U.S. director Harmony Korine will be heading to Switzerland this summer to receive an honorary award at the 76th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, running from August 2 to 12.
The director will be presented with the festival’s Honorary Leopard for outstanding achievement in cinema in a ceremony at its landmark Piazza Grande open-air venue on August 11.
The festival will screen Korine’s cult films Gummo (1997) and Spring Breakers (2012), while the director will also meet with the festival goers on 12 August in a panel conversation on his career.
“Harmony Korine is hard to pin down, difficult to categorize as a filmmaker, but he is an artist whose touch is unmistakable in whatever form,” said Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro.
“A rebellious anarchist – both dangerous and poetic in his amused, cultivated radicalism – Korine redefined the term “maverick” in U.S. cinema, without ever losing the smile on his face or the sheer fun of it all. An auteur in the present indicative.”
Past recipients of the Leopard of Honor have included Manoel de Oliveira, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ken Loach, Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Agnès Varda, Michael Cimino, Marco Bellocchio, John Waters and Kelly Reichardt.
