Thirty-six emerging producers descended on Locarno this week for the 11th edition of Match Me!, the festival's co-production meeting aimed at turning feature-film projects in development into finished films. The programme runs 7–9 August 2026, set inside the broader Locarno Film Festival, which runs 5–15 August (Locarno Festival, Rio Times).

Match Me! works as a speed-dating floor for producers and potential partners — sales agents, distributors, co-producers — through individual meetings and tailored networking. This year's edition, held in partnership with Cinecittà and Cinema Chile, drew projects from across Europe and Latin America (Locarno Festival, Variety).

Brazil sent two producers with sharply different track records. Amadeu Alban of Movioca arrived with The Girl Who Bled Woman, a coming-of-age drama and survival thriller about 13-year-old Dinha, forced to marry her older sister's widower. Alban is no stranger to commercial formats: he is behind Drag Me as a Queen, a reality show that NBCUniversal's E! network ran in Brazil and exported to the Netherlands and Germany — the first Brazilian reality format to travel globally — plus the documentary feature Anatomy of Chaos (Variety).

Amina Sophia Nogueira of Capivara Movies, a company founded in 2024, is at the other end of the journey. She is developing her first slate of features, including The She-Devil, set in working-class Rio de Janeiro during the 1990s, directed by Clara Ferrer and Tainá Bevilacqua (Variety).

Chile fielded two producers as well. Francisco Gallardo Soto of Equeco brought Falling Waves, set in a remote southern Chilean fishing community where a teenage girl's secret meets environmental catastrophe. Gallardo Soto produced Designation of Origin, Tomás Alzamora's 2025 box-office phenomenon in Chile, and The Chilean, which screens at Locarno's open-air Piazza Grande. Catalina Miles of Villano presented Champ, Pelayo Lira's story of 11-year-old Samuel fighting to enter an elite school after moving to a wealthy part of Chile in the year 2000. Miles produced The Red Hangar, a top winner at Málaga and Guadalajara that also became a sales hit (Variety).

From Europe, Denmark's Napkin Productions sent Mikkel Smidt with Glossy Pictures, a mystery drama by Mone Frogg and the company's first feature. Napkin was founded in 2025 by six producers from the same National Film School of Denmark graduation class, pooling experience from Zentropa, Nordisk Film and Danish Documentary. Giulia Triolo of Snowglobe — a producer or co-producer on Hlynur Pálmason's Godland, Joachim Trier's The Worst Person in the World, and Christian Mungiu's 2026 Cannes Palme d'Or winner Fjord — brought Grasshopper, about 15-year-old summer intern Luka, who uses she/they pronouns, finding first love in curly-haired Frida (Variety).

What gives Match Me! its pull is the gap it bridges. A producer can arrive with a script and a vision; the meetings determine whether financiers and co-producers sign on, which in turn decides whether the film reaches a screen two or three years down the line. The programme is reserved for new and upcoming producers, meaning many of these projects are first or second features looking for their first real money (Locarno Festival).

Beyond Match Me!, Locarno Pro is running its usual parallel strands. First Look, which spotlights a single country's industry each year, focuses on Uruguay in 2026. Alliance 4 Development is hosting 11 co-development projects from Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland (Locarno Festival, Locarno Festival).