Mozambican Director Ique Langa's Surrealist Love Story 'Chapa 100' Wins CNC Grant at Locarno Open Doors
A Mozambican film about an 80-year-old flower vendor whose spirit becomes fused with the minibus that kills him has won the CNC Development Grant at the 2026 Locarno Film Festival's Open Doors programme.
The grant, endowed with 8,000 euros, was awarded by the Open Doors jury to Chapa 100, a surrealist love story from Mozambique directed by Ique Langa and produced by Lara Sousa of Kulunga Filmes, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Open Doors is Locarno's co-production platform and talent development programme, connecting film-makers from underrepresented regions with producers, sales agents, and festival programmers.
The story centres on Sitóe, a flower seller in Maputo, and Valentina, a vegetable vendor in her seventies. A flower passes between them. A quiet romance begins. Then a thief steals Valentina's rented wig, Sitóe gives chase, and a speeding chapa — the private minibus that threads through Mozambican cities — strikes and kills him. His spirit becomes tied to the very vehicle that ended his life, transforming the minibus into something spectral and strange.
Langa told The Hollywood Reporter that the film began with a dream: a chapa transforming into something almost magical, flowers growing from it, carrying people through the city.
The project carries a budget of 1.1 million euros and is structured as a Mozambique-Portugal co-production, according to Cineuropa. Sales company Luminalia has picked up the title, with Mo Harare and Mostafa El Kasha also attached, Variety reported on 7 August.
Chapa 100 was presented as a work-in-progress in the Open Doors Screenings section at Locarno. Variety described it as a "quietly powerful film" in its 4 August coverage of the festival.
Langa is no stranger to Open Doors. His debut feature, The Prophet (O profeta), world-premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and screened at the Locarno Open Doors Screenings on 8 August 2026 as a Mozambique-Qatar co-production. His short film Oxy (2020) rounds out a brief but festival-tested filmography listed on the Locarno festival site.
Before arriving at Locarno, Chapa 100 had already won the 2025 Atlas Workshops Development Award, the development lab run by the Marrakech International Film Festival, as Variety and IMDb News both reported.
What stands out is the collision at the film's centre: a tender late-in-life romance derailed by sudden, absurd death, then refracted through Mozambican spiritual life and the daily reality of the chapa minibus, a vehicle so woven into the country's fabric that it becomes its own character. The Open Doors grant is modest in cash terms, but the festival's market function — putting a project in front of producers and sales agents who can push it toward completion — often matters more than the cheque itself.
With Luminalia handling sales and a Locarno jury endorsement behind it, Chapa 100 now moves toward its next stage of financing and, eventually, a festival premiere of its own.
