Locarno looks to Africa, Toronto unveils programme with first official market
The Locarno Pro industry programme is concentrating its co-production focus on 42 African countries, while the Toronto International Film Festival today publishes the full schedule of its 51st edition.
As part of the Locarno Film Festival 2026, the Locarno Pro industry programme — dedicated to co-production and the development of new talent — is currently focused on 42 countries across the African continent. The available extracts do not specify which individual projects have been selected nor which African countries are involved in detail, but they clearly indicate the geographical scope of the choice made by the Swiss festival. The news currently comes from a single source, Screen Daily, which attributes it to the official Locarno Pro programme; no further independent confirmations are available.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the Toronto International Film Festival today, August 11, 2026, publishes the full programme of its 51st edition, scheduled from September 10 to 20. The main novelty of this edition is the launch of the festival’s first official film market in its history, which will include a genre cinema programme developed in collaboration with the Fantasia International Film Festival. Here too the source is single — the festival’s dedicated entry on Wikipedia, based on TIFF’s official press release — with no further independent confirmations in the extracts gathered.
The two news items, though concerning festivals of very different tradition and geographical setting, both describe a strategic choice of expansion: Locarno broadens its gaze toward an entire continent historically under-represented in European co-production programmes, while Toronto introduces for the first time a market structure it had never had before, pairing it with programming dedicated to genre cinema. The available extracts do not allow for establishing whether the two initiatives have any direct points of contact, nor whether African productions will appear in Toronto’s new market.
Two dates remain to be followed: the closing of the Locarno Pro selection on the 42 African countries, and the opening of TIFF on September 10, with its official market making its debut.
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