Following its launch at the S16 Film Festival in 2025, the AFP Critics Prize is heading next to the Open Doors Screenings at the Locarno Film Festival as an award partner, where it will be presented to one of the selected screening titles. The full screenings lineup is expected to be announced on July 1.
The AFP Critics Prize includes a USD 500 cash award, a certificate, and continued editorial coverage of the recipient and their future work across AFP’s partner networks of Akoroko, Sinema Focus and What Kept Me Up.
The Prize is one of two new partners added to the Open Doors awards lineup this year, alongside a scholarship from EAVE and the Luxembourg Film Fund worth EUR 4,000 for the EAVE Marketing Workshop.
They join other existing awards within the Open Doors initiative, such as the Open Doors Grant of CHF 50,000 from visions sud est and the City of Bellinzona, the CNC Development Prize of EUR 8,000, and the ArteKino International Prize of EUR 6,000. Additional awards will also be presented by IFFR Pro, the International Culture Center Tabakalera and the San Sebastián International Film Festival, the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, and Sørfond. A jury will award the prizes on 10 August.
The 2026 edition marks the second year of Open Doors’ four-year cycle dedicated to 42 African countries. Participants for this year’s edition were recently announced, with Nigerian and Ghanaian representatives featured across key sections of the programme.
The physical phase of Open Doors 2026 will run from 5 to 10 August during the Locarno Film Festival and its industry arm, Locarno Pro, combining training, mentoring, networking activities, and public screenings.
AFP first presented the Critics Prize on December 5, 2025 at the fifth edition of the S16 Film Festival in Lagos, where the inaugural award went to Nigerian filmmaker Dika Ofoma for his short film Obi is a Boy.
Ofoma himself was also part of the first year of Open Doors’ African cycle. His feature project Kachifo (Till the Morning Comes) was selected for the 2025 Open Doors Projects lineup, where it won three awards.
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