The full 50-title retrospective that formed one panel of the 2026 Locarno Film Festival (held earlier in August...) can be found at the link below:

https://www.locarnofestival.ch/festival/film-sections/retrospettiva/retrospettiva79.html

Masterminded by British film historian/programmer Ehsan Khoshbakht, it includes the Steven C. Smith-directed documentary DANGEROUS CITIZEN, a lengthy look at the career and the legacy of Abraham Polonsky. It's also notable for having been written and co-produced by Eddie Muller--which means that a strong possibility exists that it will screen on TCM later this year.

Critic (and coiner of that too-clever-by-half term "Noirvember") Marya E. Gates attended a large slice of the Locarno festival and provided a solid report based on the portion of THE RED & THE BLACK she was able to attend. It can be found here:

https://www.rogerebert.com/festivals/locarno-film-festival-2026-17-urgent-hollywood-blacklist-films

One can quibble with the Khoshbakht's choices and emphasis--for example, choosing to focus on Joseph Losey's post-blacklist period at the expense of his increasingly edgy Hollywood phase (how silly is it that Imogen Smith, who decried the "liberal pieties" in his criminally-underrated THE LAWLESS, is now found singing the praises of Abraham Polonsky?). Likewise there are a number of films by Blacklist victims that simply have nothing else to do with actual leftist filmmaking.

That said, a program of this type was long overdue, and the portions that Gates covers are all "in the pocket" for shining a lens on a subject that is all too frequently distorted.

The most sobering aspect of this retrospective might be that it could only be held outside the United States. We can hope that the Smith-Muller documentary and other related works might be bundled on December 5th (Polonsky's birthday) for at least an abbreviated TCM tribute; by then, we might well have a better sense of just how much trouble is in store for American democracy.