The 2024 film festival summer closed out with the prizing at the Locarno Film Festival and it’s the debut feature of a Lithuanian filmmaker who claimed to highest prize in the Golden Leopard aka the Pardo d’Oro. Our Nicholas Bell admired the “distinctive choices” made in Saulė Bliuvaitė‘s Akiplėša (Toxic) – “elevating this beyond both miserabilism or sentimental absolution, meandering like its subjects toward some ill-formed ideas about how to escape an environment they did not choose and will certainly not uplift them.” Read the full ★★★ review here. The film also landed the Swatch First Feature Award.… Read the rest
