Locarno Open Doors 2026 Winners: Uganda’s ‘A Vineyard for A Lobster’, Somalia’s ‘Accept My Plea for Burial’ and Tanzania-Kenya’s ‘The Ones with the Tempered Flowers’ Win Big

Locarno Open Doors Africa-focused cycle has wrapped its second edition, unveiling winners at a ceremony held on Monday.

Ugandan fiction feature project A Vineyard for A Lobster and Somalia’s Accept My Plea for Burial were among the top winners, each receiving CHF 20,000 from the CHF 50,000 Open Doors Grant, while Ghana’s documentary project Too Much Music received CHF 10,000. The grant is sponsored by Visions Sud Est, with support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the City of Bellinzona and the Open Doors initiative.

Directed by Talemwa Pius and produced by Emmanuel Gashumba, A Vineyard for A Lobster explores the enduring shadows of colonialism through an impossible snowfall that turns a drought-stricken Ugandan village into a battleground for power, faith and ownership.

A co-production between Somalia and Djibouti, Accept My Plea for Burial, directed by Mohammed Sheikh and produced by Kadir Harbi, explores grief, justice and collective judgment after a child’s unexplained death fractures a remote Somali pastoral community.

Feature documentary Too Much Music, produced by Aseye Fiagbe, follows Kiki Gyan, a Ghanaian keyboard prodigy who rose to international fame as a teenager.

Tanzania-Kenya co-production The Ones with the Tempered Flowers won the ARTEKino International Award, which offers a €6,000 incentive towards the development of the project. The feature documentary also won the Sørfond Award, which grants participation in the Sørfond Pitching Forum in Norway in November 2026.

Described as an experimental documentary exploring themes of womanhood and motherhood, The Ones with the Tempered Flowers follows director Neema Ngelime’s journey from her point of diagnosis as she interrogates her own body, family history and the expectations placed on women in Tanzania. The project is being produced by Kenya’s Ivy Kiru via AQ Pictures and LBx Africa.

Other Open Doors winners from across Africa include Burkina Faso’s Mamounata Nikiema, who received the EAVE Award, which provides a EUR 4,000 scholarship for the EAVE Marketing Workshop in collaboration with Film Fund Luxembourg.

Nigeria’s Ugochukwu Azuya received the Tabakalera-San Sebastian Film Festival Residency Award for I Live in V.I., produced by Olubunmi Ogunsola. The award includes a residency at Tabakalera and participation in the industry activities of the San Sebastian Film Festival.

Adja Mariam Mahre Soro of Ivory Coast received the Rotterdam Lab Award, which will see her participate in IFFR Pro’s Rotterdam Lab in January 2027 alongside more than 70 emerging producers from around the world.

Angola’s Pocas Pascoal received the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) Award for Sarah, a consultancy prize supporting a selected feature film or series project from the French-speaking Global South.

Mozambique’s Ariel Añez received the AFP Critics Prize for Submergido, produced by Joseph Mata and co-produced by Añez. Presented by African Film Press (AFP), the prize includes a USD 500 cash award, a certificate and ongoing editorial coverage across AFP’s three founding publications: Akoroko, Sinema Focus and What Kept Me Up. This edition of the AFP Critics Prize was judged by Kenyan critic Kelvin Kariuki and Nigeria’s Vivian Nwajiaku and Jeffrey Ini-Abasi.

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