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The OrnithologistIt’s one thing to watch a film festival unfold and take the films as they come when they come, on their own individual merits. It’s another to look back at them as part of a bigger picture, tracing connections made in invisible ink that may not be apparent at the time. That’s one way to look at the competitive selection of Locarno in 2016. As usual, yes, Locarno did take risks very few other A-list festivals would, and it still gets away with stuff other events can’t. (Let’s pause here to remember that Filipino auteur du jour Lav Diaz only went on to the main Berlin line-up after winning the Golden Leopard two years ago.) If getting away with it means tripping over itself occasionally (and in my short time of attending Locarno there have been stumbles, believe me), I’m absolutely fine with it.

This article was produced as part of the Locarno Critics Academy, a workshop for aspiring journalists at the Locarno Film Festival, a collaboration between the Locarno Film Festival, IndieWire and the Film Society of Lincoln Center with the support of Film Comment and the Swiss Alliance of Film Journalists.

Audiences at the 2016 Locarno Film Festival got used to hearing a familiar statement: “I just saw a Portuguese film.” They were hard to ignore. Fourteen films of some 200 in the lineup were directed or produced by Portuguese people and were distributed across different sections of the festivals. Viewed together, they have a lot to say about the state of a country’s cinema and its ability to wrestle with broad historical concerns.

These included the so-called “blasphemous” biopic of a Lisbon patron saint in João Pedro Rodrigues’ “The Ornithologist” and “Correspondences,” directed by Rita Azevedo Gomes, which focuses on a letter...

This article was produced as part of the Locarno Critics Academy, a workshop for aspiring journalists at the Locarno Film Festival, a collaboration between the Locarno Film Festival, IndieWire and the Film Society of Lincoln Center with the support of Film Comment and the Swiss Alliance of Film Journalists.

“In France, young people get hell from the government who tells them to stop dreaming, to be more grounded.” – Axelle Ropert

During the conference following the press screening of her third feature film, “The Apple of My Eye” — which was competing for the Golden Leopard at the 69th Locarno International Film Festival — Axelle Ropert said that she “absolutely” wanted to depict today’s European youth in her new film. That will come as a surprise to those who have followed Ropert’s work as a screenwriter, director and film critic known for her disinterest in films that deal with modern-day concerns.