Call for applications – Spring Academy 2023/Locarno Film Festival

The selection process is open for candidates hoping to take part in the spring workshop run by the Locarno Film Festival and film school CISA (Conservatorio Internazionale di Scienze Audiovisive). Ten young filmmakers will be picked for the workshop, led by filmmaker Radu Jude, a guest at the 2023 edition of L’immagine e la parola, and centered on the audiovisual archives of Swiss broadcaster RSI.

“Find a Film!”: History, its images and memory, will be the focus for developing ideas at next year’s Spring Academy, the Locarno Film Festival workshop dedicated to young filmmakers from Ticino and around the world. In tandem with the upcoming edition of L’immagine e la parola (from 11 to 12 March 2023), whose program will be announced soon, participants in the workshop will have the opportunity of an intensive training experience mentored by one of Europe’s highest-profile filmmakers at international level, Radu Jude, winner of a special jury prize at Locarno in 2016 for Scarred Hearts, and of a Golden Bear in Berlin in 2021 for Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn.

With access to this immense heritage of material, participants will be asked to reflect on the image of Switzerland and its national archetypes, as they develop short films set in Locarno and the region. Their completed shorts will be presented in a special screening at Locarno76 and subsequently broadcast on RSI channels.

Call for applications

If you are a young filmmaker and would like to take part in the Spring Academy 2023, you will find everything you need to send your application here. You have until 13 January 2023.

Locarno will be again the venue for a cinema workshop: ten young filmmakers, chosen through an international call, will produce their own short films, starting from a reflection on the activation of the role of the spectator within the cinematographic work.

The selected young filmmakers will be able to make their short films in a theoretical and practical workshop, where an idea will be developed from some materials selected within the RSI archive through days of editing and post production. The ten short films will be shown at the 76th edition of the Locarno Film Festival (2-12 August 2023).

The workshop will be held in English.

Invited to send their application are:

  • young directors (with a maximum age of 35) who attended or are attending a film school and/or have advanced training in filmmaking;
  • have made at least one short film, presented in public;
  • have a good knowledge of English;
  • are available to attend the entire duration of the workshop on site.
Registration and selection procedure here