The Festival's heart is surely the daily evening projection in the magnificent Piazza Grande, which transforms itself into the "most beautiful movie-theater under the stars". Locarno's retrospectives have contributed to the knowledge of world cinema with screenings that have gone down in history.
From subject-specific programmes (Titanus, Lux, "Beloved and Rejected: Cinema in the young Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963"), to tributes to contemporary filmmakers (Moretti, Kiarostami, Kaurismäki), to complete retrospectives of famous masters (Minnelli, Cukor, Tourneur, McCarey, Peckinpah). The Locarno75 Retrospective was dedicated to Douglas Sirk curated by Bernard Eisenschitz and Roberto Turigliatto.