11 Aug – Jackie Chan has recently been awarded the Pardo alla Carriera (aka Career Leopard award) at the 78th Locarno Film Festival. The action film icon, who received thunderous applause at the event held at the Piazza Grande square, thanked the festival for the award, as well as the directors and stars he worked with around the world who have made him "look good." "I was around 17. I was sitting in the kitchen watching my father cook. Then suddenly he turned around and asked me, 'Son, I'm 60. And I can still cook. Can you still fight when you're 60?' I was shocked. I didn't know what to say. But today, I'm 71, and I can still fight," he expressed, much to the audience cheer. Thanking his fans around the globe, Jackie added that 2025 marks the 64th year of him being in the industry.
The festival artistic director Giona A. Nazarro lauded Jackie as an Asian megastar and master filmmaker, adding, "Jackie Chan is both a key figure in contemporary Asian cinema and one whose influence has rewritten the rules of Hollywood cinema. From his years at the China Drama Academy under Master Yu Jim-Yuen, working at a very young age as a stuntman in King Hu's masterpiece A Touch of Zen, Chan has continually reinvented martial arts cinema and much beyond it." Previous Asian honourees of the award include Johnnie To, Tsai Ming-liang, and Bollywood icon Shah Rukh Khan.