Israel, Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon, Korea: Political and Dystopian Films in the Locarno Spotlight

The Locarno Film Festival is known for presenting the latest art-house movie discoveries, and isn’t afraid to push some buttons in the process.

As such, its 78th edition will present “cinema that unfolds while the world is undergoing violent upheavals, while we witness — in real time — horrors that we had only read about in history books or studied in archival footage,” as artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro put it in unveiling this year’s lineup.

Indeed, political movies or ones likely to cause political debate or are a prominent part of the Locarno78 program. Audiences will find dystopian films, documentaries, and experimental fare that is likely to be cause for reflection.

Israel, Gaza and Lebanon are among the places represented on Locarno screens. The two Koreas, Iraq’s nuclear ambitions, and climate change are also being dissected cinematically in the various sections of the fest.

Kicking off the fest on Wednesday is Tamara Stepanyan’s In the Land of Arto, starring Camille Cottin and Zar Amir Ebrahimi, which dives into Armenia and the war traumas its people deal with. Iranian dissident auteur Jafar Panahi‘s Cannes winner It Was Just an Accident also dissects trauma — and vengeance. Plus, fans of Romanian provocateur Radu Jude can expect his Dracula to ruffle some feathers.

Here is THR’s look at some of the other Locarno 2025 feature-length films with political or dystopian undertones.

Tales of the Wounded Land
Director: Abbas Fahdel
Country of production: Lebanon
Festival section: International Competition

‘Tales of the Wounded Land’

Courtesy of Locarno Film Festival

“Intimate chronicles of the war that devastated southern Lebanon for a year and a half, this film captures the everyday lives of those left behind in the scorched land, as a wounded community struggles to rebuild and find a semblance of peace.”

The description for this documentary hints at such themes as loss, displacement and the attempt to preserve dignity amid destruction.

Explains Fahdel in a director’s statement: “My film was born from the need to bear witness to a war that shattered our lives and homes, and to show how, despite everything, resilience and humanity continue to flourish amid the ruins.”

Some Notes on the Current Situation
Director: Eran Kolirin
Country of production: Israel
Festival section: Out of Competition

‘Some Notes on the Current Situation’

Courtesy of Dani Schneor

“A philosophical tragicomedy about space, time, cinema and wars, composed of six episodes, all together forming an absurdist footnote.” This is how Israeli filmmaker Kolirin’s new movie is described.

Starring third-year acting students, Kolirin (The Band’s Visit, Let It Be Morning) tells seemingly absurd stories to offer reflections on Israel amid the conflict in Gaza.

Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro, who lauds Kolirin as “an extremely outspoken” filmmaker, highlights: “That is not a film about Gaza. It’s really a film about the Israeli and Jewish Zionist identity. … And it’s terribly prophetic in a way.”

With Hasan in Gaza
Director: Kamal Aljafari
Countries of production: Palestine, Germany, France, Qatar
Festival section: International Competition

‘With Hasan in Gaza’

Courtesy of Kamal Aljafari

“This is my first film, which I have never made,” Palestinian filmmaker Aljafari (A Fidai Film, Recollection) says about his new, but also old, movie. And he calls it “an homage to Gaza and its people, to all that was erased and that came back to me in this urgent moment of Palestinian existence, or non-existence. It is a film about the catastrophe, and the poetry that resists.”

A synopsis explains that three Mini-DV tapes of “life in Gaza from 2001 were recently rediscovered.” What started as a search for a former prison mate from 1989 has become a documentary about an unexpected journey through the Gaza Strip, accompanied by local guide Hasan. A trailer for the film has just been released.

Nazzaro told THR: “It’s a film that was supposed to be Kamal Aljafari’s first film, when he was looking for a friend in Gaza, around the early years of the 2000s, when the so-called largest open-air prison in the world was creating the preconditions of the unspeakable tragedy that we are witnessing today. And the reason why we picked that film as programmers was that we see a filmmaker who, while he thinks he’s making something, he’s actually creating his very own archive of himself, his family, his land, his homeland, and so on.”

The Fin
Director: Syeyoung Park
Countries of production: South Korea, Germany, Qatar
Festival section: Filmmakers of the Present

‘The Fin’

Courtesy of Syeyoung Park

If you like dystopian genre films or love exploring young South Korean voices, The Fin could be for you.

Here’s what to expect: In a post-war, ecologically devastated unified Korea, mutated outcasts called Omegas are exploited as cheap labor. A newly recruited government worker becomes suspicious of an Omega, but then begins to question her once unshakable faith in the state’s ideology.

Korean singer Pureum Kim and Pachinko actress Yeji Yeon star in the movie, which “explores the contagion of fear and the making of myths,” as its young filmmaker explains.

The Deal
Director: Jean-Stéphane Bron
Countries of production: Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Belgium
Festival section: Out of Competition

‘The Deal’

Courtesy of Bande a Part Films/Les Films Pelleas/Gaumont Television

Bron is pulling double duty in Locarno’s 2025 out-of-competition lineup. His Le Chantier, about the renovation of a legendary cinema, led by architect Renzo Piano, “paints a portrait of a miniature society,” a synopsis says.

In contrast, The Deal is a geopolitical drama series that takes viewers behind the scenes of the 2015 nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran in Switzerland. It has already won Series Mania‘s first annual Buyers Choice Award.

Starring Veerle Baetens, Juliet Stevenson, Arash Marandi, Anthony Azizi, Fenella Woolgar, and Alexander Behrang Keshtkar, the series not only sounds West Wing-y but also feels particularly timely again.

Mare’s Nest
Director: Ben Rivers
Countries of production: United Kingdom, France, Canada
Festival section: International Competition

‘Mare’s Nest’

Courtesy of Ben Rivers

English filmmaker Rivers has made a name for himself with documentaries. In his latest, Bogancloch, he revisited a Scottish hermit.

At Locarno, he is premiering a dystopian hybrid film, starring Moon Guo Barker and inspired by the impact of COVID-19 on children and Don DeLillo’s climate change play The Word for Snow. It sees a young girl traveling through a mysterious world free of adults.

“I wanted to create a world of kids with underlying uncertainty, echoing global anxieties, while somehow also being hopeful,” Rivers says in a director’s note. “I didn’t want any relation to the adult world, and no explanation as to why.”