Locarno Pro 2026 Winners: African Cinema Takes Centre Stage as Festival Hands Out Prizes Across Three Initiatives
Three African film projects split the top prize at Locarno's Open Doors incubator on 10 August 2026, closing a six-day industry programme devoted to cinema from across the continent.
The Open Doors main prize, totalling 50,000 Swiss Francs (about $61,000) and sponsored by Switzerland's Visions Sud Est fund, was shared by three projects. Talemwa Pius's A Vineyard For A Lobster from Uganda and Mohammed Sheikh's Accept My Plea for Burial, a co-production involving Djibouti, Somalia and Qatar, each received 20,000 CHF (about $24,000). Aseye Fiagbe's Too Much Music from Ghana took 10,000 CHF (about $12,000) (Deadline).
Open Doors is Locarno's co-production workshop, the part of the festival where filmmakers with unfinished projects meet producers, mentors and funders. The 2026 edition was the second year of a four-year cycle focused on 42 countries across Africa, with 25 participants connected to six projects gathering in person in Locarno for six days of mentoring and networking (Deadline). The wider Locarno Pro industry programme ran 5–10 August (Cineuropa).
Beyond the main prize, several collateral awards went to other Open Doors projects. Mozambique director Ique Langa's Chapa 100 won the CNC Development Grant, worth €8,000 (about $9,200). Tanzanian director Neema Ngelime's The Ones With the Tempered Flowers picked up two awards: the ARTEKino International Award, worth €6,000 (about $6,900), and the Sørfond Award, which opens a path to Norway's international co-production fund (Deadline).
Locarno Pro runs three separate initiatives in parallel, and the other two announced their 2026 winners as well.
The First Look showcase — Locarno's work-in-progress platform, now in its 15th edition — turned its spotlight on Uruguayan cinema, screening films from 7–9 August. Gabriela Guillermo and Irina Raffo's Spring Story (Historia de primavera) won the Bright Side of the Moon First Look Award and the Le Film Français Award, the latter worth €5,600 in advertising space. Lorenzo Tocco's The Surubí collected three prizes: the La Mayor Cine Award, the Music Library & SFX/Acorde Award (worth €45,000 in music supervision services), and the Jannuzzi Smith Award (Deadline).
The Alliance 4 Development showcase, which fosters co-productions between European partners, gave its top honours to Florian Hoffmann's Yazz. The project won the NEBEL Studios Award, estimated at CHF 30,500, and the Studio13/Valais Film Commission Award, estimated at CHF 12,000 (Deadline).
The fifth edition of the Locarno Residency named three winners: Julia Mellen, Anna Simonetti and Dominic Yarabe (Instagram, 8 August 2026).
For filmmakers working outside the major festival capitals, prizes like these are often the difference between a project reaching a screen and stalling at the script stage. The money helps — the Open Doors main prize alone distributed over $60,000 — but so do the relationships built during those six days in Locarno, where a producer from Kampala or Mogadishu can sit across the table from a European funder who might never otherwise encounter their work.
