Luc Jacquet, the Oscar-winning French director of March of the Penguins, will be honored with the 2023 Locarno Kids Award, an honor celebrating a film personality who has brought cinema to younger audiences, giving them “a sense of discovery about the big screen.”
Jacquet will receive his award in Locarno on Aug. 7, ahead of an open-air screening of March of the Penguins on Locarno’s legendary Piazza Grande. Jacquet will also take part in a panel discussion on Aug. 8. Locarno will screen a selection of Jacquet’s other films, which include documentaries Once Upon a Forest, 2015’s Ice and the Sky and Penguins sequel Penguins 2: The Next Step (2017), as well as the 2007 feature The Fox & the Child.
“Luc Jacquet is a director who has masterfully woven together the magical charm of observation and the pure poetry of storytelling, taking our gaze to dimensions of the planet never before explored,” said Giona A. Nazzaro, the festival’s artistic director. “By turning documentary into epic, but intimate, adventures he has drawn new generations of viewers into the magic of motion picture storytelling and at the same time engaged them on behalf of protecting life in all its forms.”
Jacquet’s new film, Magnetic Continent, will explore the director’s decades-long obsession with the Antarctic.
The Locarno Kids Award was created in 2021. Previous editions went to Japanese anime director Mamoru Hosoda (Mirari, Wolf Children) and Indian director Gitanjali Rao (Bombay Rose, October).
The 76th Locarno Film Festival runs from Aug. 2 to 12.
