‘Two Seasons, Two Strangers’ Takes Top Prize

Tabi to Hibi, the latest feature from Japanese filmmaker Sho Miyake, has won the Pardo d’Oro, the Locarno Film Festival’s main competition award. 

Miyake is the fourth Japanese winner of the top prize in the festival’s history after Masahiro Kobayashi’s The Rebirth (Ai no yokan) in 2007, Akio Jissoji’s This Transient Life (Mujō), which was one of four films to share the prize in 1970, and Teinosuke Kinugasa’s classic Gate of Hell (Jigokumon) in 1954. 

The festival’s awards were announced this afternoon. Tabi to Hibi is based on the manga Mr. Ben and His Igloo, A View of the Seaside by Yoshiharu Tsuge. The film was produced by Masayoshi Johnai. The official synopsis reads: In summer, Nagisa and Natsuo meet by the sea. Their vacant gazes reflect each other as they exchange awkward words and wade into the rain-drenched ocean. In winter, Li, a screenwriter, travels to a snow-covered village. There, she finds a guesthouse run by Benzo. Their conversations rarely connect, yet they set off on an unexpected adventure.

In Locarno’s parallel competition, Concorso Cineasti del Presente, Hair, Paper, Water…, a documentary co-directed by Truong Minh Quy and Nicolas Graux, won the top prize. Shot over three years on a vintage Bolex camera, the film is a rich portrait of an elderly, unnamed woman who, born in a cave more than 60 years ago, now lives in a village caring for her children and grandchildren. The film captures her daily life and the transmission of her fragile native language, Rục, to the younger generations, as she dreams of her deceased mother calling her home to her mountain cave.

Hair, Paper, Water… was produced by Thomas Hakim and Julien Graff of Petit Chaos, the company behind Payal Kapadia’s groundbreaking feature debut All We Imagine As Light, alongside Julie Freres. Italian-based sales company Lights On is handling the project.

Elsewhere, White Snail by Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, which competed in the main Competition, won the Special Jury Prize, and Abbas Fahdel won Best Director for Tales Of The Wounded Landed. 

Scroll down for the full list of this year’s winners in Locarno. 

Discussing the crop of winning titles, Locarno head Giona A. Nazzaro described this year’s festival as an event that celebrated “the enduring and gentle power of cinema and its manifold ways of bringing communities together to share the wonderful gifts of peace.” 

“We are grateful to all the directors who trusted the festival with their works. It allowed us to create a forward-looking edition, with its gaze firmly set in the future,” said in a statement. “We are certain these works will stand the test of time and become beacons of hope for young talents that are just starting to dream the films they want to make tomorrow. A festival is like building a better tomorrow. One film at the time”.

Full winners list:

Concorso Internazionale

Pardo d’Oro – Grand Prize of the Festival and City of Locarno

to TABI TO HIBI (TWO SEASONS, TWO STRANGERS) by Sho Miyake, Japan