Swatch at the Locarno Film Festival: a performance full of emotion

Swatch has become one of the four main partners of the 76th edition of Switzerland’s most important film festival. Building on its commitment to the arts — including the creation of its artist residency the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai — the “enfant terrible” of Swiss watchmaking shares the Locarno Film Festival’s mission of encouraging talented filmmakers from around the world.

Swatch has been faithfully supporting this international benchmark for high-quality emerging cinema for several years. An international jury is currently rewarding a young filmmaker with an exceptional prize: the Swatch First Feature Award worth CHF 15,000.

To celebrate the longstanding partnership, Swatch has created a special, limited-edition watch, inspired by the festival’s colors. This year, the mysterious and alluring Pardo created by the British artist duo Ciaren and Sarah Diante will be adorning the watch. It will win over both fans of the brand and film buffs around the world.

As part of this expanded partnership, from 2 to 12 August 2023, Swatch will dial up the good vibes of the festival program with exciting parallel activities. As a major first, the brand will welcome the public to its own Swatch Studios. Just a few steps from the Piazza Grande, the Swatch space will recreate the emotion of walking the red carpet. An electric Swatch golf cart will transport film fans from the station and port to the event location for a glamorous arrival at the glittering Swatch Studios, where they will discover LOCARNO76 — the official watch of the 2023 festival and step back in time with a retrospective of previous models inspired by the Locarno Film Festival. A photo platform resembling a film set will immortalize visitors who will be able to themselves in the shoes of real stars!

The Swatch Art Peace Hotel, an artist residency opened in 2011, will be “moving” to BaseCamp, the Locarno Film Festival campus for young creatives between the ages of 18 and 30 from around the world and all artistic disciplines. At the campus, Swatch Art Peace Hotel will present work by six international talents who took up artist residencies in 2023. The residents were invited by Swatch to create a piece on the theme of “Love is Love” to celebrate a universal message of inclusion, diversity and respect.

Drawing inspiration from the colors of the 2023 collection, each artist has used their creative talents to develop an artistic project in complete freedom, with an inspiring, amusing and moving result. The exhibition “Love is Love” can be seen from 3 to 11 August 2023 at BaseCamp, Istituto Sant’Eugenio, via al Sasso 1, Locarno.