Locarno Film Festival 2019 – all our coverage | Sight & Sound

Report

Locarno 2019 report: films forged in fire

This year’s standout movie, Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela, seemed to set the tone for the rest of the festival, where low-budget but innovative and politically charged films found their place to shine, writes Kieron Corless.
Saturday 31 August 2019

First-look reviews

Vitalina Varela review: Pedro Costa serenades his haunted heroine

In his seventh feature, the Portuguese master and his community of Lisbon castaways continue their otherworldly incantations of lives lost and sundered, writes Christopher Small.
Thursday 15 August 2019
Maternal review: motherly care in sisterly solidarity

Maura Delpero’s portrait of young women who find a haven to raise their families in a religious community is disarmingly funny and moving, writes Katherine McLaughlin.
Thursday 15 August 2019
The Fever review: Maya Da-Rin dreams a migrant Amazonian’s heartache

Former documentarian Da-Rin continues to innovate with this elliptical fiction feature about an indigenous Brazilian worker drawn mysteriously back in to the rainforest, writes Laura Davis.
Thursday 15 August 2019
Echo review: a mosaic of an Icelandic Christmas

Rúnar Rúnarsson’s collage film captures the celebrations, vexations and conflagrations of the festive season in 56 deft vignettes, writes John Bleasdale.
Thursday 15 August 2019
A Girl Missing review: Koji Fukada examines the complexities of guilt

In this compassionate drama from the director of Harmonium, parallel timelines show how Tsutsui Mariko’s protagonist becomes drawn into her nephew’s crime of abduction, writes Josh Slater-Williams.
Thursday 22 August 2019
Days of the Bagnold Summer review: can two awkward loners make a family?

A single mum and her moody, heavy-metal-obsessed teenager negotiate their strained relationship in Simon Bird’s poignant coming-of-age movie.
Wednesday 21 August 2019
Isadora’s Children review: dancing on to a higher emotional plane

Damien Manivel’s deftly choreographed dance-drama explores how Isadora Duncan’s powerful expression of maternal grief resonates through the lives of contemporary performers, writes Sophie Monks Kaufman.
Wednesday 21 August 2019
Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another review: a gripping restoration drama

Jessica Sarah Rinland’s mesmerising new film uses a series of close-ups of hands to tell a powerful story about how natural resources are preserved and transformed, writes Laura Davis.
Saturday 31 August 2019