Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani will receive the Excellence Award Davide Campari at the 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival.
She will be presented with the honor on the opening evening of the fest on Wednesday, Aug. 6. Farahani will also present her most recent film, Julia Ducournau’s Alpha, which premiered in the competition at Cannes this year, and will take part in a public conversation with the festival audience.
“Renowned for her captivating performances and fearless artistic choices, Golshifteh Farahani has established herself as one of the most influential voices in contemporary cinema,” Locarno organizers said. “Born in Tehran in 1983, Golshifteh Farahani’s passion for acting emerged at an early age, leading to her breakthrough role in Dariush Mehrjui’s The Pear Tree (1998), which won her the best actress award at the Fajr International Film Festival. Since then, she has appeared in a remarkable array of films, both in Iran – Abbas Kiarostami’s Shirin (2008) and Asghar Farhadi’s About Elly (2009) being two major examples – and internationally, from an acclaimed auteur work like Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson (2016) to Ridley Scott’s spy thriller Body of Lies (2008), along Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe and the epos Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) with Christian Bale and Sigourney Weaver and action packed Extraction (2020), with Chris Hemsworth and its sequel (2023).”
She also starred in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise in the film Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017). “In France, she has established herself as one of the major stars working with directors, such as Christophe Honoré, Alain Chabat, Arnaud Desplechin, Louis Garrel, and Mia Hansen-Løve,” Locarno organizers also emphasized. “All Golshifteh Farahani’s performances are distinguished by their emotional depth, her instinctive intelligence, and her ferocious commitment to the core of her characters, making her a beloved figure among audiences and filmmakers alike.”
In 2017, she traveled to Locarno to present the Rajasthan-set The Song of Scorpions (2017) on the picturesque town’s Piazza Grande.
Giona A. Nazzaro, artistic director of the Locarno festival, lauded the star. “Charismatic and multifaceted, she has been able to immerse herself in very different contexts and roles, guided by her extraordinary talent and generosity as an artist,” he said. “Over the years, she has managed to alternate between arthouse films and blockbusters, infusing each film with a new aspect of her personality. Honoring Golshifteh Farahani means celebrating an extraordinary artist who has left a deep mark on the eyes and hearts of every film lover.”
The Excellence Award, supported since 2021 by the festival’s Signature Partner Campari, has in the past gone to the likes of Susan Sarandon, John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, Michel Piccoli, Anjelica Huston, Isabelle Huppert, Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Rampling, Edward Norton, Bill Pullman, Ethan Hawke, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Riz Ahmed, and, in 2024, Mélanie Laurent and Guillaume Canet.