Romanian drama You Don’t Belong Here wins the Golden Leopard at Locarno

The Golden Leopard, the top prize of the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, went on 15 August 2026 to Nu e locul tău aici (You Don’t Belong Here) by the Romanian director Florin Șerban. The film was chosen from 17 titles in the international competition of the festival’s 79th edition, and the award carries 75,000 Swiss francs, about US$92,000 according to the Swiss news agency Keystone-SDA.

The film follows a widowed father and his teenage son, who goes out at night without his father’s knowledge and commits acts of vandalism. The jury, chaired by the Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz, said it gave the prize “for the strength of its screenplay, the uniqueness of its vision and its exceptional mastery of cinematic language”. Teodor Butănescu, who plays the son, received a special mention, and the film also took the Youth Jury’s first prize and the Europa Cinemas Label, which supports distribution in European cinemas. Festival organisers described the film as Șerban’s return to feature-length filmmaking.

The special jury prize, worth 30,000 francs, went to A Margem do Rio (The Riverbank) by the Brazilian directors Matheus Farias and Enock Carvalho. The South Korean director Hong Sangsoo, who won the Golden Leopard in 2015, received the best director award for Nun Dul Dega Eomne, set on Jeju Island. Its lead, Kim Min-hee, shared the best performance award with the Italian actress Monica Bellucci, honoured for her role as a mother in Giovanni Tortorici’s Ketticè.

In the parallel competition for newer directors, Cineasti del presente, the top award went to La ilusión de un verano sin fin by Alessandra Sanguinetti, an Argentine-American co-production. Keystone-SDA noted that the Swiss films in competition won no major prize. The festival’s 80th edition is scheduled for 4–14 August 2027.