Zelja heißt Wunsch, Zivot ist das Leben

The 40th Locarno Film Festival was held from 6 to 16 August 1987 in Locarno, Switzerland. It featured films and television movies from around the globe. To celebrate the 40th Anniversary, a retrospective of 40 years of films at the Locarno Film Festival was organized. Jean-Luc Godard, opened the festival with a lecture on cinema as a guest of honor. The opening film of the festival, which drew a crowd of 8,000 people, was Federico Fellini's film Intervista, despite the contract disputes that had kept the film from screening since its Cannes premiere. Over 60,000 people attended screenings on the Piazza Grande, the open-air theater, during the week. The Piazza Grande only had 5,000 seats, but thousands sat on the floor and even stood to watch some films, including Ettore Scola's The Family. More than 600 journalists attended the festival and 1,800 professional accreditation passes were given out. Film festival chiefs from around the world attended, including the heads of the Berlin, Mannheim, San Francisco, Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Istanbul, and Cairo film festivals. It was the most expensive Locarno festival ever, with a budget of around $1,200,000 (2 million Swiss francs). For the first time in the West, Russian director Aleksandr Sokourov was able to screen his movie The Lonely Voice of Man, which had been banned by the Soviet Union since 1978. Another Russian filmmaker, Kira Muratova, served on the festival jury and was able to screen two of her films that had also been banned in the Soviet Union. Director Win Wenders attended the festival for one day and held a midnight press conference to discuss his new film Wings of Desire. On the last day of the festival Colombia held a surprise screening of La Bamba. The Golden Leopard, the festival's top prize, was awarded to O Bobo directed by José Alvaro Morais.