The second year of Open Doors’ Africa focus takes in new projects and emerging directors and producers from fest and lab winners to new propositions
Magic realist love story “Chapa 100,” absurdist political allegory “A Vineyard for a Lobster” and cross-continental queer drama “Hibiscus by the River” look like some of the potential standouts at Locarno’s talent-deep, wide-ranging 2026 Africa-focused Open Doors, unspooling on-site at Locarno over Aug. 5-10.
Winner of a 2025 Atlas Workshops Development Award no less, moving from observational social realism to – literally – flowering magical realism, love story “Chapa 100” is set in Mozambique capital Maputo. It marks scribe-helmer Ique Langa’s follow-up to “The Prophet,” a 2026 IFF Rotterdam main competition entry.
Beginning with an impossible snowfall blanketing a drought-ridden Ugandan village, “A Vineyard for a Lobster” signals the feature debut of Ugandan Talemwa Pius, a New York Film Academy alum.
Now in advanced development, “Hibiscus in the River” is one of five projects brought to market at Locarno by David Ikeata at Vox Cinematic Films, a burgeoning force on Nigeria’s new film scene.
Screenings this year at Open Doors pack a particularly powerful punch taking in, for example, Suzannah Mirghani’s Venice Critics’ Week premiere “Cotton Queen,” a Thessaloniki’s best film and Doha Audience Award winner and the first feature-length fiction film from Sudan that is written and directed by a woman.
Also on show is “Crocodile,” a doc-feature best film, Viewpoints laureate at Tribeca Film Festival, New York and Youth Jury Prize at the U.K.’s Sheffield DocFest, and “Diya,” a 2025 TIFF Centerpiece title praised by those who caught it.
Aymar Esse’s touching “My Father’s Kora” world premieres at Locarno.
A Snapshot of Africa’s Upscale Film Scene
Carefully curated, Open Doors 2026 provides a telling take of the range of current upscale titles coming out of Africa plus their artistic and industrial trends.
Though light years from parity in Africa at large, women cineastes feature prominently at Open Doors, dominating its producers, new Open Doors Connect and directors sections.
Also, “the cohort of Open Doors 2026 is made up of projects and filmmakers that don’t compromise with authenticity,” says Suzsi Bankuti, head of Open Doors. Many titles are indeed redolently and proudly local. “I Live in V.I’s” “character ensemble and dramatic situations are colored with different aspects of the Nigerian collective psyche,” promises director Ugochukwu Azuya.
In “Crocodile,” Nigeria’s The Critics collective, though achieving increasing global renown, debate what it takes to be a Nigerian filmmaker.
Directly or indirectly, most films deal with the state of Africa today. That includes a critique of post-colonial dynamics. Formally, the British Empire et al. has gone. But their legacy lingers. In “Cotton Queen,” set on a Sudanese cotton farm, teen Nafisa, raised on her grandmother’s heroic tales of battling British colonizers, sets out to save the cotton fields – and herself when a British businessman arrives planning to introduce genetically engineered cotton.
“‘A Vineyard for a Lobster’ grows out of my interest in how colonial structures continue to shape authority, belief and communal life in Uganda decades after independence,” explains director Talemwa Pius.