Locarno closes industry programmes: awards for a restoration featuring Godard and three African films

The Locarno Film Festival has closed the 2026 edition of its industry programmes with a series of awards concerning restoration, project development and international co-production, according to the festival and The Hollywood Reporter.

The Locarno Heritage Restoration Contest awarded the restoration of “Nous sommes tous encore ici”, a 1997 film directed by Anne-Marie Miéville, a three-part meditation on philosophy and everyday life. The work contains one of the rare appearances in front of the camera by Jean-Luc Godard, who was her partner and artistic collaborator for decades. The festival’s jury described the film as an essential work of Swiss cinema signed by one of the country’s leading filmmakers.

On the front of projects in development, the Bright Side of the Moon First Look Award and the Le Film Français Award went to “Spring Story” (Historia de primavera), directed by Gabriela Guillermo and Irina Raffo. The two awards, according to the Locarno Pro statement, are worth a combined 5,600 euros in advertising space.

Meanwhile, the 24th edition of Locarno Open Doors, the programme dedicated to filmmakers from regions where artistic expression is at risk, has also concluded. This is the second time the initiative has focused on the African continent, following a three-year cycle dedicated to Latin America, according to Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter.

The main award, 50,000 Swiss francs funded by the Swiss fund Visions Sud Est, was split among three projects: “A Vineyard For A Lobster” by Ugandan Talemwa Pius, “Accept My Plea for Burial” by Somali Mohammed Sheikh and “Too Much Music” by Ghanaian Aseye Fiagbe. Pius’s film tells the story of a Ugandan village hit by drought that wakes up covered in snow, according to the description reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

The Pro and Open Doors programmes do not assign audience or critics’ awards in the traditional sense: they function as financing and visibility platforms for works still in the production, restoration or distribution phase. The economic value of the awards — from the 5,600 euros in advertising for “Spring Story” to the 50,000 francs split among the three African projects — indicates the weight the Ticino festival attributes to these sections compared with the main competition, which is instead oriented towards already completed films.

The combination of the two announcements — a restoration bringing back to light a work featuring Godard and a continuing focus on Africa through Open Doors — shows the two directions in which Locarno invests industry resources: the preservation of European cinematic heritage and support for emerging filmmakers from regions underrepresented in international financing circuits.