The 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival is set to honor U.S. director James Gray with the prestigious Pardo alla Carriera award for his outstanding career achievements in filmmaking.

The ceremony will take place on August 9, ahead of an open-air screening of Gray’s latest film, Paper Tiger, at the festival’s landmark 8,000-capacity Piazza Grande. Two other key titles in Gray’s filmography, We Own the Night (2007) and Two Lovers (2008), will also be featured in the festival lineup.

This marks Gray’s first time attending the Locarno Film Festival, which he first entered the international festival scene in 1994 at the age of 25 with his Venice Silver Lion-winning drama Little Odessa. Inspired by his own upbringing in New York’s Russian-Jewish community, Little Odessa laid the foundation for Gray’s distinctive style and themes that would become a hallmark of his work.

Gray’s body of work is characterized by his exploration of New York’s rich migrant culture and criminal underworlds, as seen in films like The Yards (2000), We Own the Night, Two Lovers, and The Immigrant (2013). He has also ventured into other genres, including science fiction and adventure, with films like The Lost City of Z (2016) starring Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson, Ad Astra (2019) starring Brad Pitt, and Armageddon Time (2022) starring Anthony Hopkins.

Locarno Artistic Director Giona A. Nazzaro praises Gray as ‘the last great novelist of American cinema,’ whose films form a rich and distinctive body of work that echoes the Jewish diaspora, film noir, and Russian as well as North American literature. ‘A filmmaker with a humanist sensibility and profound cinephile knowledge, he has experimented with genres while retaining his own artistic identity and voice,’ Nazzaro notes.

Paper Tiger, starring Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, and Miles Teller, world premiered in competition at Cannes in May and will open the 2026 New York Film Festival in September. The drama follows two brothers whose hopes for a better life draw them into the orbit of the Russian mafia, and sees Gray return to the New York milieu of his early work and to the 1980s of his childhood.

Gray collaborated with his frequent collaborators, including Cinematographer Joaquín Baca-Asay, Composer Christopher Spelman, Production Designer Happy Massee, Casting Director Douglas Aibel, Editor Scott Morris, and Costume Designer Amy Roth. The film is produced by Gray alongside Rodrigo Teixeira, Anthony Katagas, Raffaella Leone, Andrea Leone, Marco Perego, Gary Farkas, Leonardo Maria del Vecchio, Carlo Salem, and Andrea Bucko.

Previous recipients of the Pardo Alla Carriere award include notable figures such as Bruno Ganz, Claudia Cardinale, Johnnie To, Harry Belafonte, Peter-Christian Fueter, Sergio Castellitto, Otar Iosseliani, Jane Birkin, Dante Spinotti, Costa-Gavras, Tsai Ming-liang, Shah Rukh Khan, and in 2025, Jackie Chan.

The 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival will take place from August 5 to 15, 2026.

Locarno’s Pardo alla Carriera award is sponsored by local tourism agency Ascona-Locarno Tourism and is presented to filmmakers who have made significant contributions to the world of cinema.