Locarno to Honor James Gray, “the Last Great Novelist of American Cinema,” With Career Leopard

“His films form a rich body of work that echoes the Jewish diaspora, film noir, and Russian as well as North American literature,” says artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro. The 2026 Locarno Film Festival will honor James Gray with its Career Leopard, the Pardo alla Carriera. The Locarno Film Festival will pay tribute to James Gray, bestowing upon the U.S. filmmaker the Pardo alla Carriera, the Career Leopard, presented by Ascona-Locarno Tourism, during its 79th edition. Gray will receive the award in the Swiss town’s Piazza Grande on Sunday, Aug. 9, and present his latest film, Paper Tiger, after the ceremony. Two key titles by Gray, We Own the Night (2007) and Two Lovers (2008), will also screen in the festival program. “Since winning the Silver Lion at Venice for Little Odessa (1994) at age 25, James Gray has forged a singular career rooted, with piercing realism, in his upbringing in New York’s Russian-Jewish community,” Locarno highlighted. “Films like The Yards (2000), We Own the Night (2007), Two Lovers (2008), and The Immigrant (2013), cemented Gray’s place as one of American cinema’s most artistically distinctive voices – a filmmaker as concerned with criminal underworlds, rendered with exacting detail, as with meticulous family portraiture, often situated within theBrighton Beach of his youth and shaped by a dialogue with classic American and European auteur cinema.”