Editor’s Note

n a certain fine day in August, the unthinkable happened — actually, two unthinkables: 1) a jury awarded Pedro Costa the main prize at a major festival, and 2) all the reviews of a Pedro Costa film were raves. This utopian state lasted until around the same time that award was announced to the press—which I am sure was no coincidence—and,, still toiling mightily under the institutional memory of Todd McCarthy (Locarno jury, 2000), that did not let me down, launching their review of with this critical equivalent of a velvet-gloved slap to the face: “Frequently beautiful compositions and the theatrical use of a fierce kind of artifice have long been the hallmarks of Portuguese auteur Pedro Costa, regarded by a small but influential group of aesthetes as one of the great filmmakers of our era.” As I have an inkling that, in this context, I’m one of the small (I’m over six feet t all) and influential (I can’t even f ind an apartment in Berlin, if anyone has any leads let me know) aesthetes (such an insult!), I can correct this misinterpretation: having now become the first filmmaker to win all three of Locarno’s major prizes (Golden Leopard, Special Jury Prize, Best Director), Pedro Costa is one of the great filmmakers of all time, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it.