A world-cinema fixture who's earned the support of Martin Scorsese, M. Night Shyamalan, Olivier Assayas, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Béla Tarr, Claire Denis, Christian Petzold, Tilda Swinton, and Ryusuke Hamaguchi––among many others––Carlo Chatrian reshaped the festival landscape with his work as artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival and Berlinale, his influence such that an abdication of his position at the latter in 2023 caused an honest-to-God outcry.

He is now serving as director of the National Cinema Museum in Turin and, for the last couple weeks, also acted as head of the international competition jury at the Tokyo International Film Festival. While we were both there, I sought the opportunity to ask him about these responsibilities, and found myself engaged in a rigorous serious conversation about where he sees cinema culture at the moment, where it might be headed, and––amidst all this––reasons to be hopeful.