Open Doors, the talent development programme of Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival, is being forced to significantly reduce its year-round activities due to a 25% reduction to its budget from January 2025.
Open Doors’ main funder, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), is cutting its annual budget for strategic partnerships with cultural players in Switzerland by 45% from the current $4.3m (CHF 3.7m) to $2.3m (CHF 2m) from 2025 to 2028.
It is connected to the decision by Switzerland’s highest executive authority, the Federal Council, to commit $1.7bn (CHF1.5 bn) as part of its International Cooperation Strategy 2025-28 to the reconstruction of Ukraine after the end of the war.
“As far as the Locarno Film Festival and Open Doors are concerned, we will receive 25% less funding for the programme starting January 2025,” Zsuzsi Bánkuti, head of Open Doors, confirmed to Screen.
“[This will] directly lead to a cut to the Open Doors year-round activities, including the consultancy, therefore cancelling a possible support for 60 filmmakers each year, a decrease of 25% in participants in the main Open Doors programme, and SDC support of travel expenses for filmmakers of the official selection coming from the Global South being reduced to an estimated 50%, limiting the possibility of those filmmakers to attend the event,” she continued.
“This will all have a huge impact on the cultural diversity of the festival, not to mention the fact that less people will be able to benefit from the Open Doors programmes.”
The significantly reduced budget will also have an effect on the running costs of Open Doors and the number of people it employs.
“The human resources of Open Doors will also be cut, which will make it more difficult to offer a stable job to young professionals,” Bánkuti said.
She revealed Open Doors had been informed of the funding cuts in April. “By then, we had already been working on the research and planning for the new focus region [Africa] for over a year and had a nearly finished programme in place,” she explained. “We had to drastically adjust the programme proposal following that communication.”
For the current phase of funding – from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2024 – Open Doors received total support of $2.3m (CHF 2m) for these three years.
FDFA head Ignazio Cassis told Swiss Television SRF the cut had been “a strategic decision,” and SDC director general Patricia Danzi said: “You can’t conjure up money nor summon up support. When there is less money, then it’s necessary to set priorities. But the fact is that certain organisations will no longer be receiving certain funding from us.”
The 22nd edition of Open Doors, with a focus on Latin America, closed on August 13.
Serious consequences
The precarious future of Swiss cultural organisations supported for many years by the SDC to promote greater exchange with international artists from the Global South and East was highlighted in a joint statement signed by, among others, Locarno Film Festival, the Visions Sud Est production fund, distributor trigon-film, Festival International du Film de Fribourg and Zürcher Theater Spektakel.
“The consequences for artists from Africa, Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe are serious,” the signatories wrote. “If the SDC’s financial resources are almost halved from 2025, decades of development work will be irrevocably lost. What then follows is a downward spiral for artists and cultural diversity.”
Visions Sud Est fund faces closure
The cut in funding is likely, for example, to spell the end of Visions Sud Est fund, which was launched in spring 2005 as a joint initiative between the Locarno, Fribourg, Nyon and Winterthur film festivals and the trigon-film Foundation to support the production or post-production of projects from Africa, Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe, making them visible worldwide and guaranteeing their distribution in Switzerland.
“The SDC, which currently provides 80% [CHF 429,500] of the fund’s budget, has decided to withdraw its support at the end of the current contract in October 2026,” Visions Sud Est president Philippe Clivaz told Screen.
“This decision would leave Visions Sud Est with no option but to cease its operations, which would have a detrimental impact on cinema in the countries of the Global South and East,” he noted.
“The SDC has not indicated any potential alternative support, and as Visions Sud Est was established to align with the SDC’s criteria, there is no viable alternative for securing funding for its ongoing activities.”
The fund has supported over 200 projects in the past 20 years, 167 of which have been completed and many being selected to leading film festivals where they have won such awards as Berlin’s Golden Bear, San Sebastian’s Golden Shell and the Cannes Grand Prix.
Recent productions supported by Visions Sud Est include Pepe, Viet And Nam, All We Imagine As Light, Tiger Stripes, The Load, Diaries From Lebanon and Demba.
No comments yet