Pardo D'Oro 2026 Leaped From Locarno To Romania
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The 79th Locarno Film Festival has crowned its winners, with Romanian filmmaker Florin Șerban’s You Don’t Belong Here (Nu e locul tău aici) taking home the coveted Pardo d’Oro, the festival’s top prize “for the strength of its writing, the singularity of its vision, and its exceptional command of cinematic language.”
For Șerban, the victory represents a major return to the international festival spotlight. His debut feature, If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle, won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival. After several years concentrating on teaching and other projects, the Romanian director has returned to feature filmmaking with a film that proved one of Locarno’s most talked-about titles.
At the center of You Don’t Belong Here is Marius, a respected doctor and chief medical officer in a small Romanian town who is raising his teenage son, Ioan, alone following the death of his wife. Marius is initially unaware that his son has developed a secret life. At night, Ioan rides through the town with a group of masked vigilantes, vandalizing cars. The family's world changes dramatically when police begin to suspect Ioan of involvement in the murder of an elderly Romani man.
That premise gives Șerban room to explore much more than a conventional crime story. The film examines the relationship between fathers and sons, generational conflict, masculinity and the consequences of intolerance toward Romania’s Roma population. Rather than treating the murder investigation as a conventional mystery, Șerban uses it to place Marius and Ioan on opposite sides of a rapidly widening moral divide.
Șerban has said that the film grew out of a scene he originally wrote for an acting class focused on conflict between generations. He later connected the idea to Hannah Arendt’s observation about revolutionaries eventually becoming conservatives, turning that generational tension into the film’s broader examination of changing social values.
The International Competition also recognized The Riverbank (A Margem do Rio), directed by Matheus Farias and Enock Carvalho, with the Special Jury Prize. Hong Sangsoo won Best Direction for Nowhere to Lay My Eyes, while acting honors went to Kim Min-hee for the same film and Monica Bellucci for Giovanni Tortorici’s Ketticè.
Meanwhile Pardo d’Oro Concorso Cineasti del Presente (Filmmakers of the Present) went to The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer (La ilusión de un verano sin fin), directed by Alessandra Sanguinetti. The same film was also awarded Pardo d’Oro in First Feature Competition.
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