Open Doors

FF Locarno with support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) of the Swiss Foreign Ministry, the Open Doors section aims primarily at assisting directors and producers from countries in the South and the East, where independent filmmaking is vulnerable, and is committed to enabling them to find co-production partners for their new projects.
This initiative, focusing on a different region every year, operates in two modes. On the one hand, Open Doors co-production lab brings professionals from the chosen region together with potential partners, mostly from Europe, to foster support for projects that would otherwise be difficult to make. Every year, following a call for submission, the Festival selects new projects from the chosen region, which will be presented during the Open Doors co-production lab. At the end of the workshop, the winning project will receive either development or production support.
On the other hand, in order to introduce the Festival audience to the cinematographic and cultural landscape of the chosen region, a number of films are chosen each year to be part of the Open Doors Screenings, a non-competitive section of the Festival.