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79th Locarno Film Festival announces its winners
17 August 2026 — Over the weekend, the 79th Locarno Film Festival concluded with the presentation of its top prize, the Golden Leopard, to “You Don’t Belong Here” by Romanian director Florin Șerban—a dark exploration of racism against the Roma people in Romania. The lead actor, young Teodor Butănescu, received a special mention from the jury. The film tells the story of a man raising a teenage boy on his own following his wife’s death; he is unaware that, by night, the boy joins a gang of masked vigilantes vandalizing cars—until the police name the boy a murder suspect. The award for Best Director went to Hong Sang-soo for his 35th feature film, “Nowhere to Lay My Eyes”. The plot follows a protagonist named Sang-hee who travels to Jeju Island to find the mother she has not seen for ten years following her parents’ divorce. This marks the fifth time a film by Hong Sang-soo has been selected for the Locarno festival; the director previously won the Best Director award (“Our Sunhi”, 2013) and the Golden Leopard (“Right Now, Wrong Then”, 2015). Kim Min-hee shared the award for Best Performance with Monica Bellucci (for Giovanni Tortorici’s film “Ketticè”). In the “Filmmakers of the Present” section, Alessandra Sanguinetti’s “The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer” took the top prize, while Beatrice Gibson won the award for Best Emerging Director for her film “At Night”.
The Uffizi Gallery will undergo two years of renovation
17 August 2026 — Millions of people visit the Uffizi Gallery in Florence every year, and that number is growing. The complex can no longer cope with the influx of visitors, so it is set to undergo a major 50-million-euro renovation that will also encompass the famous halls overlooking the Arno River, the Pitti Palace, and the Boboli Gardens. In addition, following a hot European summer and given the need to preserve its masterpieces, the buildings require new climate control systems. The work will take about two years and will be carried out in stages, so the museum will not close completely. Half of the funds for the renovation will come from ticket sales.
Hollywood empties out as studios prepare to leave
17 August 2026 — None of the ten films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture this year was shot in Hollywood. All of them were produced—either entirely or for the most part—outside the film industry hub, ranging from “Marty Supreme” in New York to “Sinners” in Louisiana and “Hamnet” in the UK. Since 2022, the number of filming days in Los Angeles has dropped by nearly half, and tens of thousands of industry workers have left Hollywood. What comes next? Will studios relocate their headquarters? In August 2026, Paramount CEO David Ellison told company leadership he was prepared to begin moving the studio out of California on October 1 unless state Attorney General Rob Bonta agreed to negotiate a settlement in the antitrust lawsuit seeking to block Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.