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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.
Facing Africa’s Challenges
It Takes a Village, a panel at Locarno Pro on Aug. 8, will examine new investment cinema models. Africa desperately needs them, crippled by a fundamental lack of traditional national film funding incentives. Open Doors does hint, however, at some ways African cinema can go and indeed is going.
One is the full international co-production and sales agent route, empowering a production with top technical talent. One case in point: Produced by Caroline Daube’s Strange Bird in Germany and Didar Maneki’s Maneki Films in France and co-produced by Annemarie Jacir’s Philistine Films in Palestine and Jordan, “Cotton Queen” was set up as a Germany, France, Palestine, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Sudan production, supported by 10 institutions in those countries and Netherlands’ Hubert Bals Fund.
African companies are not just looking towards Europe, however. At Locarno’s mass networking encounter Match Me!, Amadeu Alban at Brazil’s Movioca is currently in development on two Brazil-Nigeria projects, “Trapped” and “La Pyramide,” reflecting his strategy of building co-productions across the Global South.
Or filmmakers are turning to genre, with its ingrained entertainment drive. Brought to Open Doors by producer Tapiwa Chipfupa, “Life On the Other Side of the Sun” has supernatural elements; “Diya” weighs in as a blood money crime thriller.
Pius uses genre storytelling “to reclaim African narratives and expand how the continent is represented on screen,” he says. Open Doors producer David Ikeata’s slate at Vox Cinematic Films spans “fiction and genre-driven storytelling,” he notes.
Rather than a market ploy, however, that passion can come from the filmmakers themselves. “Crocodile” charts how Godwin and Raymond, not yet 11, create a homemade collective with siblings and cousins, shooting ever more ambitious sci-fi films on one of their dad’s iPhones.
Or companies can seek out larger same-territory entities, galvanized by global streamer deals. Nemsia Studios, one of Nigeria’s leading film production-financing companies which signed a slate deal with Prime Video in 2022, has boarded Ikeata’s “Hibiscus by the River” as a financing partner.
Such deals may be for the lucky few. Their tenor is clear, however. A new initiative, Open Doors Connect, bringing together producers from Africa, Latin America and Asia, aims “to move co-production, circulation and long-term collaboration beyond traditional industry schemes,” Bankuti says. Larger collaboration, now being essayed by film industries as established as France and the Nordic States, is the bigger major way Africa’s film industries can also go.
Open Doors 2026 Selection
Open Doors 2026 is focused on African projects, producers and directors from outside the northern Maghreb and Egypt and South Africa.
Open Doors Projects
“Accept My Plea for Burial” (“Baryo Aas Iga Gudoon,” Mohammed Sheikh, Djibouti, Somalia, Qatar)
After Warmooge, 12, falls to his death while playing with Waasuge, a fellow goatherd, the village elder fails to resolve the case via customary law and religious counsel. From Minnesota-based U.S.-Somali filmmaker Sheik’s follow-up to “Barni,” screening at Locarno, “a morally complex story where there is no clear truth, told through a rarely seen Somali cultural framework,” he says.
“Chapa 100” (Ique Langa, Mozambique, Portugal)
Sitóe, 80, a Maputo flower vendor, and Valentina, a widowed vegetable seller, fall in love. When he is killed by a speeding minibus when trying to help her, flowers begin to bloom within the vehicle. “My love letter to Maputo, ‘Chapa 100’ is ultimately a story about love, memory, and the invisible bonds that connect us and to the places we call home,” Langa tells Variety.
“I Live in V.I” (Ugochukwu Azuya, Nigeria)
One of the first titles from Lagos-based Ensemble, launched by Azuya and O.O. Ogunsola last year, a social class satire from Azuya, whose short ghost story “Swimming in a Sea of Trauma,” played IFF Rotterdam. Florence, 23, to avoid a tough commute to her job in luxurious Victoria Island, squats in an abandoned high-rise, a relic from an ‘80s government building project. “A film about grief, urban alienation and gentrification in the city of Lagos exploring the lost hope of the Nigerian dream,” say Azuya and O.O. Ogunsola.
“The Ones With the Tempered Flowers” (Neema Ngelime, Tanzania)
Ngelime’s debut feature, a diary-like essay, she says, using constructed archives, cinema verité performances with her family and stop motion to explore, respectively, Neema’s 1990s childhood, today and imagined future. An auto doc feature about “a journey I am taking,” “exploring identity and the expectations of womanhood,” says Ngelime. Produced by LBx Africa, run by creative producer Bramwel Iro and director-producer Sam Soko.
“Too Much Music” (Aseye Fiagbe, Ghana)
A music doc bio, about Kiki Gyan, a Ghanaian keyboard prodigy catapulted to international fame as a teen with Afro-rock pioneers Osibisa, which he left over conflict over credit and ownership. Shaping African disco and funk, but unrecognised, he became famed for addiction and an early death. “Kiki’s story is about memory and erasure, about who gets remembered for their work and who is remembered only for how they fell,” says Fiagbe.
“A Vineyard for a Lobster” (Talemwa Pius. Uganda)
Billed as absurdist political allegory, after mysterious snowfall blankets a drought-stricken Ugandan village, a desperate trader, a disgraced priest and a reluctant chairman exploit the “miracle.” Their escalating ambitions threaten to tear the community apart. From Kampala-based Gripmagic, “in the film, an impossible snowfall in a Ugandan village becomes a political allegory, echoing colonial intrusion,” says Pius.
Producers
Tapiwa Chipfupa, Ambidextrous Pictures, Zimbabwe, “Life on the Other Side of the Sun”
Heading Ambidextrous, founder of AVEL and Girls Making Films training programs and a producer exploring “implications of tradition, culture and custom within modern-day Zimbabwe and on the continent, particularly in the life of women,” says Chipfupa. One case in point:“Life On the Other Side of the Sun, ” a supernatural thriller set in a men-ruled mountain hamlet which slides into desperation and witch hunts – until the free-spirited girl Sungano emerges as the village heroine.
Natasha Craveiro, Korikaxoru Films, Cabo Verde, White Mask (“dja branku dja”)
“In a market dominated by advertising, we established an auteur cinema production house as an act of resistance and cultural affirmation,” Craveiro says of Korikaxoru Films, set up in 2017. Following on multi-prized docu-fiction fest fave Pirinha (2024), she is now developing hybrid feature “White Mask” which plumbs what she calls her father’s “identity denial:” “a Black man from Cabo Verde who served as a soldier in the Portuguese army and, after the war, erased his Cabo Verdean life to settle in Portugal as a judge.”
David Ikeata, Vox Cinematic Films, Nigeria, “Hibiscus by the River”
Set up in 2024 by Nigerian actor Chimezie Imo and producer David Ikeata, Vox Cinematic Films slate includes “Hibiscus by the River,” the tale of a young Nigerian man who moves to England to pursue an education, only to find himself pulled back into the currents of his past. Holmes Awa, behind Prime Video’s “Soft Love,” directs. South African producer-screenwriter Paballo Molingoane, and Bulgaria’s U.K.-based Teodora Shaleva also produce.
Mamounata Nikièma, Pilumpiku Production, Burkina Faso
General secretary of the Africadoc Association Burkina over 2009-2014 and honored at the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, Africa’s largest cinema festival, in 2021. Behind multiple doc-features, such as “Djeliya, Memory of Mandingo,” an ambitious, five-county co-pro. “Our vision is to become a national and continental reference in film production, digital marketing, and promotion, championing impactful African storytelling, creating jobs for professionals, and nurturing emerging talent,” Nikièma has said.
Rua Osman, Helomur Picture, Sudan, “Manageable Matter”
Osman’s Helomur focuses on stories that explore memory, identity and social transformation, while fostering meaningful South–South and international co-productions. At Locarno with
her “Manageable Matter,” a film take on Berlin-based Emma Waltraud Howes’ installation, staging a procession of the Paradox Crew as an Artichoke Brigade, feature nine performances. These build a “meditation on repetition, collective endurance and the search for humility and grace within seemingly unresolvable cycles,” the synopsis reads.
Adja Soro (Studio KÄ, Ivory Coast, “Unchosen”)
Behind Abidjan’s animation Studio KÄ and now Studi KÄ France and editor-in-chief of Spark Anim and developing African stories such as YA animated thriller series “Unchosen.” It turns on Esmel, an Olympic taekwondo silver medal winner who returns home a national hero, but, linked to his father’s unsolved murder, risks everything in a live TV interview, to help him find his missing sister. “Through Esmel’s journey, ‘Unchosen’ explores the violence of public exposure in a world where the line between good and evil grows thinner every day,” says Soro.
Open Doors Feature Screenings
“Barni” (Mohammed Sheik, U.S., Somalia)
Sheik’s debut feature, a 2025 Red Sea Fest competition world premiere line-produced by Kadir Harbi at Minneapolis-based Aleel, now behind “Accept My Plea for Burial.” Sheik’s passion to depict Somalia through a Somali lens plus older generation fecklessness shines through as Amini leaves her somnolent village to find sis Barni, 9, in a big city. Arrestingly shot – whether ochre scrub-desert or a big city scrap yard beach – speaking well of Sheik/Harbi’s larger production ambitions.
“Catcher” (aka “Wrestlers,” Derhwa Kasunzu, Burkina Faso, France, Democratic Republic of Congo, Saudi Arabia)
When Kelekele Lituka, a wrestler who became world champion in 1974, dies in 2021, he’s buried with little fanfare. To honor him, the New Generation wrestling club announces one last catch event in his honor, despite a war-torn Kisangani and the fact its members are getting on in years…. A “lovingly made film,” said an IDFA description.
“Cotton Queen” (Suzannah Mirghani, Germany, France, Palestine, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan)
An undoubted Open Doors standout, sparking some rave reviews – “a beguiling mix of magic-realist fable, coming-of-age drama and post-colonial critique,” says Eye for Eye – scoring top plaudits at a slew of festivals labs such as Cannes’ Cinéfondation L’Atelier and sales from Totem Films to MAD Solutions/Film Clinic Indie Distribution (Arab-speaking countries), TAPE Collective (U.K./Ireland) and Jip Film (Germany). Cotton Queen “highlights how Sudanese girls must navigate authority in all its forms, whether patriarchal or matriarchal – from the specter of colonialism, to familial authoritarianism to the needs of contemporary capitalism,” Mirghani has said.
“Crocodile” (The Critics, Pietra Brettkelly, New Zealand, Nigeria)
Built on footage collected by The Critics, a kids’ collective filmed over 13 years through 2025 as Godwin, Raymond, not yet 11, launch The Critics, a filmmaking collective based out of a hardscrabble part of Kaduna, Nigeria, making sci-fi and super-hero films. Now, still determined to make Nigerian genre, they’ve received a digital camera from J.J. Abrams and Morgan Freeman’s narrated Ogun Ola: War Is Coming.” “Crocodile” The Critics and New Zealand’s Brettkelly, whose “A “Flickering Truth” played Venice and TIFF and “Yellow Is Forbidden” Tribeca, chronicle together that journey.
“Diya” (Achille Ronaïmou, Chad, France, Germany, Ivory Coast)
Rated by critics who have caught it – TIFF’s in-house review calls it “a relentless thriller” – “Diya” sees Dane, an NGO driver, accidentally knock down and kills a child, whose family demands an exorbitant blood debt – a diya – driving Dane ever deeper into crime. Ronaïmou’s feature debut, a critique of diya, still widely extended in Chad, in a film praised for its moral complexity, engrossing tension and sense of place. Bought by Canal+ and a triple winner at the Brussels Intl. Film Festival.
“My Father’s Kora” (“La Kora de mon père,”Aymar Esse, Benin, Switzerland, Germany)
A Locarno world premiere. Souleymane, an Afro-German trans man, talented fashion designer and increasingly less timid figure on Berlin’s ballroom scene, travels to Dakar to repair his father’s kora. In doing so, he repairs himself, building his new identity rooted in part in his origins, his griot family in Dakar. Souleymane’s journey’s is sluiced by simple but touching scenes such as his bonding with his brother sewing and with grandfather praying and metaphorical shots of the wash of the ocean on Dakar’s beaches.
“The Prophet” (“O Profeta,” Ique Langa, Mozambique, South Africa, Qatar)
Preaching in the village of Manjacaze, his inspiration and congregation dwindling, evangelical Pastor Hélder turns to black magic to fire up his oratory and heal his parishioners. His powers come at ever larger sacrifice, literally. Pointedly framed, even in vertical box aspect, bringing sense and sensitivity to shots, a black and white film parable becoming “an expression of the community [Manjacaze] that inspired it,” marking out Luque as a director to track.
“Katanga: the Dance of the Scorpions” (“Katanga la danse des scorpions, Dani Kouyaté, Burkina Faso)
Last caught by Variety at Abidjan’s SICA, debating African cinema’s future, here vet Kouyaté (“Sia, the Dream of the Python”) re-imagines “Macbeth” in Africa, shot in bold black and white and placed in a broadly modern setting. A Fespaco Yennega Etalon d’Or winner, creating many new scenes, but key plot beats and the broad parable of overweening ambition remain. %!s(
