Italy-based sales agent Luminalia has boarded "Chapa 100," the Mozambican urban surrealist romance that won the 2025 Atlas Workshops Development Award, bringing the project a step closer to reaching international screens (Variety).

A sales agent is the company that licenses a finished film to distributors in different countries; landing one before a frame is shot signals market confidence in the project. Luminalia, which describes itself as an independent agency specialising in festival strategy and creative distribution with a focus on non-Western films, will represent the title worldwide (Luminalia).

"Chapa 100" is written and directed by Ique Langa, a film-maker who has lived his entire life in the Mozambican city that inspires the story. The film is lead-produced by Lara Sousa at Kulunga Filmes in Maputo, with Pedro Borges of Portugal's Midas Filmes co-producing and Mozambique's Better Films joining as a third production partner. Production also involves Better Audiovisual in Mozambique and Tubafilms in South Africa, with international sales handled by Luminalia in Italy (Variety; Cineuropa).

The project has been building momentum on the festival circuit for over a year. It was selected for Locarno Pro's Open Doors programme for 2026 — a development initiative that connects film-makers from underrepresented regions with co-producers, financiers and sales agents (Locarno Festival). Before that, "Chapa 100" received the Cultiv'Art / Expertise France Development Grant, described as one of the largest international development grants ever awarded to a Mozambican feature project (Variety). Langa also completed a seven-week residency at MacDowell, the storied New Hampshire artists' colony, where he deepened the screenplay.

Langa's feature debut, "The Prophet" ("O Profeta"), world-premiered in the main competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and is screening as part of Locarno's Open Doors Screenings. That earlier film follows a pastor and a practitioner of traditional healing in Mozambique (Variety; Hollywood Reporter).

The team around "Chapa 100" brings festival pedigree. Associate producer Mo Harawe saw his own film, "The Village Next to Paradise," screen in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 2024. Egyptian cinematographer Mostafa El Kashef is behind the camera. Kulunga Filmes, Sousa's company, is also behind "Nós, Povo das Ilhas," directed by Elson Santos and Sousa herself (Variety).

Luminalia is building a deliberate slate of sub-Saharan African cinema. Alongside "Chapa 100," the agency is representing Langa's debut "The Prophet" and "Atcha Atcha," a new documentary by Senegalese director Mamadou Dia. Dia's own debut, "Nafi's Father," won best first feature at the 2019 Locarno Film Festival and took the Golden Leopard in its Filmmakers section (Variety).

For a Mozambican project, the assembly of producers across three countries, a sales agent in Italy and a cinematographer from Egypt is the kind of cross-border scaffolding that festival development programmes are designed to build. Open Doors selects roughly a handful of projects each year from specific regions; "Chapa 100" carries the Mozambique–Portugal flag at the 2026 edition.

No production dates have been announced.