1 of 3 | James Gray will receive the Pardo alla Carriera lifetime achievement award at the Locarno Film Festival. File Photo by Rocco Spaziani/UPI | License Photo
U.S. director James Gray will be honored at the 2026 Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland.
Gray, 57, will receive the Pardo alla Carriera lifetime achievement award for his contributions to film.
The filmmaker’s credits include Little Odessa (1994), We Own the Night (2007), The Immigrant (2013), The Lost City of Z (2016), Ad Astra (2019) and Armageddon Time (2022).
His latest feature, Paper Tiger, will screen following his award ceremony Aug. 9 at the Piazza Grande. We Own the Night and Two Lovers (2008) will also be shown at the festival.
“James Gray is the last great novelist of American cinema. His films form a rich body of work that echoes the Jewish diaspora, film noir, and Russian as well as North American literature,” Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro said in a statement. “A filmmaker with a humanist sensibility and profound cinephile knowledge, he has experimented with genres such as science fiction and adventure while retaining his own artistic identity and voice.”
“Celebrating James Gray at the Locarno Film Festival means paying tribute to a unique and unmistakable artist, a filmmaker who speaks the language of cinema and knows how to pas it onto future generations.”
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Paper Tiger, starring Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller, follows two brothers who become entangled with the Russian mafia in 1980s Queens, N.Y. The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
The 2026 Locarno Film Festival will run Aug. 5 to 15 and feature 233 films.
