Locarno's Open Doors 2026: Two African Features Take Top Grants as Festival Champions Global South Voices
Two filmmakers split the top money at Locarno's Open Doors on 10 August, each walking away with CHF 20,000 — roughly $24,800 — to push their features toward the screen. Ugandan director Talemwa Pius won for A Vineyard for a Lobster, his feature debut, and Somali-American director Mohammed Sheikh won for Accept My Plea for a Burial, his second feature after Barni, which debuted in competition (Variety).
The prizes were announced at Locarno Pro, the industry zone of Switzerland's Locarno Film Festival. Open Doors is the festival's pipeline for cinema from regions under-represented on the global circuit — much of sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and parts of Latin America. For independent producers, a grant here can be the difference between a project stalling in development and reaching a set.
Pius's A Vineyard for a Lobster is a political allegory: an impossible snowfall descends on a drought-ridden Ugandan village, a strange intrusion that echoes the strangeness of colonialism. Emmanuel Gashumba of Kampala-based Gripmagic Uganda produces. Pius trained at the New York Film Academy (Variety).
Sheikh's Accept My Plea for a Burial — the original-language title is Baryo Aas Iga Gudoon — is a co-production across Djibouti, Somalia and Qatar, produced by Kadir Harbi of Aleel Films. Sheikh's first feature, Barni, premiered in competition (Screen Daily).
A third Open Doors Grant of CHF 10,000 — about $12,400 — went to Aseye Fiagbe for Too Much Music, a documentary portrait of Ghanaian keyboard prodigy Kiki Gyan. The total CHF 50,000 in Open Doors grants was backed by Visions Sud Est, with support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the City of Bellinzona and the Open Doors initiative itself (Variety).
Beyond the cash, several projects collected partner prizes that carry their own weight. Mozambique's Ique Langa won the CNC Development Grant — €8,000, roughly $9,200 — from France's national film board for Chapa 100. Tanzania's Ngelime took both the ArteKino International Award and a Sørefond Award for Tempered Flowers. Burkina Faso's Mamounata Nikiema of Pilumpiku Production received the EYE Award, a producer-development prize.
Nigeria's Ugochukwu Azuya earned a Tabakalera-San Sebastian residency for I Live in V.I., a social-class satire set on Lagos's Victoria Island. Ivory Coast animator Adja Soro of Studio KÄ received an invitation to the Rotterdam Lab, a training programme for emerging producers.
What ties the roster together is geography. Every project in the 2026 Open Doors selection comes from a region where production funding is scarce and international distribution is rarer. The grants, residencies and lab invitations are designed to bridge that gap — connecting filmmakers to European co-producers, sales agents and festival programmers who can move a film from local shoot to global premiere.
