Locarno Meets

Colm Meaney is the definitive Irish character actor of his generation, having starred in classics like “The Commitments”, “The Damned United”, and “Layer Cake” over a near 50-year career. Meanwhile, his roles in Hollywood blockbusters like “Die Hard 2”, “Con Air”, and “The Last of the Mohicans”, as well as on TV in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”, have cemented his place as one of those character actors we’re always happy to see appear in a movie. Meaney joined us to discuss his new movie – Duwayne Dunham’s “The Legend of the Happy Worker” – and to tell us quite why digital cameras suck.

From ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Blue Velvet’ to Disney Channel originals, nobody has had a career like Duwayne Dunham’s. In the latest episode of Locarno Meets, the singular editor and director reflects on cutting some of the most iconic films of our time, explores longstanding collaborations with George Lucas and David Lynch – from ‘Twin Peaks’ to ‘Wild at Heart’ – and dives into his “Western capitalist fairy tale,” the new feature ‘Legend of the Happy Worker’, which premiered out of competition at Locarno78 and marks the final film to feature Lynch’s name as executive producer.

A comedian from New York who knows what’s wrong with the movie industry, Maysoon Zayid spent Locarno78 haranguing cinema executives about the kind of work being produced, and she joined us on Locarno Meets to do the same.
“The idea that diversity only applies to diverse audiences is a supremacist mindset” says the Palestinian-American comic, a disability rights advocate uncompromising in her critiques of how and why movies get made. In Locarno last year to speak at StepIn during Locarno Pro, Zayid’s many insights were a powerful and much-needed provocation on the first day of our industry activities.

We start the new year off with another episode of our movie podcast Locarno Meets, this time in conversation with the iconic star LucyLiu and Eric Lin, director of her celebrated film “Rosemead”.
Winner of the Prix du Public UBS – the audience award – at Locarno78, “Rosemead” tells the heart-wrenching, real-life story of a woman, played by Liu, who discovers her teenage son is obsessed with violent fantasies and plans to act on them. Only her drastic intervention can stop him from destroying everything they’ve built as a family and bringing harm to others.
We sat down with Lucy Liu and her director Eric Lin to discuss this extraordinary film and dig into the specifics of Liu’s remarkable performance.

Ed Guiney is an Irish producer known for his collaborations with filmmakers like Yorgos Lanthimos and Joana Hogg. We invited him to join us on Locarno Meets to give his insights on the state of indie filmmaking in Europe, his artistic partnership with Yorgos Lanthimos, Letterboxd’s influence on arthouse attendance, and his definition of the role of producer.