Hollywood star Zoe Saldaña received a Special Honorary Pardo (Special Leopard) honour at the 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival, celebrating her extraordinary journey that has left a mark on contemporary cinema.
After receiving the Pardo from festival director Giona Nazzaro, Saldaña engaged in a lively interaction with the gathering which ranged from her upbringing in New York and Dominican Republic to her current and future acting roles in the third season of Taylor Sheridan’s “Lioness” and the upcoming part 4 of the “Avatar” franchise.
The Oscar-winning actor, while addressing the audience at the festival, expressed her wish to step into direction. "I have a feeling that I can only watch other people's direction for so long until I kind of say: 'Give me that camera!' Because women, we all think that we're right because we are half the time. So, I would like to prove myself," Saldaña said at the festival held in Switzerland.
Also read: Zoe Saldaña to receive Special Pardo honour at Locarno Film Fest
Talking about her childhood, the actress described the cultural clash of moving from the US to the Dominican Republic. "It was quite difficult for us to be torn from New York kind of culture where you get to meet the world in your block. That's rich to grow up in a culture like that. And then I went to a small island where it's very homogenous and it's one religion, one form of being, and though the growing pains were big, so was the growth."
Saldaña also spoke about her project 'Avatar', expressing her desire to work on the fourth instalment. Of James Cameron, with whom she has made three ‘Avatars’ already, she said: "This man's storytelling spoke to me when I was 7 years old. I knew that when he wrote and conceived 'The Terminator' that he was tapping into something incredibly human and foreseeable, and I was 7. The purpose that he gave a woman like Sarah Connor, at my tender age of 7, spoke volumes to me, and I wanted to be her."
Saldaña also suggested that she hopes to develop a family drama based in the post-war era in San Francisco following a traumatised veteran and his wife, who suspects her husband is gay.
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