The industry strand Locarno Pro returns for its 2025 edition with a comprehensive slate of industry initiatives, market platforms, and networking opportunities for international film professionals.
Taking place from August 7 to 12 as part of the 78th Locarno Film Festival, the industry program aims to facilitate co-production, funding dialogue, talent development, and strategic reflection within the global independent film sector. In 2024, the program attracted over 1,900 accredited professionals.
At the heart of Locarno Pro lies a cluster of initiatives designed to support emerging filmmakers and producers at key moments of their creative journey. This year’s highlights include:
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Alliance 4 Development, the co-development platform spanning Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, returns with its 10th edition, showcasing 11 projects. The track record is impressive: past alumni include Village Next to Paradise by Mo Harawe (Un Certain Regard, Cannes 2024) and Der Fleck by Willi Hans (Cineasti del Presente, Locarno 2024).
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First Look, now in its 14th year, offers an exclusive preview of six Canadian films nearing completion, providing sales agents, distributors, and programmers with a privileged window into the country’s most promising upcoming titles.
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Industry Academy, aimed at early-career professionals working in programming, sales, distribution, and marketing, brings together 10 talents from diverse territories to build long-term networks and share expertise in navigating the business side of cinema.
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Match Me!, one of the Festival’s most cosmopolitan initiatives, facilitates informal matchmaking between 37 up-and-coming producers from 14 countries and industry decision-makers. Among its success stories is Flow by Matīss Kaža, Oscar winner for Best Animated Feature 2025, and a Match Me! alum from 2018, who returns this year as part of the Latvian Previews alongside two compatriot producers.
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U30, the Festival’s youngest initiative, fosters dialogue among professionals under 30, hosting curated think tank sessions to imagine new futures for the industry.
These initiatives coalesce around Open Doors, which this year inaugurates a new triennial cycle spotlighting the African continent. With projects and talents from 42 countries, Open Doors reinforces Locarno’s role as a bridge between Global South filmmakers and the international marketplace.
Locarno Pro's increasing engagement with the structural shifts in film financing is embodied in its Locarno Investment Community, a new initiative uniting private investors with independent filmmakers and producers. In a funding landscape where public resources are finite and competition fierce, this move signals Locarno’s proactive stance in cultivating hybrid funding models.
This theme will be the subject of a dedicated StepIn think tank session, a centerpiece of the Locarno Pro calendar. Across keynotes, panels, and roundtables, StepIn 2025 will address the state of independent film production and distribution through four thematic axes:
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Public and Private Synergies in production finance
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Risk and Resilience in independent distribution
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Festivals and the Press as amplifiers of auteur cinema
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Diversity Beyond Rhetoric, asking how to tangibly foster inclusivity in a time of socio-political retrenchment
Opening the StepIn strand is an electrifying keynote by Maysoon Zayid, comedian and disability advocate, whose talk Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Making Movies That Save Lives will provocatively ask whether fiction has numbed us to real-world violence, or can still offer redemptive power.
Subsequent sessions will feature insights from leading industry figures including Stuart Ford (AGC Studios), Ed Guiney (Element Pictures), Tricia Tuttle (Berlinale), and Claudia Bluemhuber (Silver Reel), among others. Panels will probe how independent cinema can not only survive but redefine its relevance in an age of streaming fatigue and media fragmentation.
Saturday’s marquee panel, Building Sustainable Film Ecosystems in Africa, takes a decisive step beyond the "emerging market" narrative. Featuring voices such as Yannick Mizero Kabano, Ema Edosio-Deelen, and Tshepiso Chikapa-Phiri, the session will map out innovative funding models and local infrastructure solutions enabling African cinema to thrive on its own terms.
This focus is echoed in the strategic programming of Open Doors and the inclusion of African narratives in development platforms and market showcases, highlighting Locarno’s long-term commitment to regional cinema beyond the Eurocentric model.
Industry programming this year also invites deeper reflection on the creative partnership at the core f filmmaking. The conversation between Radu Jude and Ed Guiney, The Producer–Director Relationship, promises a candid exploration of the artistic and emotional labor behind auteur cinema.
The growing attention to heritage cinema continues with the third edition of Heritage Monday, a full-day program combining screenings and strategic roundtables. At its center are two Italian restorations, I Cannibali (Liliana Cavani, 1969) and Anno Uno (Roberto Rossellini, 1974), presented as part of Histoire(s) du cinéma – Locarno Heritage, and supported by Zurich’s Cinegrell lab.
The accompanying panel on promotional strategies for classic films, moderated by Bernardo Rondeau, brings together leading curators and platform representatives to explore how archival works can find new resonance in the digital age.
Locarno Pro 2025 takes place August 7–12.