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Mexican actor Gael García Bernal will be attending the 65th edition of the Festival del film Locarno to receive an Excellence Award Moët & Chandon. The award ceremony will be held on Wednesday 8 August at 21:30 on the Piazza Grande, before the screening of his latest film, Pablo Larraín’s No (2012). Gael García Bernal is the second actor, along with Charlotte Rampling, to receive this year’s Excellence Award Moët & Chandon.
As a tribute to García Bernal, the Locarno Festival will also screen two films that are significant in his career: Pedro Almodóvar’s Bad Education (La mala educación, 2004) and Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep (La Science des rêves, 2006).
Every year the Festival del film Locarno’s Excellence Award goes to one or more actors of international stature. Previous recipients are Oleg Menchikov, Susan Sarandon, John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, Michel Piccoli, Carmen Maura, Toni Servillo, Chiara Mastroianni and, in 2011, Isabelle Huppert.
Moët & Chandon is supporting the Excellence Award for the fourth consecutive year.
The 65th edition of the Festival del film Locarno will take place 1-11 August, 2012.
Gael García Bernal Biography
Born in 1978 in Guadalajara (Mexico), into an acting family, from his early childhood Gael García Bernal performed in theatre and then in television. The actor owed his initial fame to two films that spearheaded the New Mexican cinema, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores perros (2000) and Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también (2001). In 2002 Bernal played the lead in Carlos Carrera’s The Crime of Father Amaro (El crimen del padre Amaro), one of Mexico’s biggest ever box-office hits.
Thus began a stellar international career in Hollywood and Spain, with acclaim for his performance as Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries (Diarios de motocicleta, 2004) and as a manipulative transvestite in Pedro Almodóvar’s Bad Education (2004). Michel Gondry cast him as a gentle dreamer in The Science of Sleep in 2006 and the same year he worked again with Iñárritu, alongside Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett on Babel.
Gael García Bernal is also a producer and director. In 2007 he directed the feature film Déficit and contributed to two other portmanteau films. With Diego Luna and Pablo Cruz he co-founded the company Canana with the objective of promoting Mexican independent cinema.
In 2011 Gael García Bernal featured in Julia Loktev’s The Loneliest Planet, screened in Concorso internazionale (international competition) at Locarno that same year. In 2012 he played the lead in Pablo Larraín’s No, about the dark years under the Pinochet dictatorship.
Press Office
65° Festival del film Locarno
1-11 | 8 | 2012
Via Ciseri 23 | CH-6601 Locarno
tel +41 91 756 21 21 | fax +41 91 756 21 49
press@pardo.ch | www.pardo.ch