Locarno has run since 1946 and holds a place no other festival occupies: a serious auteur competition for the Pardo d'Oro by day, and at night the largest open-air screen in Europe in the Piazza Grande, where around 8,000 people watch a single film together in the open air.
The festival publishes admissions per edition; we have not collected a dated one.
Its programming reputation is for discovery rather than premieres of finished reputations — directors are found at Locarno and consecrated elsewhere.
The Piazza Grande is open-air and Ticino in August has thunderstorms; the festival holds an indoor fallback and announces the switch late in the afternoon. Locarno is small, Ascona next door is smaller and more expensive, and the audience largely commutes from across the lake.
PlanningAn eleven-day August window; the Piazza Grande screenings are the event and they are weather-dependent.