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Actor Virginie Efira will be honoured with the Leopard Club Award at the 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, recognising her contribution to contemporary cinema, according to Variety.
The festival announced that Efira will receive the honour on August 7, when her latest film, All of a Sudden, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, will be screened at the iconic 6,500-seat Piazza Grande venue in the Swiss lakeside town. Efira recently appeared in the Cannes Film Festival competition with lead roles in Hamaguchi's All of a Sudden and Asghar Farhadi's Parallel Tales. She also won acting honours at Cannes for her performance in All of a Sudden, for which she partly learned Japanese for the role. In a statement, the Locarno Film Festival said Efira's career has been marked by "memorable turns" in films by Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven and Anatomy of a Fall director Justine Triet, according to Variety. "In Verhoeven's Elle (2016), and especially in Benedetta (2021), Efira demonstrated a willingness to inhabit provocative, demanding characters whose thorny complexities resist easy categorization," the festival said. "Her extraordinary performances in Triet's Victoria (2016) and Sibyl (2019) likewise confirmed that gift and, along with a handful of other remarkable films of that period, secured her status as one of the rising stars of modern European cinema," it added, according to Variety. Locarno Film Festival Artistic Director Giona A. Nazzaro praised Efira's artistic journey, saying, "Virginie Efira brings a unique sensibility to her roles as a performer. Bold yet thoughtful, instinctive yet ironic, she offers contemporary cinema a fresh perspective that continually reinvents itself." "From working with Verhoeven to Hamaguchi and beyond, she has consistently explored her artistic potential, revealing a talent that evolves with freedom and vitality. Efira captures the beauty of what it means to be an actress in today's cinema," Nazzaro added. Previous recipients of the Leopard Club Award include Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow, Andy Garcia, Stefania Sandrelli, Adrien Brody, Meg Ryan, Hilary Swank, Kasia Smutniak and Daisy Edgar-Jones. The 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival will be held from August 5 to 15, according to Variety. (ANI)
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