French actress Laetitia Casta will receive the 2021 Excellence Award Davide Campari at the Locarno Film Festival The actress has selected two titles from her filmography to be screened during the Festival: Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque) (Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life, 2010) by Joann Sfar and L’homme fidèle (A Faithful Man, 2018) by Louis Garrel.
Laetitia Casta’s transition from the sphere of high fashion to the world of film and theater marked the rise of one of the most versatile acting talents of the new millennium. Directed for the screen by auteurs such as Raúl Ruiz in Les âmes fortes (Savage Souls, 2001) and Tsai Ming-liang in Visage (Face, 2009) and, on stage, by recent Academy Award winner Florian Zeller in Elle t’attend (2008), Casta has added layer upon layer of complexity to the characters she portrays, overcoming the barriers of prejudice and responding with extreme flexibility to a broad spectrum of directing inputs and artistic visions.
Giona A. Nazzaro, artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival: “Laetitia Casta personifies a highly modern concept of cinema, in tune with the ongoing transformation of audiences and moving images. Her artistic research has led her to work with some of the most innovative filmmakers of recent times, while conserving the unique and unmistakable acting style typical of classic cinema. Her ability to be both sophisticated and popular, an accessible diva, the bearer of a cultivated, strategic and profoundly European glamor, makes Laetitia Casta an emblematic figure of the kind of cinema of which Locarno is an expression, as also the perfect guest for a Piazza Grande that can once again welcome its audience in person. To open the 74th edition of the Locarno Film Festival by handing the Excellence Award to Laetitia Casta is a sign of hope that allows us to look to the future with confidence and enthusiasm.”