When Nigeria Happens is set for its world premiere as the opening film of Locarno Film Festival’s Open Doors Section, where thirteen African films have been selected for screening.
By Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku
Nigerian contemporary dance feature film, When Nigeria Happens (2025), is set for its world premiere as the opening film of Locarno Film Festival’s Open Doors Section, where thirteen African films have been selected for screening.
Directed by Ema Edosio, whose debut feature, Kasala! (2018), won the Audience Choice Award at the African International Film Festival (AFRIFF) in 2018, When Nigeria Happens, described by Edosio as “a testament to the resilience, ingenuity, and spirit of the Nigerian youth,” utilises dance to offer a unique perspective on Nigeria’s socio-political landscape and to articulate the current predicaments of young Nigerian creatives.
The film will be the first African film to open the Open Doors Section, a section of the Locarno Film Festival that supports filmmakers from under-represented regions around the world and from countries in which cinema as a form of expression is at risk, offering Locarno audiences a selection of films that are representative of the focus regions.
After three years focused on Latin America and the Caribbean, Locarno Open Doors has shifted its focus to the African continent for the 2025 to 2028 editions, with filmmakers from 42 African countries to benefit from professional development initiatives as well as Locarno’s Open Doors Projects, Producers, and Directors programs, and the festival’s non-competitive section, Open Doors Screenings. Eight feature films, including When Nigeria Happens, and five shorts from across the continent will screen at the 2025 Locarno Open Doors Screenings.
Making a notable appearance at the Open Doors Screening is Ancestral Visions of the Future (2025 — a co-production of Lesotho, France, Germany, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia) a docufiction which recently screened at the Berlinale and the SXSW London Screen Festival, directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese whose international breakout feature, This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019), won the Jury Award for Visionary Filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020.
Also selected to screen are Le Rêve de Dieu (2025 — Mali) by directors Fousseyni Maïga and Mariam Kamissoko, which screened at this year’s Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), and Omi Nobu (2023 — Cape Verde, Belgium, Germany, Sudan) by director Carlos Yuri Ceuninck, which won the Étalon d’Or for Best Feature Documentary at FESPACO 2023.
The Open Doors Screening will also include a screening of Myriam Birara’s The Bride (2023 — Rwanda) which earned a Special Mention for the GWFF Best First Feature Award at the 2023 Berlinale as well as So Long a Letter (2025 — Senegal, Mali, France, Ivory Coast, Egypt), the debut feature of Angèle Diabang and an adaptation of the acclaimed novel of the same title by Senegalese writer, Mariama Bâ.
2022 Africa Movie Academy Awards Best Film winner, Tug of War (2021 — Tanzania, South Africa, Germany, Qatar) directed by Amil Shivji, and Nome (2023 — Guinea-Bissau, France, Portugal, Angola) directed by Sana Na N’Hada, who is regarded as the first filmmaker from Guinea-Bissau, will also screen at the Open Doors Section.
Also screening at the Open Doors Section of the festival are the short films: Yasir Faiz’ Bougainvillea (2024 — Egypt and Sudan); Patience Nitumwesiga’s Jangu (2022 — Uganda); Amina Abdoulaye Mamani’s The Envoy of God (2023 — Niger, Burkina Faso, Rwanda); Abdoulaye Sall’s Le Dernier Voyage (2023 – Mauritania, Senegal), and Priscillia Kounkou Hoveyda’s Where My Memory Began (2024 – Sierra Leone).
The directors of the five short films selected for the Open Doors Screenings will participate in the Open Doors Directors program. Meanwhile, participants for the other Open Doors programs were announced early in June, with six projects in development selected from across Africa to participate in the Locarno Open Door Projects and six creative producers for the Open Doors Producers program.
Among the projects selected for the Open Door Projects is Kachifo (Till The Morning Comes), a Nigerian reincarnation romance, produced by the 2025 Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards (AMVCA) winning producer of Freedom Way (2024), Blessing Uzzi of Bluhouse Studios, and directed by Dika Ofoma whose short film, God’s Wife recently screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2025.
Also selected are the Congolese veteran documentary, Les Bilokos, directed by Erickey Bahati and produced by Giresse Kassonga for Gikas Films; the Ivorian and Burkinabé documentary-animation hybrid, Journal Intime d’une Femme-Chèvre (Diary of a Goat Woman), by director Azata Soro and producer Nameita Lica Toure for TSK Films; and Lutteurs (Fighters), a Senegalese wrestling family drama directed by Alassane Sy and produced by Jules Dieng for Thiely Films.
Zimbabwean supernatural mystery, Black Snake, by Zimbabwean-Egyptian director Naishe Nyamubaya and Zimbabwean-American producer Sue-Ellen Chitunya, for 263 Reels Productions, and the Ethiopian dark comedy, The Fortunate, which screened at the European Film Market and is directed by Habtamu Gebrehiwot and produced by Nahusenay Dereje for MTF Multimedia, were also selected for the Open Door Projects.
For the Open Doors Producers program, participants selected are Kamy Lara (Angola), Moustapha Sawadogo (Burkina Faso), Leul Shoaferaw (Ethiopia), June Wairegi (Kenya), Yannick Mizero Kabano (Rwanda), and Kudakwashe Maradzika (Zimbabwe).
The Open Doors program will take place in two phases, online between June and July, and onsite between 7th and 12th August, 2025, in the framework of the Locarno Film Festival and Locarno Pro.