Locarno Open Doors Reveals 2026 Selection and New Scholarship by EAVE and FFL
press release
Open Doors, Locarno’s co-production platform and talent development programme for filmmakers from equity-seeking communities and regions where artistic expression is at risk, announces its selection for 2026, a bold and diverse slate of voices from across the African continent.
On Monday, August 10, a jury of industry professionals will award financial and in-kind prizes to selected winning projects. New this year, professional training organisation EAVE, together with the Film Fund Luxembourg, will offer a scholarship for the EAVE Marketing Workshop, worth EUR 4,000.
Now in its second year of a four-edition cycle dedicated to 42 countries in Africa, Open Doors presents its Projects, Producers, and Directors programmes, bringing together a generation of filmmakers whose work spans fiction, documentary, and animation across more than ten countries.
From 5 to 10 August, the programme offers hands-on training, mentoring, and networking, alongside public screenings and events during the Locarno Film Festival and its industry arm Locarno Pro.
Drawn from ten different 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. From Ghana, Aseye Fiagbe directs and produces Too Much Music, a documentary portrait of Ghanaian keyboard prodigy Kiki Gyan. Mozambique and South Africa come together in Chapa 100, an urban, surrealist love story directed by Ique Langa, whose previous feature O profeta screened in the Tiger Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam earlier this year, and produced by Creative Producers Indaba graduate Lara Sousa (Kulunga Filmes). Nigerian director Ugochukwu Azuya and producer Olubunmi Ogunsola (ENSEMBLE) present I Live in V.I, a sharp social satire about urban space and gentrification. From Somalia and Djibouti, Mohammed Sheikh and producer Kadir Harbi Hassan (Aleel Films) bring fiction project Accept My Plea For Burial (Baryo Aas Iga Gudoon), which probes the tensions between tradition and justice in a rural community. A Tanzania–Kenya collaboration, The Ones With The Tempered Flowers is an experimental documentary weaving together themes of womanhood and motherhood, directed by Neema Ngelime and produced by Ivy Kiru of AQ Pictures and LBx Africa, who also participated in the 2026 La Fabrique Cinéma programme at the Cannes Film Festival with the project Strong Wind. Rounding out the selection, Ugandan fiction project A Vineyard for A Lobster, directed by Talemwa Pius and produced by Gashumba Emmanuel (Gripmagic Uganda Limited), uses a snow-covered landscape as an allegory for the enduring shadows of colonialism.
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 Kazakh-Nigerian fiction film Adam Bol (2024) and currently developing a new project with an Egyptian director. Rua Osman (Sudan, Helomur Picture) brings extensive production experience, with a resumé 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).
An overview of all selected Projects, Producers and Directors can be found here.
EAVE graduate Yanis Gaye, Head of Studies at Open Doors: “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 meet 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 eco-systems and their practitioners are a chance 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 whole.”
Zsuzsi Bánkuti, Head of Open Doors: “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 more diversity - the richer and more honest our cinema will be."
Page published 2 June 2026.
