Virginie Efira received the Leopard Club Award at the Locarno Film Festival on the evening of Friday, 7 August 2026, in the Piazza Grande — the open-air venue that is the Swiss festival's signature stage. The award, named after the association that supports Locarno — Europe's pre-eminent event dedicated to independent cinema, as Variety describes it — pays homage to figures shaping contemporary film (Variety; Locarno Film Festival).

In a wide-ranging interview with Variety published the same day, Efira looked back on her work with two directors who have shaped her recent career: Paul Verhoeven and Ryusuke Hamaguchi.

On Verhoeven's "Benedetta" (2021), in which Efira stars as Benedetta Carlini, a 17th-century French nun who communicates directly with Jesus, she recalled that the Dutch director warned her the film would contain lesbian sex scenes. Her reply: "No problem." She trusted him (Variety; AP News).

The film stirred controversy. Efira told Variety she enjoyed it. "It was fun," she said — the kind of reaction Verhoeven's work has provoked for decades. During the Cannes premiere, she recalled, Verhoeven turned to her and asked: "Do you think it's going to be O.K.?" She was not worried.

Efira also defended Verhoeven's infamous "Showgirls" (1995), a film that bombed with critics and audiences on release but has since been reassessed. She called it an "incredible movie" and noted that critics have come to regard it as a masterpiece (Variety).

She expressed intrigue, though, that American studios no longer seemed willing to work with the director — a shift she found worth pondering without elaborating further.

The Hamaguchi chapter of Efira's career opened, she said, with the Japanese director asking her a lot about "Benedetta" when they first met. They went on to collaborate on "All of a Sudden" (titled "Soudain" in the Locarno programme), a 2026 co-production from France, Japan, Germany and Belgium. Efira plays a newly appointed director at a nursing home who meets a terminally ill Japanese artist (Variety; Locarno Film Festival).

At Cannes in May 2026, Efira and her co-star Tao Okamoto were awarded for their performances in the film. Preparing for the role required her to study Japanese — "a lot of work," she said, even before shooting began. Hamaguchi, she noted, never speaks French, but she believes he understands everything (Variety).

As part of the Locarno programme, Efira presented Hamaguchi's film to festival audiences on 8 August, the day after receiving her award — a bridge between the honour and the work it recognised (Locarno Film Festival).

Efira also reflected on the broader trajectory of her career. Before working with Hamaguchi and Iranian director Asghar Farhadi on "Parallel Tales," she had been thinking about making movies outside France. She had already taken on roles that pushed her range: "Paris Memories," about a terrorist attack, among them. The Locarno honour lands at a moment when her choices have carried her well beyond French cinema's borders (Variety).

What makes Efira's Locarno appearance resonate is the span it captures. A Belgian-born actress who became one of France's most sought-after leading performers, she is now building relationships with Japanese and Iranian auteurs, studying new languages, and fielding questions about an American industry's complicated relationship with one of its former directors. The Leopard Club Award, given to those shaping contemporary cinema, found a fitting recipient.