2014 will cover the following nations, which did not participate in 2012:
Angola, Botswana, Cape Verde, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi,
Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa,
Southern Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The Festival will select a dozen projects from the region to participate in Open Doors 2014. The
objective of the co-production lab (August 9-12) is to bring the finalist projects’ directors and
producers together with potential partners, to encourage support for these projects to come to
fruition.
Open Doors will continue the new initiative introduced in 2013, whereby, in addition to enabling
the selected directors and producers to meet possible partners, there are also workshops for
professionals on related film industry issues, with individual meetings and panels on training and
marketing.
The four-day event will conclude with the awards.
The Open Doors Grant, worth 50,000
CHF (about $55,000), is funded by the Open Doors initiative in collaboration with the Town of
Bellinzona and the Swiss production support fund Visions Sud Est, also supported by the SDC.
Two
further awards are offered by the CNC (Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée) and by
ARTE.
In addition to these initiatives for professionals, the section also offers the general Festival
audience the Open Doors Screenings, which present a selection of films that are representative of
production in the countries involved.
The initiative is organized in close collaboration with Locarno’s Industry Office and enjoys the
support of ACE (Ateliers du Cinéma Européen), EAVE (European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs) and the
Producers Network Marché du Film (Festival de Cannes).
The 2014 edition of Open Doors is the first to be managed by Ananda Scepka, who succeeds Martina
Malacrida.
For this edition of Open Doors, the Festival is working with Alex Moussa Sawadogo, an expert in
African cinema and director of the Afrikamera Festival in Berlin.
The 2014 edition is open for applications as of today, via www.opendoors.pardo.ch, for projects
originating from any of the 25 countries listed above.
The 67th edition of the Festival del film Locarno will take place August 6 -16 2014.
