Magdalene Reddy, director of the Durban FilmMart Institute, frames this year’s event as a critical inflection point for African cinema. The continent’s filmmakers face both unprecedented visibility at major festivals and unparalleled challenges from global industry consolidation. The four-day gathering in South Africa brings together distributors, financiers, filmmakers, and industry leaders to chart a path forward that centers African needs, African talent, and African capital.

“We are very much looking inward [at this year’s edition],” Reddy told Variety. “In a world where…everything is shifting, we find that, at this time, it’s important for us as the African cinema community to look at what we need to create systems that will work for us. How can we consolidate? How can we create solutions?”

The festival opens with a significant departure from tradition-a screening of Rwandan debutante Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s “Ben’Imana,” which captured the Caméra d’Or at Cannes earlier this year. This marks the first time the market has opened with a film screening, breaking with previous editions that ran parallel to the Durban International Film Festival. The choice carries symbolic weight-“Ben’Imana” was pitched at DFM just two years ago and went on to win two awards at Cannes, including the FIPRESCI prize, demonstrating the market’s direct impact on African filmmaking success.

African Cinema’s Unprecedented Festival Breakthrough

African filmmakers enter this year’s Durban FilmMart riding an extraordinary wave of international recognition. Long marginalized or pigeonholed by festival programmers, African cinema has achieved an undeniable foothold in the main programming strands of A-class festivals. Established auteurs now share red carpets with a dynamic cohort of newcomers pushing the continent’s filmmaking in exhilarating new directions, including South African directors Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar, the duo behind last year’s Rotterdam-winning docudrama “Variations on a Theme.”

The talent pipeline has never been richer. Beyond Dusabejambo’s triumph with her searing post-genocide drama, Nigerian directors Arie and Chuko Esiri brought “Clarissa” to the Croisette-a Lagos-set adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” starring Sophie Okonedo, David Oyelowo, and Ayo Edebiri that distribution powerhouse Neon quickly acquired. Venice awarded its prize for best first feature to Cameroon’s Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu for “House of the Wind.” Based on talent alone, the future shines brightly.

Homegrown Financing Emerges to Replace European Dependence

More encouraging than the northbound flow of films from the Global South is the fact that financing increasingly flows in both directions. Whereas African film production was long underwritten by European funding bodies and cultural institutions, a wave of homegrown financing tools has emerged. Institutional heavyweights like the Next Narrative Africa Fund and CANEX Creations Inc.-the IP investment arm of the African Export-Import Bank-now operate alongside equity investors including MBO Capital, Volition Capital, and Capital Film Productions.

Steven Markovitz, CEO of Big World Cinema, who recently spearheaded the inaugural African Film Investor Roundtable alongside the African creative sector-focused HEVA Fund, observes a fundamental shift in the financing landscape. The gathering brought together top investors and financiers from across the continent’s creative industries, marking a new era of coordinated capital deployment.

“For the first time in the history of African film, there are a number of equity players who are investing in film,” Markovitz noted, pointing to what he describes as a “critical mass of equity investors” entering the market.

Think Tank Sessions Target Distribution and Audience Challenges

A crucial pillar of every DFM remains its influential Think Tank strand, whose conversations and conclusions often become blueprints for the market’s future direction and the broader industry’s trajectory, according to Reddy. This year’s programming includes a closed-door session gathering key distributors, financiers, and industry leaders to tackle vexing distribution challenges on the African continent, which has been hit especially hard by successive waves of corporate consolidation in the global industry. Additional sessions will focus on audience development, addressing how African films can connect more effectively with both local and international viewers.

The event features a comprehensive slate of panel discussions, masterclasses, one-on-one meetings, and mentorship sessions designed to capitalize on this moment of unprecedented visibility. DFM’s influential pitching and finance forum continues to serve as a launching pad for projects that go on to international acclaim, with “Ben’Imana” serving as the latest high-profile example of the market’s impact.

Celebrating Local Content in Local Context

Reddy emphasizes that the decision to open with “Ben’Imana” reflects a broader philosophy guiding this year’s event. The screening represents more than celebration of a DFM success story-it signals a commitment to showcasing African cinema within African spaces, on African terms.

“This was a DFM project. It was pitched at DFM two years ago, and they were able to win two awards at Cannes [including the FIPRESCI prize],” Reddy explained. “For us, the celebration of hosting a screening at the market-which we’ve not done previously-is based on the fact that we want to show our local content in our local context.”

As the fall festival season winds down, the temperature rises in Durban next month for an event that arrives amid surging hopes but lingering anxieties for an African industry at a crossroads. The continent’s screen industries face the challenge of converting festival acclaim and emerging capital into sustainable production ecosystems that serve African audiences first. The 17th Durban FilmMart convenes with the explicit goal of ensuring African cinema defines its own path forward, turning inward to create systems built by Africans, for Africans, funded increasingly by African capital-embodying Sembène’s revolutionary declaration: I myself am the sun.

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Harawe’s previous work “The Village Next to Paradise” screened in Cannes Festival’s 2024 Un Certain Regard section to enthusiastic reviews, with Variety describing it as “a quietly powerful film.” Egyptian cinematographer Mostafa El Kashef and Mozambique’s Better Films have also joined the production as partners, signaling growing industry interest in the project.

Written and directed by Mozambique filmmaker Ique Langa, “Chapa 100” marks his follow-up to feature debut “The Prophet” (“O Profeta”), which world premiered in main competition this year at the IFF Rotterdam and now forms part of Locarno’s Open Doors Screenings. The building momentum around both films demonstrates the rising profile of Mozambique cinema on the international festival circuit.

Production Team Anchored in Maputo

Filmmaker Lara Sousa leads production through Kulunga Filmes, based in Mozambique capital Maputo. The company previously produced “Nós, Povo das Ilhas,” directed by Elson Santos and Sousa. Pedro Borges at Portugal’s Midas Filmes, a past Kulunga partner, co-produces the advanced-development project.

“Chapa 100” begins with observational social realism before lifting into magical realist style, along the lines of Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” The approach speaks to the collective mindset and heart of Maputo dwellers and the illusions of individual characters, “celebrating the resilience, tenderness, and humanity found in the city’s everyday rhythms,” Langa and Sousa said in a statement.

Unlikely Romance Sparks Supernatural Journey

The narrative centers on Sitoé, an 80-year-old flower vendor who meets Valentina, a vegetable seller in her seventies. A simple flower sparks a quiet romance between the two elderly vendors. When a thief steals Valentina’s rented wig, Sitoé runs after him and is struck dead by a speeding chapa, a local minibus.

His spirit becomes tied to the vehicle that killed him, however, and flowers begin to bloom within it. The supernatural turn transforms the tragedy into a meditation on love, memory, and the invisible bonds that connect people to each other and to place. The chapa itself becomes a moving memorial, carrying Sitoé’s spirit through the streets he once walked.

“‘Chapa 100’ is my love letter to Maputo. I wanted to portray the city not simply through its streets, but through the people who give it its heartbeat. By bringing together professional actors and non-professional performers from the city itself, the film seeks to capture something truthful and deeply human,” Langa told Variety.

Open Doors Showcases African Cinema’s Range

“Chapa 100” appears as a potential standout at Locarno’s talent-deep, wide-ranging 2026 Africa-focused Open Doors program. The film moves from observational social realism to literally flowering magical realism, establishing it as one of several ambitious projects at the showcase. The carefully curated program provides a telling snapshot of the range of current upscale titles coming out of Africa plus their artistic and industrial trends.

Suzsi Bankuti, head of Open Doors, emphasizes authenticity as a defining characteristic. “The cohort of Open Doors 2026 is made up of projects and filmmakers that don’t compromise with authenticity,” she notes. Many titles prove redolently and proudly local, with “Chapa 100” exemplifying this commitment through its deep roots in Maputo’s daily life and cultural identity.

Blending Professional and Non-Professional Talent

Langa employs both professional actors and non-professional performers from Maputo itself, seeking to capture something truthful and deeply human about the city. This casting approach mirrors the film’s hybrid aesthetic, which balances documentary-style observation with supernatural poetry. The strategy reflects broader trends in African cinema toward authenticity and community engagement.

The production team describes the film as “ultimately a story about love, memory, and the invisible bonds that connect us” to each other and to place. This thematic focus resonates with the magical realist tradition while remaining firmly grounded in Maputo’s specific cultural landscape. The flowers blooming within the chapa serve as both literal supernatural event and metaphor for how love persists beyond death.

Women Filmmakers Dominate Program

Though light years from parity in Africa at large, women cineastes feature prominently at Open Doors 2026, dominating its producers, new Open Doors Connect and directors sections. Lead producer Lara Sousa represents this shift, bringing both creative and production expertise to “Chapa 100.” The program also includes Suzannah Mirghani’s Venice Critics’ Week premiere “Cotton Queen,” the first feature-length fiction film from Sudan written and directed by a woman.

Other Open Doors screenings pack particularly powerful punches, including “Crocodile,” a documentary-feature that won best film at Tribeca Film Festival and Youth Jury Prize at the U.K.’s Sheffield DocFest. Aymar Esse’s touching “My Father’s Kora” world premieres at Locarno, adding to the program’s diverse slate of African stories told through distinctive artistic voices.

The sales agreement with Luminalia positions “Chapa 100” for international distribution following its Open Doors debut. Combined with its award-winning development pedigree and growing team of acclaimed collaborators, the film enters Locarno with significant momentum. The magical realist romance promises to celebrate Maputo’s resilience while exploring universal themes of love transcending death through distinctly local imagery and sensibility.

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The documentary follows Souleymane Everston Adowo Freudenreich, an Afro-German trans man who travels to Dakar, Senegal, to repair his father’s kora. The kora, classified as a harp or lute, serves as a powerful metaphor throughout the film for Souleymane‘s search for identity and acceptance. Through this journey of physical repair, Esse crafts a narrative exploring the possibility of emotional and spiritual healing within a cultural context that often challenges queer identities.

A Poetic Approach to Complex Themes

Director Aymar Esse describes his work as more than a simple documentary. “It’s a film about repair, memory, and transmission,” Esse explains. The filmmaker emphasizes that his approach listens as much as it observes, employing a poetic and sensory language to explore identity, silence, faith, and the healing power of music, sewing, and the ocean. He positions the work as a quiet reflection on what can be repaired and what remains uncertain, rather than offering definitive answers.

Esse deliberately distances his film from conventional activist cinema. “It is not an activist film in the strict sense,” he states. Instead, he frames the documentary as an invitation to see the other without rushing to define them, to recognize a human being before a category. The director believes cinema can sometimes open a small breach in the wall of certainties, creating space for understanding beyond rigid categories and assumptions.

The Kora as Living Instrument and Metaphor

The kora itself holds deep cultural significance that extends beyond its role as a musical instrument. Esse describes the kora as a profoundly living instrument, almost a voice in its own right. Born in the Mandingue cultural world, it carries a long history of transmission, memory, and poetry, and maintains deep connections to the griots-those guardians of speech, genealogy, and storytelling. In their hands, the kora transcends its physical form to become a link between generations, between the living and the ancestors, between the past and the present.

The instrument’s sound particularly moves Esse, who describes it as something very soothing, very enveloping, almost like water flowing. This quality makes the kora an ideal metaphor for the film’s central narrative. Esse explains that the idea of using the kora as a metaphor emerged from having a musical instrument that is broken and a character who is also trying to understand himself and find his place. The parallel between physical repair and personal journey creates the film’s emotional core.

International Collaboration and Support

The production represents a multinational collaborative effort spanning three countries. Esse produced the film through his company SunRise Films, with co-production support from Aline Bonvin Film Video in Switzerland, Seera Films in Germany, and 274 Studio, also based in Switzerland. The film was developed within the framework of Steps’ Generation Africa program, with financial support from the Swiss Cooperation Office in Benin.

Following its premiere at Locarno, the film will continue its festival circuit with its German premiere scheduled for the Afrika Film Festival Köln in September. This progression through European festivals positions the work for broader international exposure and critical reception.

Exploring Identity Within Traditional Contexts

The film’s setting in Senegal adds layers of complexity to its exploration of queer identity. By placing Souleymane‘s journey within a traditional Muslim culture, Esse confronts the tensions between personal identity and cultural expectations. The documentary examines not only the challenges of being trans in such an environment but also the possibility of finding acceptance and belonging across seemingly insurmountable divides.

The film employs multiple healing modalities beyond music, incorporating sewing and the ocean as additional sources of comfort and connection. This multifaceted approach to repair-both literal and metaphorical-suggests that healing occurs through various pathways. Esse’s focus on silence and observation allows space for complexity, refusing to reduce his subject’s experience to simple narratives or predetermined conclusions.

A New Voice in African Cinema

The selection of “My Father’s Kora” for Locarno‘s Open Doors section highlights the festival’s commitment to showcasing diverse African voices. The platform provides crucial visibility for filmmakers working outside traditional Western production centers. Esse’s poetic approach distinguishes his work within contemporary documentary filmmaking, offering an alternative to more conventional narrative structures.

The director’s emphasis on recognizing a human being before a category challenges audiences to approach difference with openness rather than judgment. By framing the film as an invitation rather than a declaration, Esse creates space for dialogue and reflection. His work contributes to expanding representations of African queer identities in international cinema, offering nuanced perspectives that resist simplification.

As “My Father’s Kora” prepares for its world premiere, it stands as a testament to the power of personal storytelling to illuminate universal themes. Through the specific journey of one Afro-German trans man and a broken musical instrument, Aymar Esse crafts a meditation on what it means to seek wholeness in a world that often demands conformity. The film’s success will be measured not in definitive answers but in the questions it invites audiences to consider about identity, tradition, and the possibility of repair.

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