Locarno Open Doors Winners: Talemwa Pius  Mohammed Sheikh

Ugandan Talemwa Pius’ striking magic realist fable “A Vineyard for a Lobster” and “Accept My Plea for a Burial,” a Somalia set critique of ancient custom, emerged triumphant at Locarno’s 2026 Open Doors, winning its two biggest cash prizes.

Neither prize comes as a surprise. 

Picturing a miraculous snowfall in a drought-ridden Ugandan village, in “A Vineyard for a Lobster,” Pius cleverly spins a political fable of broader collective breakdown, as characters – a desperate trader, a disgraced priest and a reluctant chairman – react to the miracle in self-serving ways rather than thinking about any common good. As their ambitions escalate, the village threatens to fall apart. From Kampala-based Gripmagic, “in the film, an impossible snowfall in a Ugandan village becomes a political allegory, echoing colonial intrusion,” Pius told Variety. 

A €20,000 cash prize was also granted by Open Doors to “Accept My Plea for Burial” (“Baryo Aas Iga Gudoon”), by Mohammed Sheikh a Djibouti, Somalia and Qatar. It kicks in when 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. Minnesota-based U.S.-Somali filmmaker Sheik’s follow-up to “Barni,” screening at Locarno, this is “a morally complex story where there is no clear truth, told through a rarely seen Somali cultural framework,” Sheikh told Variety.

Aseye Fiagbe’s “Too Much Music,” a rehabilitating music doc bio of Kiki Gyan, a Ghanaian keyboard prodigy, took in the same prize. Notably, however, Open Doors prizes announced Aug. 10 at Locarno Pro, the industry zone of Switzerland’s Locarno Film festival, were spread pretty evenly, every single titles among its six project focus walking off with some kind of compensation. 

That prize sweep took in a development grant from France’s CNC national film board for “Chapa 100,” an endearing advanced age love story from Mozambique’s Ique Langa, who impressed with his Rotterdam main competition entry “The Prophet.”

An ArteKino International Award and a Sørfond Award went to “Tempered Flowers,” a diary-like essay, Tanzania’s Ngelime told Variety. It will use constructed archives, cinema verité performances with her family and stop motion to explore, respectively, Neema’s 1990s childhood, today and imagined future.     

An EAVE Award was won by Burkina Faso’s Mamounata Nikiema at Pilumpiku Production, a prestigious documentary producer behind multiple doc-features, such as “Djeliya, Memory of Mandingo,” an ambitious, five-county co-pro. 

“Exploring the lost hope of the Nigerian dream,” “I Live in V.I.,” a social class satire by Ugochukwu Azuya set on Nigeria’s luxurious Victoria Island, won a Tabakalera-San Sebastian residency. The high-energy Adja Soro at the Ivory Coast’s animation-focused Studio KÄ scored an invitation to the Rotterdam Lab.  

More to come