Swiss director Simon Edelstein’s triumphant return to Locarno, 50 years later

The last time Simon Edelstein had a film screened at the Locarno Film Festival was over 50 years ago. This year a retrospective paid homage to the influential Swiss director showing two newly restored versions of his films. History hasn’t been very fair to Simon Edelstein. The director and screenwriter from Geneva is better known for his photography books, which capture the beauty of dilapidated cinemas around the world, than his films. This injustice, however, has been repaired in grand style this year. The 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival presented two of Edelstein’s films - Les Vilaines Manières (Evil manners) and L’Ogre (The Ogre) – which had been restored recently by the Cinémathèque Suisse [Swiss Film Archive] with the support of French-speaking public television RTS, in a section dedicated to the rediscovery of Swiss cinema (Cinéma Suisse Redécouvert). Retrospectives are often the only way to access obscure films that have been lost in time, shedding light on the ...