Out Of Africa: Locarno Film Festival’s Open Doors Initiative Prioritises African Projects In 2026 Selection

Locarno’s Open Doors 2026 selection highlights bold new African filmmaking talent.

Open Doors, Locarno Film Festival’s co-production platform and talent development programme for filmmakers from equity-seeking communities and regions where artistic expression is at risk, has announced its selection for 2026 — a bold and diverse slate of voices from across the African continent.

Now in its second year of a four-edition cycle dedicated to 42 countries in Africa, Open Doors’ Projects, Producers, and Directors programmes bring together a generation of filmmakers whose work spans fiction, documentary, and animation across more than ten countries. From 5 to 10 August, the programme will offer hands-on training, mentoring, and networking, alongside public screenings and events during the Locarno Film Festival and its industry arm, Locarno Pro.

Open Doors Projects 2026 – Selected Films

Drawn from ten countries across the continent, this year’s Open Doors Projects showcases an exciting range of six selected first and second features in development: from portraits of music and memory to explorations of womanhood, urban life, and the long shadows of colonialism.

Too Much Music (Ghana)
Directed and produced by Aseye Fiagbe
A documentary portrait of Ghanaian keyboard prodigy Kiki Gyan.

Chapa 100 (Mozambique / South Africa)
Directed by Ique Langa | Produced by Lara Sousa (Kulunga Filmes)
An urban, surrealist love story exploring memory and identity.

I Live in V.I (Nigeria)
Directed by Ugochukwu Azuya | Produced by Olubunmi Ogunsola (ENSEMBLE)
A sharp social satire on urban space and gentrification.

Accept My Plea for Burial (Baryo Aas Iga Gudoon) (Somalia / Djibouti)
Directed by Mohammed Sheikh | Produced by Kadir Harbi Hassan (Aleel Films)
A fiction project exploring tensions between tradition and justice.

The Ones With the Tempered Flowers (Tanzania / Kenya)
Directed by Neema Ngelime | Produced by Ivy Kiru (AQ Pictures / LBx Africa)
An experimental documentary on womanhood and motherhood.

A Vineyard for a Lobster (Uganda)
Directed by Talemwa Pius | Produced by Gashumba Emmanuel (Gripmagic Uganda Limited)
An allegorical fiction set in a snow-covered landscape exploring colonial legacies.

Open Doors Producers 2026

The Open Doors Producers programme supports creative producers in building sustainable careers and cross-border networks. This year’s six participants come from six different countries:

• From Burkina Faso, Mamounata Nikiema (Pilumpiku Production) is a veteran of the continent’s film industry, knighted at FESPACO 2021 for her contributions to cinema.
• Natasha Craveiro (Cabo Verde, Korikaxoru Films) produced Omi Nobu, which screened as part of the Open Doors Screenings at Locarno 2025.
• Adja Mariam Mahre Soro (Ivory Coast) leads Studio Kä, an animation studio she founded in Abidjan.
• Nigerian producer David Ikeata (Vox Cinematic Films) has worked across borders, co-producing the Kazakh-Nigerian fiction film Adam Bol (2024) and is currently developing a new project with an Egyptian director.
• Rua Osman (Sudan, Helomur Picture) brings extensive production experience, with a résumé including festival landmarks You Will Die at Twenty (Venice, 2019) and Goodbye Julia (Cannes, 2023).
• Rounding out the selection, Tapiwa Chipfupa (Zimbabwe, Ambidextrous Pictures) is an EAVE alumna who has recently launched the international training and mentorship programme Audiovisual Entrepreneurs Laboratory (AVEL).

Open Doors Directors 2026

Five directors have been selected for Open Doors Directors, a programme of talks, workshops, and industry networking:

• Fagamou Fama Ndiaye (Senegal)
• Rediet Haddis Yalew (Ethiopia)
• Pocas Pascoal (Angola)
• Judith Nini Kibinge (Kenya)
• Ariel Añez (Mozambique).

Their short films will be part of the Open Doors Screenings, an official section of the Festival featuring both short and feature films, the full selection of which will be announced on 1 July 2026.

Yanis Gaye, Head of Studies at Open Doors, commenting on the selection, said: “With this new iteration of Open Doors’ African focus, we’re looking to affirm the richness of storytelling across the continent, with artistic voices and creative entrepreneurs strongly dedicated to meeting their audiences at home, within their diasporas and internationally. Our programme is set to allow those synergies — within our cohort; between them and Open Doors alumni from other regions; and through the encounters they will have in Locarno — to take hold through concrete and actionable interactions. African film ecosystems and their practitioners are an opportunity for the industry to globally redesign some of the ways we think of our co-production practices, our audience-building strategies, and the economics of cinema as a whole.”

Zsuzsi Bánkuti, Head of Open Doors, added: “With this selection, we are reaffirming something we deeply believe in: that the future of cinema depends on who gets to make it, and how. One of my hopes for this edition, and for Open Doors more broadly, is to keep amplifying female voices, both behind the camera and in the producer’s chair. Gender parity in our industry isn’t just a goal for the screen; it has to be lived in the way we work and who we support. But it goes further than that: what excites me most about this year’s selection is how many of these filmmakers understand that cinema is never a solo act. A film is always made by many hands, many minds, many stories. The more we build our industry on that truth — on horizontal collaboration, on genuine equality within our creative communities, on greater diversity — the richer and more honest our cinema will be.”

On Monday 10 August 2026, a jury of industry professionals will award financial and in-kind prizes to selected winning projects. These include the Open Doors Grant of CHF 50,000, sponsored by visions sud est and the City of Bellinzona; the CNC Development Prize of EUR 8,000; and the Arte Kino International Prize of EUR 6,000. Additional awards are offered by IFFR Pro, the International Culture Center Tabakalera and San Sebastian Film Festival, the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), and Sørfond.

The Open Doors initiative was launched by the Locarno Film Festival in 2003, in subsequent collaboration with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA). For more than 20 years, Open Doors’ mission has been to support artists from underrepresented communities around the world and from countries in which cinema and art as a form of expression are at risk. Its aim is to help foster sustainable industry practices and film environments in the regions in question. Offering a multi-faceted space for nurturing film talent, it has developed an array of programmes for training, learning, and networking for film professionals, as well as public screenings and events — during the Locarno Film Festival and online.

To learn more about the selected projects for this year’s Open Doors, click here.