The Locarno Film Festival will honor and celebrate the Belgian-born actress Virginie Efira with the Leopard Club Award at its 79th edition this August.
Efira will receive the award in the Swiss town’s Piazza Grande on the evening of Friday, Aug. 7. In the fest program, she will also present Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden (Soudain), for which she won the Palme for best actress at Cannes and for which she learned to act partly in Japanese.
“Over the past decade, Virginie Efira has become a defining presence in French-language cinema,” Locarno said 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.”
Also at Cannes 2026, Efira starred in Asghar Farhadi’s Parallel Tales (Histoires parallèles), another competition title, in which she featured opposite 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 said. “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.”
Said Giona A. Nazzaro, Locarno’s artistic 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 Club, the official supporting association of the Locarno festival, presents the Leopard Club Award each year to “an individual whose work in the film industry has left its mark on the collective imagination.” Among the stars who have received the honor 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 take place Aug. 5-15.
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