GENEVA, Aug 5: Almost 200,000 people are expected to descend on the small Swiss-Italian town of Locarno for its 61st film festival that opens on Wednesday.

Around 380 films, including 203 feature films, will be shown until August 16, with 78 world premieres.

The festival, founded in 1946, is unashamedly aimed at the auteur, arthouse end of the cinematic spectrum, with retrospectives of major film-makers and a focus on cinema from emerging countries and Latin America. Among them, 18 films from 17 countries that will compete for the festival’s highest prize the Golden Leopard.

The festival will present a retrospective of Italian director Nanni Moretti’s work, who will also award a Leopard of Honour to the Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai.

Films vying for the Golden Leopard award include “March”, the first feature film by Austrian director Klaus Handl. It attempts to explore why three adolescents committed suicide.

Chinese filmmaker Pan Jianlin is competing for the Golden Leopard again with his depressing tale “Feast of Villains”, in which a debt-ridden unemployed man makes amends by selling his kidney. Other styles of films include “Black Sea” by Italy’s Federico Bondi examines the relationship between an old lady and her young Romanian housemaid.—AFP