Locarno75 will feature the 20th edition of Open Doors. As always, cinema will be part of the celebration. The kind of cinema Open Doors has been uncovering, encouraging, supporting and accompanying since 2003, on the outskirts of major filmmaking countries, but in regions that are central in terms of talent, urgency and stories to share.
Open Doors Screenings
On August 3-13, in parallel with the ongoing film projects presented to the professionals attending Locarno, the Open Doors Screenings will tell the public the stories of 19 directors (10 women, 9 men), of 8 feature films and 10 shorts arriving from the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, Grenada, Nicaragua and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, countries that have never been guests of Locarno and rarely at the center of festivals in Europe. Among the works that the public will have the opportunity to discover, and which will be announced on July 6 at the program press conference, there will also be a world premiere and a European premiere, respectively from El Salvador and Guatemala.
20 Years of Open Doors
Open Doors, one of the projects of Locarno Pro, the facet of the Festival aimed at the film industry, was born in 2003, from a precise desire: to build a bridge between Locarno and emerging filmmaking countries, small in terms of means and economy, but rich in terms of stories and talents. Over the course of 20 editions, Open Doors has reached more than 70 countries, from A in Afghanistan to Z in Zambia. And there it gave an opportunity, a space to hundreds of filmmakers, producers, and professionals. By participating in Open Doors, they have the opportunity to grow in their own country and then arrive in Locarno to create their own network of acquaintances, essential for the development of their film projects. Thus, in all these years, Open Doors has proven to be, for hundreds of filmmakers and professionals, a platform through which to exist cinematically and be able to make films in territories where there is often no possibility of film school. By its side, from the very first edition focusing on Cuba, we have the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), which is part of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA).
20 Years on the Big Screen
Then again, the goals of the project are the same as those of the Locarno Film Festival, where "culture" coincides with inclusion, welcoming, discovery and opportunity. For example, the opportunity to live on the big screen, where every year, since 2003, the public can discover hundreds of films and filmmakers that are otherwise difficult to see in our part of the world. And the big screen of the cinemas in Switzerland that embraced, starting with Open Doors, films such as Madrigal by Fernando Pérez Valdes, or the international hit Atlantics by Mati Diop, born in Locarno in 2012 when it was still an idea, and then the winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2019.
Discover the Open Doors selection and the talents from Central America and the Caribbean in attendance this summer, on August 3-13.
