The Locarno Film Festival, following the lead by Berlin Film Festival, is switching to gender-neutral categories in its 2023 edition. 

Locarno’s neighbor Berlin was the first to come up with this category, Locarno being the second. The gender-neutral category was introduced in the Berlin Film Festival back in  2021. 

From 2023, the gender neutral categories of Best Performance and Best Supporting Performance will replace the Best Actor and Best Actress category for Locarno’s acting awards.

According to Variety, in contrast to Berlin, Locarno will give out the two awards in the festival’s main competition along with the Cineasti del Presente category for first and second works. 

Berlin replaced best actor and actress categories with separate gender-neutral awards for Best Leading and Supportive performances.

Last year, the award for best leading performance was secured by Maren Eggert for her performance in Maria Schrader’s sci-fi screwball comedy I’m Your Man, and best supporting performance to Lilla Kizlinger for Bence Fliegauf’s Forest — I See You Everywhere. Even this year, the acting honors in Berlin again were won by two women. The best leading performance award was secured by Meltem Kaptan for Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush, and the best supporting performance award was bagged by Laura Bausuki for Before, Now and Then.

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Scheduled for August 2023, the two main competitions of the 76th edition of Locarno Film Festival Concorso internazionale and Concorso Cineasti del presente, will each give two awards for best performances. 

“As one of the first world festivals to bring in the change, Locarno is already at work on preparing next year’s 76th edition as an even more open and inclusive event, capable of fully representing its universe of talents,” the fest mentioned to Variety.

The Locarno Film Festival takes pride in itself for being an all-inclusive center, “a place for encounter and exchange, where the value of diversity and minority voices is recognized as one of its strongest assets,” it added. 

According to Giona A. Nazzaro, Locarno’s creative director, this decision would promote “efforts to showcase and reward talent and creativity, transcending individual categories that are now obsolete”. 

“The world is progressing towards a path that is most definitely non-binary,” he added.

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Marco Solari, who is the President of the festival, said, “As President, I welcome this proposal from the Artistic Director and his team, which is perfectly in tune with the changing sensibilities that are necessary today.”