Last but not least, we went to Locarno last Friday to catch some of the film festival (and to approximately celebrate our wedding anniversary). The festival was, in characteristic Swiss fashion, immaculately organized. (We learned while there that the non-profit which organizes the festival has an 18mil CHF annual budget and more than 30 full-time employees.)
We were only there Friday evening and Saturday, and the midnight screenings were too much for us, needing to travel 1.5hr back to our accommodation. We thus saw three feature-length films: Ich ist ein Anderer, Violence du corps l’autre, and The Invite, in response to which I thought (respectively): you’d have a better time reading the wikipedia page than watching it; it was an auteur’s masterpiece; and it was at last a rom-com worth watching.
We cycled 60km or so up Lago Maggiore from Verbania to Bellinzona on the way in, and over a beautiful mountain pass another 60km or so from Bellinzona to Chiasso on the way out. I recommend the bike-packing: I’m not sure that we’ll be going back to the film festival on a regular basis, as although the lakeside setting is gorgeous, I can’t quite diff the prices with the food quality in Switzerland when comparing with Italy.