Much of the news before and after the Locarno Film Festival this year concerned the appointment of a new president of the festival, Maja Hoffmann, after some 23 years with Marco Solari at the festival helm. The president of a film festival typically has little to do, at least directly, with the films selected — such selection usually falls under the purview of the artistic director and programming teams.
But presidents nonetheless have essential influence on the basic shape, everyday operations, and long-term institutional health of the event.
Solari has been widely credited with raising the profile of Locarno with the serial appointments of effective artistic directors while also steering the festival to continued growth — with growth not at all a given in such a small town within a small country like Switzerland. Many were very keenly curious about who would succeed Solari, someone who had come to embody the likeable, low-key cosmopolitanism of Locarno.
An active philanthropist in a long line of philanthropists — her father Luc co-founded the World Wildlife Foundation — Hoffmann has been an important patron of the arts, and collector of contemporary art, especially in Arles, in southern France, the erstwhile home of Vincent van Gogh.
Although she has hitherto mostly been known for her work in the art world, especially via the LUMA foundation she created in , she also studied film in New York and has produced documentary films.
