Sokurov has returned to the international competition of Locarno, the festival that brought him worldwide recognition in 1987 with The Lonely Voice of Man, which won the Bronze Leopard. It is a rare occasion for an influential auteur, who already received an honorary award from the festival in 2006, to return to it with a new production, but the Swiss festival is one of the few that are true to their own discoveries, as they did in 2015, by screening Andrzej Zulawski's latest film in competition, just a few years after awarding him with a similar lifetime achievement award. By far the most anticipated title in the competition, after being rejected at Cannes – it's unclear to what extent this was due to political reasons related to the war in Ukraine and the boycott of Russian films, given that the film received no financial support from the Russian government, or for artistic reasons – Skazka reflects the Siberian-born director's interest in history. The screening of a film that brings together the great tyrants of the past in Locarno, the place where several peace treaties were signed after the First World War, also gains a special significance in these politically unstable times that we are living in. 

Andreea Pătru

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Film critic and programmer, she collaborates with various international film festivals. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Senses of Cinema, Kinoscope, Indiewire, Film Comment, Vague Visages and Desistfilm. In Spanish she has written for Caimán Cuadernos de Cine and in Romanian she collaborates with FILM magazine. Programmer and coordinator of Tenerife Shorts.

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