Open Doors 2025 Courtesy of Locarno/Open Doors The Locarno Film Festival’s Open Doors co-production platform and talent development program for filmmakers from equity-seeking communities and regions where artistic expression is at risk has unveiled the participants and partners for its inaugural Open Doors Connect program. Open Doors is gearing up for its second edition with a focus on African cinema. The new Open Doors Connect initiative offers “a pathway for professionals from countries outside Open Doors’ traditional geographic focus,” organizers highlighted. “The program also allows foundations, film institutions, and organizations to join by sponsoring an industry professional, opening up new financing models, markets, and collaborations rooted in global equality.”
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The program welcomes not only those working directly in production, but “anyone looking to build new relationships with the African continent and engage as a partner.”
The participants will follow a two-month hybrid program, both online and on-site during the Locarno Film Festival, mentored by producer Fibby Kioria from Kenya and curator, producer, arts manager and consultant Mitchell Harper from South Africa. There will be “shared touchpoints with the wider Open Doors and Locarno Pro programs and personalized industry matchmaking,” Locarno said. “The inaugural Open Doors Connect will mark a new phase in the program’s development,” highlighted Harper. “Bringing together film professionals from Benin, Madagascar, Brazil and Mongolia, Open Doors Connect aims not [only] to act as a platform for professional development of the participants, but also to ideate and facilitate opportunities for South-South collaborations, drawing on knowledge, experiences and models from each of their regions.” On Wednesday, Locarno unveiled four partners that have come on board, with each sponsoring one participant. Check out the participants and sponsors right here. Participant: Candy Radifera (Madagascar), “also recipient of the Wyss Academy’s CHF 20,000 production fund for her upcoming documentary The Crab Diagonal.” Partner and sponsor: Wyss Academy for Nature Participant: Frédy Agblo (Benin), “an emerging producer committed to amplifying underrepresented voices and fostering new narratives from Africa for global audiences.” Partner and sponsor: Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie Participant: Talita Arruda (Brazil), “a distributor who also served as an expert during Open Doors’ Latin American cycle.” Partner and sponsor: Projeto Paradiso
Participant: Nomintuya Baasankhuu (Mongolia), “who participated in Open Doors in 2021 with her project Water Garden and has since founded her own film development initiative in Mongolia, Film Nomad, inspired in part by her Open Doors experience.” Partner and sponsor: Film Nomad Lab
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