Italian actress, filmmaker and musician Asia Argento is about to take the big outdoor stage in Locarno in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. The 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival will celebrate the creative with its Life Achievement Award on Thursday evening in the city’s Piazza Grande in front of around 8,000 people.
While in Locarno, Argento is also presenting Jorge Thielen Armand’s Death Has No Master (La Muerte No Tiene Dueño), which premiered in this year’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. “Since making her onscreen debut as a child in Lamberto Bava’s cult sequel Demons 2 (1986) and starring in Palombella rossa (1989) by Nanni Moretti, Asia Argento, one of the most distinctive European performers of her generation, has built a singular body of work that encompasses passionately beloved genre films, auteur cinema, and intimate self-portraiture,” Locarno said when it unveiled the honor. And Giona A. Nazzaro, Locarno’s artistic director, lauded her as “an artist who has always managed to reimagine what it means to make films, constantly challenging herself and taking personal risks.”
Argento spoke to THR about the honor, her role in Death Has No Master and the documentary about late U.S. supermodel Gia Carangi that she has boarded as an executive producer.
