Sigurjón “Joni” Sighvatsson, the Iceland-born producer whose work touched some of the defining films and television of the 1990s, will receive the Raimondo Rezzonico Award at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. The honour will be presented on August 6, during the festival’s run from August 5 to 15, with screenings of two films from his career — David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990) and Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon’s Zidane, A 21st Century Portrait (2006) — marking the occasion.
In 1986, Sighvatsson co-founded Propaganda Films, which became the world’s leading music video and commercial production company before expanding into features. At Propaganda, he helped launch the directing careers of David Fincher, Michael Bay, and Spike Jonze, while producing Wild at Heart, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Over a career spanning more than four decades, he has produced over 60 feature films and television series, including Twin Peaks and Beverly Hills 90210, and collaborated with filmmakers including Nicolas Winding Refn, Jim Sheridan, and Kathryn Bigelow.
Locarno’s artistic director, Giona A. Nazzaro, placed Sighvatsson in a tradition of producers who subordinated their own visibility to the creative vision of their directors. “Sigurjón ‘Joni’ Sighvatsson shaped a true ‘politique du producteur’, allowing artists such as David Lynch to create their works in complete freedom and supporting authors such as Kathryn Bigelow to make some of the most personal films of her career,” Nazzaro said. “His instinct as a producer profoundly influenced the course of ’90s cinema, while his attitude of favouring originality and independence as a principle made him a point of reference for a whole generation of filmmakers.”
Nazzaro also noted that Sighvatsson’s career was marked by “a deeply European perspective but immersed in the workings of the industry in the United States” — a characterisation that captures the transatlantic position Sighvatsson occupied throughout his career, financing and championing work that sat between art-house ambition and commercial reach.
The Raimondo Rezzonico Award, established in 2002 in memory of the festival’s president from 1981 to 1999, has previously gone to producers including Jason Blum, Gale Anne Hurd, and Ted Hope. Recent recipients include Abbout Productions, the Beirut-based house led by Georges Schoucair and Myriam Sassine, and producer Marianne Slot. Sighvatsson joins a list that consistently prizes producers who have expanded the definition of what commercial infrastructure can support, rather than those who have simply built the biggest budgets.
