The future of Locarno Film Festival’s Open Doors programme beyond 2028 has been thrown into doubt following a decision by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) to slash its annual $2.2m (CHF 2m) budget for all of its strategic partnerships with Swiss cultural institutions from 2029.
This latest development follows the SDC’s announcement last August during Locarno Film Festival that it would cut its annual budget for these strategic partnerships by 45% from the previous $4.1m (CHF 3.7m) to $2.2m from 2025 to 2028.
At the time, Open Doors head Zsuszi Bánkuti told Screen the cut would have “significant consequences” for her programme with 25% less funding from this year and the likelihood of “a huge impact on the cultural diversity of the festival”.
The Locarno initiative has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of SDC support, with Open Doors receiving almost $2.2m (CHF 2m) between January 1, 2022, and December 31, 2024.
Reacting to today’s announcement, Locarno’s press office confirmed that this year’s reduced budget is being directed almost entirely to the three main festival-related programmes – projects, producers and directors – with fewer participants and an overall reduction in year-round support for filmmakers.
Looking ahead to 2029, the press office admitted: “The [entire] Open Doors programme, in its current form, is at risk because of this funding cut, which inevitably impacts the diversity of films and filmmakers that the Locarno audience can engage with. However, we will use these next four years to ensure that the programme continues, probably with a further-adapted concept, and that Locarno continues to be a vital space for intercultural creative exchange.”
SDC is Switzerland’s international cooperation agency and sits within the federal department of foreign affairs.
Nyon’s Development Lab under threat
Speaking to Screen, Carl Ahnebrink, head of press at the Visions du Réel documentary film festival, explained the festival in Nyon had not been affected by the first cuts announced by SDC in August 2024 and it still has its annual funding of $200,000 (CHF 180,000) guaranteed for 2025 and 2026.
“We don’t yet know what the situation will be for 2027 and 2028. From 2029, the subsidy will be completely withdrawn,” he said, adding it is “still early to say precisely” what implications the end of SDC funding would have for the festival.
“But it means a major cut in the budget and will indeed have general consequences for the festival and the industry [programme], starting with the abolition of the VdR-Development Lab project,” Ahnebrink noted.
After a pilot run in 2022, the VdR-Development Lab was launched in 2023 as a nine-month-long incubator for the development of creative documentaries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
In the Lab’s first two years, projects supported with online tutoring and a four-day intensive workshop during Visions du Réel have included Lamis Al Mohamad’s My Grandparents’ Window Overlooks A Cemetery (Italy/Syria), Sai Kong Kham’s The Birdwatcher (Myanmar) and Carla Valdes Leon’s The Road Ahead (Cuba).
Visions Sud Est fund
Meanwhile, Meret Ruggle, co-director of distributor trigon-film, confirmed the production fund Visions Sud Est (VSE) will be forced to shut up shop in autumn 2026 when its funding expires at the end of the current contract with the SDC.
“At the moment, we expect that we can still call for [two more rounds] of projects in 2025 and no more projects will then be able to be supported from 2026, which is naturally extremely regrettable,” she said.
The world premiere of Stefan Djordjevic’s Wind, Talk To Me in the Tiger Competition was one of three VSE-supported films screening this week in Rotterdam alongside Amel Guellaty’s Where The Wind Comes From in the Harbour sidebar and Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light in the Limelight section.
“A worrying signal of isolationism”
Following this latest announcement by SDC, Locarno Film Festival has joined other affected institutions including Visions du Réel, Festival International du Film de Fribourg, trigon-film and Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur in issuing a statement expressing its alarm Switzerland is sending “a worrying signal of isolationism with this step in times of increasing polarisation, which could encourage growing populism”.
They revealed they had not been consulted by the agency prior to its decision, and urgently called upon the Swiss federal government to intervene.
“In a world in which spaces for international dialogue are becoming ever narrower, offers that promote cultural diversity, freedom of expression, economic change and social cohesion are more important than ever,” the institutions declared.
“Cultural partnerships make an important contribution to sustainable development, democratic participation, conflict prevention and peace. Art and culture in particular offer space for critical debate and peaceful dialogue. Switzerland should play a pioneering role, stability in these regions brings peace and security to the world. This is why these cuts send the wrong signals for us and are an alarming step towards cultural cutbacks on a federal level,” they concluded.
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