The Board of Governors decided, at a special meeting held on Tuesday 4 September 2012, to designate Carlo Chatrian as the new Artistic Director of the Festival del film Locarno. Carlo Chatrian will take up his post from 1 November 2012, following Olivier Père, who is leaving the Festival to head up Arte France Cinéma.
Journalist, author and programmer, Carlo Chatrian was born in Turin in 1971 and graduated in Literature and Philosophy from Turin University, while simultaneously taking special options in journalism and communications. From the early 1990s he worked regularly as a film critic for the magazines Filmcritica, Duellanti, Cineforum and is director of the magazine Panoramiques. Carlo Chatrian has published numerous essays and monographs on filmmakers such as Errol Morris, Wong Kar Wai, Johan Van Der Keuken, Frederick Wiseman, Maurizio Nichetti and Nicolas Philibert. He has run film courses at various schools and institutions since the early 1990s.
As a programmer Chatrian has curated numerous film seasons, working with festivals and institutions such as Cinéma du réel in Paris, the Museo nazionale del cinema in Turin and the Courmayeur - Noir in Festival. Deputy director of the Alba Film Festival from 2001 - 2007, he has been a member of the selection committee for the Florence Festival dei Popoli and the Nyon Festival Visions du Réel.

Carlo Chatrian started working with the Festival del film Locarno in 2002 and from 2006 - 2009 was part of the selection committee. He also curated Locarno’s last few years’ retrospectives (Nanni Moretti, Manga Impact, Ernst Lubitsch, Vincente Minnelli, Otto Preminger).
Since 2010 he has been a consultant to the Swiss Cinematheque in Lausanne and since 2011 has been director of the “Film Commission Vallée d’Aoste” Foundation.
Festival President Marco Solari commented: “I have been keeping a watchful eye on Carlo Chatrian for several years now. I have always appreciated both his intelligence and professional abilities. Carlo Chatrian knows our event inside out and has the charisma and qualifications required to lead the Locarno Festival. I am sure he is the right person for this important task.”

Carlo Chatrian said of his appointment “The word “cinema” covers a multitude of diverse realities. The word invokes one of the instruments that fashion the contemporary imagination, all the fantastic players involved, and the industry that promotes and makes it possible, but also the act of creation, regardless of fashion, as well as the impulse to discover the world. Both these and other dimensions converge and feed the Locarno Festival in many different ways, making it the place where the diversity of film is revealed, enriching us all. To have the chance to direct this event, so bold and sharp-sighted in its presentation of coming cinema that also engages a dialogue with what has gone before, is at the same time a cause for pride and a stimulus to take its agenda forward, an agenda that is characterised by freedom, an openness to the new, and is attentive to the requirements of both experts and the tastes of audiences who, from one edition to the next, return to Locarno with the hope of being – once again – surprised.”

Carlo Chatrian is now the Director designate, and will officially assume his post on 1 November 2012.