Accepting the Pardes d’Onore at the 79th Locarno Film Festival, Zoe Saldaña offered a candid reflection on a career spent populating cinema’s biggest franchises—and made clear her intention to step behind the camera for her next chapter.
The star of Avatar, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Star Trek—who recently earned critical acclaim for Emilia Pérez—reflected on how early cultural shifts between New York and the Dominican Republic informed her affinity for complex, outsider roles. She also detailed how her early ballet training provided the physical discipline required for her motion-capture and action-heavy turns.
Saldaña praised key collaborators like James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, and Gore Verbinski for evaluating her solely on talent rather than box-office tokenism. However, she voiced frustration over industry pressures that force creators from underrepresented backgrounds to act as spokespeople for diversity rather than focusing purely on craft.
Having co-produced Marco Perego’s 2023 immigration drama The Absence of Eden, Saldaña outlined plans to direct her own project: a post-war family drama set in San Francisco, intended to center marginalized communities within classic American narrative frameworks.
