The 78th Locarno Film Festival began on Wednesday. At the opening, Swiss Culture Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider praised the courage of the festival organisers. Controversial works have always been shown at the renowned film festival on Lake Maggiore. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox This year, the documentary film With Hasan in Gaza, with images from 2001, takes a “unique look” at the region, said Baume-Schneider in the evening. The festival will also address the topic of Iran with the screening of the first two episodes of the mini-series The Deal by Swiss filmmaker Jean-Stéphane Bron. The series is dedicated to the 2015 nuclear agreement. Since its beginnings in the 1940s, the festival has constantly reinvented itself and has not hesitated to tackle controversial topics, Baume-Schneider continued. During the Cold War, for example, the Locarno Film Festival paid particular attention to works from Eastern Europe. And in the 1970s, the film Berliner ...
