James Gray Accepts Locarno Career Honour, Screens Paper Tiger to 8,000 on the Piazza Grande

James Gray received the Pardo alla Carriera — the Career Leopard — at the 79th Locarno Film Festival on 9 August 2026, ahead of the Swiss premiere of his new film Paper Tiger on the festival's open-air Piazza Grande. The festival also screened two of his earlier titles, We Own the Night (2007) and Two Lovers (2008), and hosted a masterclass with the director on the Monday following the premiere. Locarno runs through 15 August. (Deadline; Hollywood Reporter)

Paper Tiger stars Adam Driver and Miles Teller as two brothers whose pursuit of the American Dream puts them on the wrong side of the Russian mafia, with Scarlett Johansson in a supporting role. The film played to a capacity crowd of 8,000 on the Piazza Grande, the vast open-air screening space that is Locarno's signature venue. (Deadline)

At a press conference, Gray called cinema "the closest thing humans have to a dream" and "the most beautiful art form." He traced the speed of that art form's development: the first full-length sound film arrived around 1928, and Fritz Lang's M followed roughly eighteen months later. Cinema, he argued, evolved far more quickly than painting or music. (Deadline)

Gray was candid about the contradictions of the job. Filmmaking, he said, requires him to oscillate between being "very narcissistic" to get a project financed and "vulnerable" once the cameras roll. He described himself as "not a good director of actors," crediting his casts' excellence and their freedom to be themselves as the key to his films' performances. His approach on set is to ask actors what they want to do and keep them comfortable rather than dictating a fixed performance. (Deadline)

He also shoots every rehearsal. "Messiness is interesting," Gray said, and his finished cuts typically use either take one or take twenty-five — the freshest accident or the most worn-in repetition. (Deadline)

For a director who has spent his career on intimate, character-driven dramas, the Career Leopard places his body of work in a festival spotlight that prizes auteur cinema above commercial machinery. Locarno's Piazza Grande, with 8,000 seats under the open sky, is one of the largest outdoor screening venues in the world; a film that lands there lands hard.

Paper Tiger does not yet carry a confirmed wide release date.