Alain Tanner honored with the Swisscom Honorary Leopard

Born in Geneva in 1929, Alain Tanner made his first feature film in 1969 with Charles mort ou vif, which immediately won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Festival. Two years later, La Salamandre (1971) attracted 200,000 admissions in Paris. Alain Tanner became one of the leading figures of the New Swiss Cinema, whose freshness and desire for freedom radiated far beyond the country's borders. In addition to his numerous documentaries for television and cinema, Alain Tanner made 19 feature films that were shown at the most important international film festivals. These include Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l'an 2000 (1976), Dans la ville blanche (1983), Les années lumière (1981, Grand Prix of the Jury in Cannes), Une flamme dans mon coeur (1987), Fourbi (1996) and Paul s'en va (2004), with which he bid farewell to film.
Every year, the Locarno Festival's Honorary Leopard honors one or more important film directors. Previous recipients include Manoel de Oliveira, Ken Loach, Ermanno Olmi, Abbas Kiarostami, Wim Wenders, Aleksandr Sokurov, Hou Hsiaohsien, Amos Gitai and, in 2009, William Friedkin. After Jean-Luc Godard (1995) and Daniel Schmid (1999), Alain Tanner is the third Swiss director to receive this award.
Swisscom has been the main sponsor of the Locarno Film Festival since 1998 and is supporting the presentation of the Honorary Leopard for the second time in 2010.