The Locarno Film Festival will honor and have fun the Belgian-born actress Virginie Efira with the Leopard Membership Award at its 79th version this August.
Efira will obtain the award within the Swiss city’s Piazza Grande on the night of Friday, Aug. 7. Within the fest program, she may also current Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden (Soudain), for which she gained the Palme for finest actress at Cannes and for which she realized to behave partly in Japanese.
“Over the past decade, Virginie Efira has become a defining presence in French-language cinema,” Locarno mentioned on Thursday. “In 2023, she earned the César for best actress for Alice Winocour’s Paris Memories (Revoir Paris) and has repeatedly ventured into bold, formally adventurous work with some of the most distinctive contemporary filmmakers.”
Additionally at Cannes 2026, Efira starred in Asghar Farhadi’s Parallel Tales (Histoires parallèles), one other competitors title, by which she featured reverse Isabelle Huppert and Vincent Cassel.
“Along with popular successes, Efira’s trajectory has been marked by memorable turns with Dutch auteur Paul Verhoeven and Anatomy of a Fall (2023) filmmaker Justine Triet,” Locarno mentioned. “In Verhoeven’s Elle (2016), and especially in Benedetta (2021), Efira demonstrated a willingness to inhabit provocative, demanding characters whose thorny complexities resist easy categorisation. Her extraordinary performances in Triet’s Victoria (2016) and Sibyl (2019) likewise confirmed that gift and, along with a handful of other remarkable films of that period, secured her status as one of the rising stars of modern European cinema.”
Mentioned Giona A. Nazzaro, Locarno’s inventive director: “Virginie Efira brings a unique sensibility to her roles as a performer. Bold yet thoughtful, instinctive yet ironic, she offers contemporary cinema a fresh perspective that continually reinvents itself. From working with Verhoeven to Hamaguchi and beyond, she has consistently explored her artistic potential, revealing a talent that evolves with freedom and vitality. Efira captures the beauty of what it means to be an actress in today’s cinema.”
The Leopard Membership, the official supporting affiliation of the Locarno competition, presents the Leopard Membership Award annually to “an individual whose work in the film industry has left its mark on the collective imagination.” Among the many stars who’ve obtained the distinction are Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow, Andy García, Stefania Sandrelli, Adrien Brody, Meg Ryan, Hilary Swank, Kasia Smutniak, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Irène Jacob, and Emma Thompson.
The 79th edition of Locarno will happen Aug. 5-15.
