Oscar-nominated Swiss animator Claude Barras (“My Life as a Zucchini”) will be honored by the Locarno Film Festival with its Locarno Kids Award given to personalities credited with infusing younger generations with a love for cinema.
Barras’ beloved stop-motion film “Life as a Zucchini,” about an orphaned boy who lives in a foster home, played at Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes in 2016, and went on to be nominated for best animated feature at the Oscars and secured distribution in over 50 territories.
Barras’ more recent work “Sauvages,” about an orangutan fighting to save the forests of Borneo with his friends, will travel to Locarno after premiering positively at Cannes earlier this month.
“Sauvages” will play on the prominent Swiss fest’s 8,000-seat Piazza Grande on Aug. 13 with the director in tow.
“Claude Barras is one of the great shapers of the contemporary collective imagination,” said Locarno’s artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro in a statement. Nazzaro went on to praise Barras for being a “proponent of a civil and committed cinema whose work – both avant-garde and popular – has fostered a fertile intergenerational dialogue, placing the key nodes of our relationship with the world and the environment at the center of his actions.”
Previous recipients of the Locarno Kids Award, which was created in 2021, are Japanese anime director Mamoru Hosoda (“Mirari,” “Wolf Children”); Indian filmmaker Gitanjali Rao (“Bombay Rose,” “October”); and French director Luc Jacquet (“March of the Penguins”).
The upcoming 77th Locarno Film Festival will run Aug. 7 to 17.
