Los De-Noche Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Guy Lodge Film Critic“Rule 34,” a challenging and sexually explicit film from Brazilian director Julia Murat, has emerged as the surprise winner of the Golden Leopard award at this year’s Locarno Film Festival — an edition where typically audacious and formally ambitious work dominated the program.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentTo the exuberant tones of Christophe’s “Aline,” lamenting the loss of his love, two shirtless men rejoice orgiastically as water tumbling down a rock face drenching their bodies. Meanwhile, at a country house, maids and a gardener, dressed in period costume, proudly pour what looks like a mixture of water and milk onto plants.The scenes, it seems, are from a libertine costume drama, being shot in the wooded French countryside. Then suddenly Valentin, the director, disappears.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentEnergetic Italian sales agent Open Reel has closed world sales rights to Valentin Merz’s “De noche los gatos son pardos,” which will world premiere in this year’s Locarno Festival International Competition. One of two first features in Locarno’s main competitive section, “De noche los gatos son pardos” (“At Night All Cats Are Black”) returns to Europe’s largest mid-Summer film event after winning the biggest prize last year at its First Look pix-in-post showcase focused on Swiss movies.That prize went to the section’s boldest entry, a genre mashup of film shoot drama and comedic procedural which proves an ode to sexuality in its multiple manifestations, as well as to love and filmmaking.  Shot through with a meta conscience, “De noche…” turns on a highly disparate crew and cast shooting a sexually-souped costume drama in wooded hills. Suddenly, its director, Valentin disappears.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentValentin Merz’s “De Noche los Gatos Son Pardos” scooped the biggest prize, the Cinegrell First Look Award, at this year’s Locarno Festival First Look pix-in-post competition, one of its industry centerpieces.Now in its tenth edition, First Look’s focus this year was Switzerland with a jury and industry audience given the chance to preview six upcoming Swiss feature films at various stages of rough or final cut.The Cinegrell First Look Award