The Festival del film Locarno (August 4 through 14) has announced that it will award the Pardo d’onore Swisscom (Leopard of Honour) to Jia Zhangke. Olivier Père, Artistic Director: "This is the first time that Locarno has given a Leopard of Honour to such a young filmmaker, but he is already one of the major names in world cinema. We are proud to celebrate the enormous talent of Jia Zhangke, an exciting filmmaker, who, film after film, with great aesthetic rigour and an innate sense of time and space, offers a unique perspective on the profound changes occurring in contemporary China."
Photo by Fabrizio Maltese/EF Press/fabriziomaltese.com, Cannes 2010.