The prizes handed out by Locarno Pro are largely practical affairs: color grading, sound mixing, equipment, studio time, marketing and international consultancy, intended to move projects towards production, completion and the marketplace.
This year’s winners were drawn from three of the Locarno Film Festival’s flagship industry initiatives: the First Look works-in-progress showcase, Alliance 4 Development and the Locarno Heritage Restoration Contest.
First Look’s 15th edition, presented in partnership with the Uruguayan Film and Audiovisual Agency, ACAU, introduced six Uruguayan features in post-production to international sales agents, distributors and festival programmers. Historia de primavera (Spring Story), directed by Gabriela Guillermo and Irina Raffo, received the Bright Side of the Moon First Look Award for complete color grading and the Le Film Français Award, providing €5,600 in advertising space.
The film begins with an encounter between Agustín and Bruno in Montevideo’s Botanical Garden. Their ensuing relationship is stretched across continents when Bruno leaves for Venice. Inspired in part by Spinoza, the project concludes Guillermo and Raffo’s four-film response to Éric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons, exploring desire, jealousy and emotional freedom.
Produced by Guillermo and Raffo through L’Avventura Cine with Germán Ormaechea of Animista Cine, Spring Story is in post-production and targeting an international premiere in May 2027. Its team is seeking a sales agent, particularly for Europe, as well as festival-strategy and distribution partners. The First Look jury praised the project “for its candid depiction of longing and desire which connects those who dare to be driven by it.”
Lorenzo Tocco’s El Surubí was First Look’s biggest multiple winner, collecting three awards: complete sound post-production from La Mayor Cine, €45,000 in music-supervision services from Music Library & SFX/Acorde and an international poster design worth €10,000 from Jannuzzi Smith. The debut feature is set in a disappearing industrial town where apparently miraculous events encourage residents to reinvent their home as a destination for mystical tourism. Faith, opportunism and collective desperation collide as the supposed divine power becomes an increasingly dangerous commodity.
Pancho Magnou Arnabal and Isabel García produce for Uruguay’s Montelona, with Brazil’s Kocria co-producing. The film is currently being edited and is looking for an international sales agent and festival launch. First Look’s jury comprised Ana David, programme advisor at the Berlinale, Susana Santos Rodrigues, co-director of IndieLisboa, and Triin Tramberg, artistic director of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
Alliance 4 Development, Locarno Pro’s co-development platform for projects from Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland concluded with a double win for Florian Hoffmann’s Yazz. The drama follows Yasmine, a teenager growing up amid the privilege and barbed wire of a United Nations compound in the Central African Republic. A secret meeting with her local boyfriend ends disastrously, only for the encounter to resurface ten years later in Switzerland.
Produced by Katrin Renz of Switzerland’s tellfilm GmbH, Nicole Gerhards of Germany’s NiKo Film and Xénia Maingot of France’s Eaux Vives Productions, the €4.7 million project already has support from the Swiss Federal Office of Culture and the Zurich Film Foundation. Its co-production structure is in place, with the producers seeking further financing and feedback on international sales, distribution and positioning. Yazz won the NEBEL Studios Award, valued at approximately CHF 30,500, and the CHF 12,000 Studio13/Valais Film Commission Award.
Several of the platform’s other prizes went to projects with strong genre or crossover elements. Tamer Ruggli’s Cuore Matto, co-written with Joanne Giger, is conceived as a queer and feminist coming-of-age musical set in Switzerland in 1969. It follows 17-year-old Matteo, who encounters a freer world after being sent to Ticino for the harvest, while his mother Giusi begins her own escape from an oppressive marriage.
The French- and Italian-language project, budgeted at €5.17 million, is seeking French, Italian and Belgian co-producers, distributors and a sales agent. It shared the CHF 25,000 Masé Studios Post-Production Award with Wendy Pillonel’s Les Orages Magnétiques (Magnetic Storms). Pillonel’s coming-of-age drama follows a 13-year-old girl caught in a family crisis during a heatwave and a series of strange magnetic disturbances in a deindustrialised Italian village. The project examines changing bodies, toxic masculinity and vulnerability from an adolescent perspective. It also received the MIDPOINT Consulting Award.
Jessica Puppo’s Le Règne des Silures (Reign of Silures), co-written with Marine Flores-Ruimi, won the Ticino Film Commission Residence Award. Described as ecological body horror with an intimate core, the €3.5 million debut is set beside a dying Lake Geneva, where giant catfish are blamed for a disease that causes human skin to crack like dry earth. The French project is seeking a Swiss or other European co-producer, as well as sales, distribution and development partners. Its Locarno award includes a two-day location scout and the possibility of financial support should the film shoot in Ticino.
Bruce LaBruce’s Third Take, written with Jérôme D’Estais and Pauline Baduel, received the Alphapanda Market Breakout Award. Monica Bellucci and Béatrice Dalle are attached to play iconic actresses and former lovers reunited at a drought-stricken Mediterranean villa for a chaotic film shoot. Nicolas Brevière produces the €2.8 million project through Local Films. Production is provisionally scheduled for summer 2027, with the team seeking a lead Italian producer and exploring a broader European co-production structure.
Antonio Donato’s Sparare alle Angurie (Shooting Watermelons), co-written with Paolo Carbone, received the CHF 3,000 Masé Studios Award. Produced by Santiago Fondevila Sancet of Cinedora, the Italian project examines masculinity and paternal relationships through an authoritarian father attempting to reconnect with his sons during a strained summer holiday.
Locarno’s Heritage Restoration Contest was won by Anne-Marie Miéville’s Nous sommes tous encore ici (We’re All Still Here, 1997). The three-part work moves between philosophy, theatre and everyday life and features Jean-Luc Godard in a rare on-screen role.
Selected by Amy Homma, Leslie Vuchot and Nicole T. Allemann, the film will undergo a complete restoration at Cinegrell Postproduction and premiere at Locarno’s 80th edition in 2027. The jury described it as “an essential work of Swiss cinema by one of the country’s leading female directors,” adding that its 30th-anniversary restoration offered an overdue opportunity to rediscover Miéville’s work.
Locarno Pro Industry Awards 2026
First Look — Uruguay
Bright Side of the Moon First Look Award
Historia de primavera (Spring Story), directed by Gabriela Guillermo and Irina Raffo; produced by Guillermo and Raffo (L’Avventura Cine) and Germán Ormaechea (Animista Cine). Complete color-grading services.
Le Film Français Award
Historia de primavera (Spring Story). Advertising space worth €5,600.
La Mayor Cine Award
El Surubí directed by Lorenzo Tocco; produced by Pancho Magnou Arnabal and Isabel García (Montelona), with Kocria (Brazil). Complete sound post-production services.
Music Library & SFX/Acorde Award
El Surubí. Music-supervision services worth €45,000.
Jannuzzi Smith Award
El Surubí. International poster design worth €10,000.
Alliance 4 Development
NEBEL Studios Award
Yazz, directed by Florian Hoffmann; produced by Katrin Renz (tellfilm GmbH), Nicole Gerhards (NiKo Film) and Xénia Maingot (Eaux Vives Productions). Three days of studio use and five days of camera equipment, valued at approximately CHF 30,500.
Studio13/Valais Film Commission Award
Yazz. Five days of studio use at Studio13, valued at approximately CHF 12,000.
Masé Studios Award
Sparare alle Angurie (Shooting Watermelons), directed by Antonio Donato; produced by Santiago Fondevila Sancet (Cinedora). CHF 3,000 cash voucher.
Masé Studios Post-Production Award
Cuore Matto, directed by Tamer Ruggli; produced by Francine Lusser and Gérard Monier (Tipimages Productions)
Les Orages Magnétiques (Magnetic Storms), directed by Wendy Pillonel; produced by Flavia Zanon (Close Up Films). Shared post-production services worth CHF 25,000.
Ticino Film Commission Residence Award
Le Règne des Silures (Reign of Silures), directed by Jessica Puppo; produced by Alexis Perrin (Rumble Fish Productions). Two-day location scout worth CHF 4,000, plus potential production support of up to CHF 12,000.
Alphapanda Market Breakout Award
Third Take, directed by Bruce LaBruce; produced by Nicolas Brevière (Local Films). Consultancy services worth €3,500.
MIDPOINT Consulting Award
Les Orages Magnétiques (Magnetic Storms). Online script consultancy with a MIDPOINT Institute expert.
Locarno Heritage Restoration Contest
Nous sommes tous encore ici (We’re All Still Here, 1997), directed by Anne-Marie Miéville and represented by Miéville and L’atelier/Casa Azul Films. Complete restoration by Cinegrell Postproduction, premiering at Locarno in 2027.
Photos courtesy of Locarno Film Festival.