US filmmaker James Gray is to be honoured with the Pardo Alla Carriera award at the 79th Locarno Film Festival, which runs August 5-15. Gray wil
US filmmaker James Gray is to be honoured with the Pardo Alla Carriera award at the 79th Locarno Film Festival, which runs August 5-15.
Gray will receive the career achievement honour on August 9 on Locarno’s Piazza Grande and will present his latest film, Cannes competition premiere Paper Tiger, after the ceremony. Two key titles by Gray, 2007’s We Own the Night and 2008’s Two Lovers, will also show in the festival programme.
Gray won the Silver Lion at Venice for 1994’s Little Odessa at age 25, with recent films including 2016’s The Lost City of Z with Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson, 2019’s Ad Astra with Brad Pitt, and 2022’s Armageddon Time with Anthony Hopkins.
Previous winners of the Pardo Alla Carriera award have included Claudia Cardinale, Johnnie To, Harry Belafonte, Jane Birkin, Costa-Gavras, Tsai Ming-liang, Shah Rukh Khan, and, in 2025, Jackie Chan.
Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro said: “James Gray is the last great novelist of American cinema. His films form a rich body of work that echoes the Jewish diaspora, film noir, and Russian as well as North American literature. A filmmaker with a humanist sensibility and profound cinephile knowledge, he has experimented with genres such as science fiction and adventure while retaining his own artistic identity and voice. Celebrating James Gray at the Locarno Film Festival means paying tribute to a unique and unmistakable artist, a filmmaker who speaks the language of cinema and knows how to pass it onto future generations.”
