Abdellatif Kechiche’s controversial sequel “MectoubMy Love: Canto Due ”is finally here, through Locarno 2025 – six years after the director caused a firestorm in Cannes with the previous film in the trilogy. The 78ᵗʰ edition of the Locarno Film Festival contains 220 films, with Kechiche’s long-awaited third payout, one of the most remarkable elections in the Concorso Internerale section. The festival takes place from August 6 to 16.
The polarizing “Blue is first the hottest color” director Debuted “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno” 2017. The film centers at Amin (Shaïn Boumédine), a young screenwriter traveling from Paris to his Mediterranean’s hometown for the summer of 1994. While he is there, he meets a producer who offers to finance his first film … for a cost. The story is based on François Bégaudeau’s novel “La Blessure, La Vraie.”
That feature stimulated a notorious sequel in 2019, “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo,” which included endless twerking images and an unsalad oral sex scene that lasted for more than 10 minutes, which led to walkouts at Cannes. (Read the scandal Indieview review here.) Then accusations of behavior on site. A source near the production alleged Midi Libre At that time as a kechiche insisted on the non-simulated sex sceneBut that the actors “didn’t want to” it. The sequence was still filmed later “with alcohol that is regularly consumed” to allegedly force the stars. “Intermezzo” continued to land at Rat tomatoes with one Rare 0 percent score from eight critics.
Kechiche reacted To the bad reception for the film at Cannes 2019 and said he wanted to “try something else” with “intermezzo” and that “not everyone is open to the new experience.”
“Not everyone shares how I look at others,” he said the backlash to the film. “Not everyone likes this or that kind of movie for example, no, it bothers me not least. If what I see is what I want to see and if it doesn’t appeal to everyone, yes, it is very happy, it would be a disaster if everyone watched a movie in exactly the same way.”
Kechiche previously won Palme d’Or at Cannes 2013 for lesbian romance “Blue is the hottest color.” The film was tormented on established accusations of exploitation from the actresses Lea Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos. Kechiche was later accused of abuse by various women in 2018.
In 2019, Kechiche denied that “Mektoub” was “a movie to respond to the critics” by “Blue is the hottest color.” He added, “The most important thing for me, and that is what I want to say directly, was to celebrate life, love, desire, breath, music, the body. I wanted to try a movie experience that would be as free as possible.”
Kechiche’sMektoub my love: Canto because of“Is one of the many surprising additions to Locarno. Fabrice Arannos” Le Lac “and Radu Judes” Dracula “is also among the program. Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro said in a press release that the 2025 festival has a theme ambition.
“The cinema that presents itself at the intersection with history for the 78th edition of the festival is a cinema that, on the one hand, does not turn away from reality, and on the other hand, the still possible forms of the image are investigated without forgetting to smile at the absurdities in our lives,” said Nazzaro. “A movie that is playful, takes risks, dreams and provokes; a cinema that stubbornly remains in the world. Looks on, along with all people.”
Check out the full program here.
