, Rossellini – who holds a master’s degree in animal behavior and conservation from Hunter College in New York – will present her witty, self-directed web series Green Porno (2008-09), in which she acted out animal mating rituals in costume and with deadpan comic genius, as well as My Dad is 100 Years Old (Guy Maddin, 2005), Seduce Me (2010), Mammas (2013), Darwin, What? and Darwin, What? What? (co-directed with Paul David Magid, both 2020) and an excerpt from Animals Distract Me (2011) as part of the Locarno Film Festival.
Previous recipients of Locarno’s Excellence Award include Susan Sarandon, John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, Michel Piccoli, Anjelica Huston, Carmen Maura, Isabelle Huppert, Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Rampling, Giancarlo Giannini, Edward Norton, Bill Pullman, Mathieu Kassovitz, Ethan Hawke, Song Kang-Ho, Laetitia Casta, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Riz Ahmed, Mélanie Laurent, Guillaume Canet and, in 2025, Golshifteh Farahani. Continue reading on THE WEEK IN WOMEN.
