June Wairegi and Yannick Mizero Kabano Among Winners at Locarno Open Doors

The inaugural Africa-focused Open Doors cycle at the Locarno Film Festival closed on 12 August with the announcement of winning projects.

Kenyan producer June Wairegi won the MECAS Award which grants her an opportunity to participate in the International Market for Almost-finished Films in Gran Canaria in April 2026. The jury praised her “courageous and inspiring” slate of independent projects, highlighting her creativity, initiative, and vision. Wairegi, a producer at Giza Visuals, was one of six African filmmakers in the Open Doors Producers program which kicked off online in June and July, with onsite participation from 7 – 12 August in Switzerland. Her entry project, Manjano, is a $400,000 romance-action film about a young man who recruits a team of misfits to pull off a heist to fund his elopement with a girl promised to another.

Rwanda’s Yannick Mizero Kabano of Imitana Productions took home two prizes: the Tabakalera–San Sebastian Film Festival Residency Award, offering a residency and industry participation in San Sebastian, and the Open Doors–OIF–ACP–EU Award – a €2,500 development grant. Kabano’s entry project Mado is an action thriller about a woman who battles for truth and justice after her husband’s suspicious death.

The biggest winner of the day was Dika Ofoma’s queer romance Kachifo (Till the Morning Comes) from Nigeria, which claimed a hat-trick with the Open Doors Grant of CHF 20,000 (€21,000), the ARTEKino International Award worth €6,000, and the Sørfond Award, which grants participation in the Sørfond pitching event in November. Produced by Blessing Uzi of Bluhouse Studios, Kachifo was praised for its “complex and challenging approach” to its parallel love story.

Another major win went to Zimbabwe’s Black Snake, directed by Naishe Nyamubaya and produced by Sue-Ellen Chitunya, which received CHF 25,000 – the largest share of the Open Doors Grant. The Ivory Coast–Burkina Faso co-production Journal intime d’une femme chèvre (Diary of a Goat Woman), directed by Azata Soro and produced by Nameïta Lica Touré, received CHF 5,000 from the same grant.

Other winners included Les Bilokos (The Bilokos), directed by Erickey Bahati and produced by Giresse Kassonga from DR Congo and France, which received an €8,000 development grant from CNC – Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée. Angolan producer Kamy Lara won the Rotterdam Lab Award, granting her participation in the lab, as well as the World Cinema Fund Audience Strategy Award, which offers a tailored program to develop an audience engagement strategy.

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