This year, the Locarno Film Festival will award James Gray with its Lifetime Career Award, and the American author’s latest film, Paper Tiger, will be screened.
Gray will be presenting “Paper Tiger,” which won the Pardo alla Carriera Award on August 9th and was released by Cannes in May, at the festival’s Piazza Grande outdoor venue. Set in 1986, the film follows two brothers, Irwin (Miles Teller) and Gary Pearl (Adam Driver). Irwin becomes involved with the Russian mob after embarking on a get-rich-quick scheme to clean up the Gowanus Canal. The only person who can save him from his predicament is his younger brother Gary, a former police officer. Paper Tiger will make its North American debut on September 25th as an opening night film at the 64th New York Film Festival.
Two of Gray’s other titles, We Own the Night (2007) and Two Lovers (2008), will also be screened at Locarno as part of the memorial.
“Since winning the Venice Silver Lion at the age of 25 for Little Odessa (1994), James Gray has continued to create an outstanding filmography rooted in his upbringing in New York’s Russian Jewish community. “He has built a singular career rooted in rhythm,” the festival said in a statement, citing Gray’s “The Yard” (2000), “We Own the Night” (2007) and “Two Lovers.” (2008) and The Immigrant (2013) cemented Gray’s status as “one of the most artistically distinctive voices in American cinema, a filmmaker concerned with the criminal underworld, as often located in the Brighton Beaches of his youth as with his meticulous family portraits, and shaped by a dialogue with classic American and European auteur cinema.”
Locarno’s statement continued: “As he has established himself among the top echelons of American filmmakers, Gray’s exploration of the elusive promise of the American Dream has expanded over the past decade into more diverse thematic areas, including colonial exploration, space travel, and racial prejudice, highlighting his uniqueness while also contributing to his work. He reshaped public understanding, including “The Lost City of Z” (2016) with Charlie Hunnam, “Ad Astra” (2019) starring Robert Pattinson and Brad Pitt, and “Armageddon Time” (2022) starring Anthony Hopkins.
Locarno Artistic Director Jonah A. Nazzaro added, “James Gray is the last great novelist of American cinema. His films form a rich body of work that reflects the Jewish diaspora, film noir, Russian literature, and North American literature.” He described Gray as “a filmmaker with a humanist sensibility and deep cinephile knowledge” who has “experimented with genres such as science fiction and adventure while retaining his own artistic identity and voice.”
Previous winners of the Locarno Pardo alla Cariera Award include Francesco Rosi, Bruno Ganz, Claudia Cardinale, Johnny To, Harry Belafonte, Jane Birkin, Costa-Gavras, Tsai Ming-liang, Shah Rukh Khan and Jackie Chan.
The 79th Locarno will be held from August 5th to 15th.
