Locarno Pro and Open Doors name 2026 winners, backing projects from Uganda, Somalia and Ghana

The Locarno Film Festival has unveiled the winners of its Locarno Pro project and incubator initiatives for 2026, highlighting new works in development and a separate set of incubator tracks aimed at early-stage filmmakers. The announcement, published on Aug. 10, 2026, covers programs gathered under Locarno Pro and spanning multiple strands, including First Look, Alliance 4 Development and Open Doors initiatives.

Among the project winners named in the announcement is Talemwa Pius’s A Vineyard For A Lobster, described as a Uganda entry. The festival also named Mohammed Sheikh’s Accept My Plea for Burial, listed as a Somalia project, and Aseye Fiagbe’s Too Much Music, listed as a Ghana project. Deadline reported that these winners, along with other project selections within the Locarno Pro umbrella, are paired with support that the article describes as totaling €50,000.

The announcement also references additional top prizes for other projects identified as “Spring Story” and “Yazz.” While the published summary does not provide further production details in the material available for this write-up, it frames these titles as part of the Locarno Pro and Open Doors set of winning works that the festival will support through its development and incubation pathways.

In addition to the project awards, Locarno Pro’s Open Doors initiatives are presented in the announcement as an incubator component, designed to help filmmakers move from early development to more formal production planning and presentation. The festival’s approach, as described in the report, is organized around multiple entry points, including development-oriented tracks and open-door programming.

Because the Deadline package provided here is a condensed overview, several operational details about the winners’ next steps, such as specific workshop schedules, mentoring assignments, distribution or pitching dates, and which organizations administer each portion of the €50,000 support, are not specified in the available excerpt. The festival and the report’s full breakdown are therefore the controlling references for any finer-grained timelines.

Still, the announcement establishes which creators have been selected by Locarno’s industry programs and confirms that multiple countries and distinct projects are represented in this round. Filmmakers and production teams associated with the named titles will now proceed under Locarno Pro’s process for the next stage of their participation.

The winners’ announcement also provides an advance look at the festival’s development pipeline as it moves toward subsequent festival and industry events, where curated works and participating filmmakers typically receive additional opportunities for visibility and support. For audiences and industry partners following Locarno Pro, the next publicly documented updates will likely clarify the presentation formats for these winners and the allocation of the reported funding support among the selected projects.