Famous, or infamous, people make for good subjects of movies, whether documentaries, essay films or fiction features.
Just look at the lineup of this year’s Locarno Film Festival, whose 79th edition, running Aug. 5-15, features all sorts of screen stories about bold or recognizable names.
From a German entertainment figure and an Italian film and series creator to a U.S. prisoner sentenced for an “unintended crime,” the program of the Swiss festival allows you to learn more about people who have been in the headlines. Plus, there is also a cinematic letter to a documentarian of modern Lebanese history and a fiction feature about infamous Nazi Heinrich Himmler’s massage therapist.
If you are curious about diving deeper into the lives of the famous and the infamous at Locarno 2026, THR has compiled some possible picks for you below.
Sixteen Moments of My Life (Seize Moments De Ma Vie) by Albert Serra
Section: Out of competition
‘Sixteen Moments From My Life’
The new movie from Spain’s Albert Serra (Afternoons of Solitude) focuses on German actress and singer Ingrid Caven. Yes, that is THE Ingrid Caven who is best known for her roles in films directed by her former husband Rainer Werner Fassbinder, including Love Is Colder Than Death, Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? and The American Soldier. You may also remember her from her role as Miss Vendegast in Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (2018).
Since this is a Serra film, this is not your typical documentary, of course. Here is how the Locarno festival website teases Sixteen Moments of My Life: “Ingrid Caven sings about 16 moments from her life in a unique concert at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris.”
And Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro tells THR: “It’s a live concert that Albert worked on with Ingrid,” adding: “It’s one of the out-of- competition section films that could be very, very interesting” for audiences.
Bruton by Vincent Grashaw
Section: Out of competition
‘Bruton,’ courtesy of JIB LLC
Last year, Vincent Grashaw was in Locarno with the indigenous crime drama Keep Quiet, starring Lou Diamond Phillips and Elisha Pratt. This year, he returns with a very different story set in the world of crime, a biopic about Bryan Bruton, who was sentenced to a decade in a Florida prison for an “unintended crime.”
Or, as the Locarno festival synopsis reads: “A tragic accident leads Bryan Bruton on a wild and unforgettable experience in the Florida prison system.” The film stars Theo Rossi.
Bruton was charged in the early 2000s with a manslaughter conviction for a fatal hit-and-run in Jacksonville, Florida. The movie follows Bruton’s journey through the correctional system. After his release, he moved to California and turned to making the YouTube video series Bryan Bruton Crazy Prison Stories. It covers life in the Florida prison system, from how inmates obtain and conceal drugs, alcohol and weapons to cutting the window out of a jail cell.
Marco Bellocchio: La porta della Realtà by Fabio Lovino
Section: Out of competition
‘Marco Bellocchio: La porta della Realtà,’ courtesy of Fabio Lovino
The director worked as set photographer for legendary Italian writer-director Marco Bellocchio (Portobello, The Traitor, Kidnapped) for more than 20 years – long enough to have something to tell the world.
“After 20 years of working with Marco Bellocchio, I felt the need to share what I experienced with him and give voice to the emotions and lessons I received,” reads a synopsis of the film. “An exclusive portrait of the man and artist told through interviews and unseen images from the set.”
Among the people featured in the film are Bellocchio’s family, long-term collaborators and such prominent actors as Pierfrancesco Favino and Fabrizio Gifuni, as well as such directors as Marco Tullio Giordana.
I Is Another by Felix Randau
Section: Piazza Grande
‘I Is Another’
Courtesy of Anke Neugebauer/Ostlicht Filmproduktion/Wega Filmproduktion
Fall 1952. Journalist Hedda and her husband ambush Felix Kersten, the former massage therapist to Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler, on a train. “Kersten claims to have helped thousands of concentration camp prisoners to freedom during the Nazi era,” reads a synopsis. “But Hedda has doubts, and what started as an interview quickly leads to a psychological cat-and-mouse game.”
Writer-director Randau’s fiction feature has a star-studded cast, including Claes Bang (The Square, Bad Sisters) as Kersten, Valerie Pachner (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, The Stories, Four Minus Three) as Hedda and Susanne Wuest (Sound of Falling, Goodnight Mommy) as Kersten’s wife.
What awaits audiences? Randau puts it this way in a director’s note: “Every story has three sides. Yours. Mine. And the truth…”
Revolutionaries Never Die by Mohanad Yaqubi
Section: Filmmakers of the Present Competition
‘Revolutionaries Never Die’
Courtesy of Locarno Film Festival
Yaqubi’s goal was to celebrate the legacy of the late Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab by tracing 16 of her films documenting Arab revolutions and struggles between 1973 and 1983.
The result is Revolutionaries Never Die, a cinematic letter to the female filmmaking pioneer in response to an invitation that Yaqubi received from the late Lebanese director and that suggested a collaboration just two months before her death. “Since his reply can never reach her, the film transforms into a lyrical expedition through the life, political commitments and artistic vision of a singular voice from the era of revolution,” the Locarno website highlights.
And Yaqubi notes in a director’s statement: “Jocelyne Saab’s film archive from 1973 to 1983 brought forward several questions about the striking resonance between her historical depictions and our contemporary realities five decades later, when no answers can ever be given.”
Transition by Peter Badel and Chris Wright
Section: Out of competition
This film has a very personal story behind it; actually, more than one. Documentarian Thomas Heise began a film about Berlin’s Schönhauser Allee, the road he lived on for decades. A few months later, Heise died unexpectedly.
Heise’s long-time cinematographer Badel and editor and co-director Wright stepped up to complete the film, though. “With exclusive material from his archives, the film reveals lived history and a great thinker,” Locarno’s website promises.
Heise (Vaterland, Material), born in East Berlin in 1955, when Germany was divided into the GDR and West Germany, was known for chronicling the reality of life in East Germany and, after German reunification, the societal and social changes in the country.
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