Locarno’s Match Me! Projects from Sophia Mocorrea, Liliana Torres

LOCARNO, Switzerland — Launched 2015, Match Me! is now a firmly established festival fixture, an informal networking platform for young producers with strong usually but not entirely auteurist visions looking for international co-production.  

Supported by 14 national film agencies, Match Me! highlights 37 companies from Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Uruguay. Projects being brought onto the market range from “Vaca Muerta,” from fast emerging German-Argentine scribe helmer Sophia Mocorrea, a winner at Sundance and Les Arcs, “Echoes” from Dominican Balck List-selected Kryss Gautier, acting to “erasure of Blackness, queerness, and Caribbean identity in Latin American cinema,” she says, and “Climacteric” (“Climateri”), the next from Spain’s Liliana Torres, director of 2024 SXSW winner “Mamífera.”

Also being talked up is “A Night at the Roadside,” with “3%” star Bianca Comparato set to direct; 2025 IFFR Cinemart top winner “Erratics”; sci-fi eco anthology “The Murk,” from top Estonian outfit Nafta Films;  

Variety will return to producers takes on the way forward in the context of declining opportunities for theatrical distribution. For now, profiles of the producers and companies highlighted at this year’s Match Me! It’s a rich selection.  

Brazil

Priscilla Brasil, Companhia Amazonica de Filmes

“It is essential to advance the representation of the Amazon and bring Amazonian voices to the forefront in order to create real awareness about Amazonian issues,” says the Belém-born Brasil. Fiction feature “Valentina,” with doc elements and now in post, recreates the trail of Valentina de Andrade, leader of the Lineamento Universal Superior, accused of ordering 20 crimes of emasculation and murder of children. “The film exposes the inner workings of Brazil’s judiciary and media, revealing how prejudice can condemn individuals even before they are judged,” Brasil tells Variety.  

Fernanda Prestes, Fluxa

Fostering emerging and bold talents working with a majority-women crew and headed by creative producer Fernanda Prestes and the director Bárbara Bárcia. At Locarno with Bárcia’s “Remember Me,” a dramedy about a lonely and closeted retiree who sets off on a chaotic road trip with her first girlfriend. The project is “middle-age coming-of-age of women who seek fulfilment at a time in life when society expects you to be slowing down,” Prestes tells Variety.  

Akira Martins, Rodô Audiovisual

After launching two series, “Wild Cub School,” “Game Dev BR,” and finishing the shoot of first fiction feature, “The Shortest Distance Between Two Points,” Rodô is “now in a key moment to show its full potential,” founder Akira Martins said just before Cannes. At Locarno with its next feature, “A Night at the Roadside,” a gender-issue murder mystery set at a remote inn during the construction of Brasilia. “3%” star Bianca Comparato is set to direct. 

Chile

Rodrigo Díaz, Fiebre

Behind 2025 IFFR Cinemart top winner “Erratics,” a Eurimages New Lab Outreach Award laureate, starring Denis Lavant as the ghost of Lucien Castelnau, director of “Terre de feu,” roaming modern Tierra de Fuego to discover trace of the Kawésqar and Yaghan peoples, whom he filmed in 1925. Fiebre produces with France’s La Belle Affaire and Argentina’s Un Puma. “‘Erratics’ is a fiction film that combines fantastic elements and real characters in the confrontation between the mechanical and the spiritual,” says director Thomas Woodwroffe. 

Francisca Ponce, Fortuna Films

Santiago-based, behind short-format series “Kenopsia,” acquired by Filmin, Fortuna aims to connect with audiences and platforms beyond local borders, and most immediately find a sales agent or distributor to partner on “It Used to be Fun.” From writer-director Ponce, it turns on Sady, 77, his home damaged by earthquake and living with his daughter and granddaughter. When he longs to return to the past, his roles as a father, grandfather and friend will be questioned. “A timely reflection on memory, tradition, care, and resilience,” says Ponce.  

Bastian G. Monsalve, El Viento

At Locarno with hybrid fiction-docs projects, often eco-themed such as true-facts-based “The Forest Breathes in Murmurs,” in which the Chilean government announces a new road through the Alerce Costero National Park, home to the world’s oldest tree. A dendrologist will make an important discovery, however, linked to the tree’s rings and roots. Produced by Monsalve and U.S.-based Jay Keitel. “We believe that the film will allow us to attend to other forms of encounter with nature, memory and time,” says Monsalve.   

Dominican Republic 

Kryzz Gautier, Reclaimed Entertainment

From L.A. and DR-based Kryzz Gautier, looking to develop “bold, genre-driven stories centering queer, Afro-Latinx, and disabled characters,” she tells Variety. In one, “Echoes,” a pragmatic historian and an expressive architect return to a decaying colonial estate in the Dominican Republic, to be ensnared in the echoes of a past that they can’t escape. To be directed by Gautier, with an impressive C.V., her “Wheels Come Off” hitting 2021’s Black List, while she’s written for HBO (“Gordita Chronicles”) and 2K Games’ admired “Bioshock.”   

Mary Helen Ferreira, Cinefilms

Part of the Dominican Republic’s auteur cinema build, Cinefilms’s Ferreira will be at the Swiss fest with a feature expansion of her short “Dolore” about the titular character who’s a a professional mourners, paid to cry at funerals, who cannot shed a tear when her grandmother dies. “Dolore must confront the roots of her pain and rediscover the power of tears — not just for the dead, but for the living,” the synopsis runs. A film about “the forgotten identity of my people  – only it’s not truly lost, but quietly holding on,” says Ferreira.

Estonia

Marju Lepp, Filmivabrik Oü

At Match Me! With, among other titles, “No Me Without You,” from Janno Jürgens, a two sisters’ relationship drama, and “Our Erika,” by German Golub, a drama inspired by the life of Olympic champion Erika Salumäe, beginning with a brutal childhood in the fading Soviet Union. “The film is not just art; it’s an act of empathy driven by relationships from both sides of the screen,” Golub told Variety.

Olga Hartšuk, Nafta Films 

Behind the Global Constellation-sold Medieval crime miniseries “Melchor the Apothecary,” 19th century whodunnit “Von Fock and movie “The Southern Chronicles,” a 2024 Tallinn Black Nights best Baltic film winner, Nafta Films weighs at Locarno as one of the movers and shakers on the Estonian film-TV scene. At Locarno with “The Murk,” a feature-length sci-fi eco anthology following four individuals as the northern winter murk extends to the whole of the globe. Anastasia Pashkevich and Eve Tisler are writing.

Finland

Paulina Maus, Making Movies

Headed by Kaarle Aho and Kai Nordberg and behind Joshua Oppenheimer’s Oscar-nominated “The Look of Silence,” and Klaus Härö’s shortlisted “The Fencer.” “Making Movies is known for collaborating with visionary filmmakers and telling bold, socially relevant stories across both fiction and non-fiction,” says Maus. Moving at Locarno, among other titles, “Late” (“Myöhässä”), about Rasmus, 33, a lawyer who throws himself into the world of dating to find the future mother of his children. It’s no cake-walk. A rare – for Nordic cinema – exploration of modern fatherhood from a male perspective, Maus adds. 

Paria Eskandari, Mozhi Films

Helsinki-based, established by Paria Eskandari in 2024, “we focus on creating films and TV series with heart and global appeal,” says Eskandari. One example: “The Unlucky Bunch.” “Set in a snowy, gritty small town in Finland, it’s a darkly humorous exploration of family, guilt, and misadventure in Finland’s version of Detroit,” adds debut director Fabian Munsterhjelm, whose Sukkahousut, the latest of his rated shorts, won the top George Lucas Award Grand Prix at 2025’s Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia.   

Joon Tervakari, Tarasów Films

Building from one-man editing company, Tarasów Films expanded into post-production, advertising, branding and fine art, then artistic docs and character-driven features. It is now aiming to move into international co-production. One early play: Jone Boy, a “quirky small-town drama-Western” in which “as a powerful piece of storytelling, it naturally weaves together sex, drugs, and motorcycle chases into an emotionally justified narrative,” says Tervakari. Annika Gróf (“Syke,” “Within Limits”) writes and directs. 

France

Anne Berjon, Modina Films

Launched by ex-Pyramide Productions exec Anne Berjon in 2019, now moving from shorts – such as Stéphanie Halfon’s 2023 Cesar-nominated “Women of Virtue” – into features. One title: “Deda,” about Mira, 31, a Serbian pediatrician exiled after homophobic persecution, works as a maid in Paris. While struggling to be a doctor again, she falls for her employer’s daughter and past traumas resurface. Elvire Muñoz’s first feature. “‘Deda’ reimagines the migration narrative through the lens of a vibrant queer melodrama,” says Berjon. 

Manuel Romero, Eddy Cinema

At Locarno with the Marc Picavez-directed “The Legend of Louis Fall,” the fiction-feature bio of Senegal’s Louis Fall, the first African-born boxer to become a world champion. Fighting in Roaring Twenties Paris, when refuses to take a dive in a fixed match against world light heavyweight champion Georges Carpentier in 1922, his triumph proves brief and ends in tragedy. “Adored for his originality, his devastating charm, and his boxing talent, Battling Siki becomes the  scapegoat of a small society that fancies itself progressive,” says Romero at Eddy (“Le Corset”).

Nathalie Denis, The Living 

Launched by Denis in 2017, after gigs at Anonymous Content and Studiocanal and behind Myrsini Aristidou’s “Hold Onto Me,” Marco Martins’ “The Colony” and Chabname Zariab’s “Bells of Kabul.” Denis’ Locarno slate includes on-the-rise French director Sarah Al Atassi’s “Suce ma Kalash” described by Denis as an “exhilarating crime action-comedy.” In it, after murder of a man at the small French town fun fair, razor-sharp police officer Maïssa instigates an apparent terrorist attack. In reality, however, it’s a highly personal act of spirited revenge.

Germany

Félix Herrmann, Benedetta Films

In Locarno with one of Match Me! biggest films, “The Song of Baba,” freely adapting an autobiographical novel by Charlie Hebdo founder François Cavanna, which catches him on the run in late WWII as Germany collapses. Produced by Benedetta, Desert Flower (Germany), Hutong Prods. (France) and Babylon 13 (Ukraine), directed by Camille Tricaud “Slow Down the Fall”). “This historical story tells us about Europe – about getting to know different languages and cultures, about the connections between people,” says co-writer Hermann.  

Sarah Valerie Radu, Matadoras 

At Locarno’s Match Me! with on paper one of its hottest titles, “Vaca Muerta,” from Sophia Mocorrea, interweaving four lives that unfold in the shadow of a vast fracking industry. A firefighter is confronted with fall-out from a deadly landslide, a paleontologist with failed discovery; a young girl searches for her identity in origin myths and a lawyer is torn between justice and ambition. Set up at Berlin’s Matadoras, founded in 2025 by Radu, Mocorrea, Nina Bayer-Seel and Markus Krojer. 

Valentina Huber, Trimafilm 

Behind Beta Film sales hit “30 Days of Lust” – and now developing a high-end series together with Ingo Fliess at If… Productions and Oscar nominated director İlker Çatak (“The Teachers’ Lounge”), Munich-based Trimafilms Match Me! slate is led by “A Robber’s Tale.” The true story of Reiner Laux, the “nicest bankrobber in history,” set in Germany and across Europe in the 1980s and ‘90s, “it’s a wild, fast-paced adventure. The film playfully subverts the rules of conventional thinking, challenging them without ever becoming moralistic,” says Huber.

Italy

Alberto Favruzzo, Abisso Studio

Based out of Trentino-Alto Adige, northernmost Italy, and a devotee of international co-production, now in early development on what could be its banner title to date, Zaki, a hybrid fiction/animation feature inspired by the real case of human rights activist Patrick Zaki, jailed in Egypt from Feb. 7 2020 to Dec. 9 2021, without ever being brought to trial. Simone Massi (“About Killing the Pig”) will handle the animation, Alessandro Ingaria the live action. 

Flavia Enchelli, Orca

“Orca decides to pursue the greatest of all experiments: classicism,” says Enchelli. That means shooting “Porcelain Bodies Abandoned in the Sun on a Scorching Summer in Central Italy,” an Italian small town serial killer thriller, on 35 mm, using a 2-perf film to contain costs. Giuliano Giacomelli, co-director of the multi-awarded short “Fiabexit,” is attached to direct. “We’ve attracted the interest of some major Italian co-production partners,” Enchelli adds.

Leonardo Birindelli, Ozono Studi

Co-producer of Liryc Dela Cruz’s “Come la Notte,” a Berlin Perspective player, at Match Me! with Marcello Orlando’s “A Day for Everything,” a doc feature following DJ Travella playing Tanzanian Singele at trendy clubs; Moody, also Tanzanian, opening a money transfer business, and Yin teaching Chinese in Africa. A film “not just about Singeli music or its artists’ global journeys; it’s about power, mobility and the hidden structures of neo-colonialism,” Birindelli tells Variety. 

Latvia

Dārta Vijgrieze, Mistrus Media

A notable international co-producer – on “January”(Tribeca 2022 winner), “Natural Light” (Berlin 2021 Silver Bear laureate), and “In the Dusk” (Cannes 2020). At Match Me! with “She Devil.” Set during the Soviet occupation, “one woman’s personal loss ignites a relentless quest for justice,” the synopsis runs. “This film dares to make memory cinematic – shocking, urgent, and impossible to ignore,” says Vijgrieze. Directed by Dāvis Sīmanis Jr. and produced by Mistrus heads Gints Grūbe and Inese Boka-Grūbe, behind Berlin Forum player “Maria’s Silence.”

Katrina Karple, White Picture

A skilled practitioner of European co-productions and producer on Sergei Loznitsa’s Cannes Competition contender “Two Prosecutors” and Rainer Sarnet’s Locarno cult item “The Invisible Flight,” Karple is in Locarno in part to push “Tabita,” a third collaboration with Juris Kursietis after “Oleg” and “The Exalted.” A fiction/doc hybrid, it features a real-life father-daughter casting and “an authentic, unsentimental look at love, family and inclusion,” standing out for its honesty and emotional truth,” says Karple.

Lithuania

Rūta Kiaupaitė, Afterschool

Vilnius-based and founded by director Laurynas Bareiša and producer Klementina Remeikaitė whose “Drowning Dry” won  director and ensemble cast in main competition at last year’s Locarno Festival. At Locarno with “Miss Venezuela,” in which a Lithuanian-Venezuelan actress channels her childhood obsession with beauty pageants into a personal stage act. The doc feature explores “how identity is shaped, challenged, and reimagined between two cultures, tracing shifting notions of home, memory, and femininity,” says Kiaupaitė. The feature debt of Kamilė Milašiūtė (“Mother’s Day”).

Gabriele Vaičiūnaitė, Why Films 

Founded in 2021 by Vaiciunaite,and now advancing on a wide.-ranging slate taking in animation, a kids’ series “The Lil’ Bigfoot, feature doc “Chasing Gold in the Dark,” and “Translator, by Emilija Juzeliūnaitė, a futuristic drama made in 2D cell animation. “A hybrid model combining limited theatrical, VOD, and regional broadcaster support seems most viable right now,” Vaičiūnaitė tells Variety.

Poland

Ewka Hoffman, Balans 

“Our main goal is to create films and series with high artistic quality that will reach a wide audience. The most crucial aspect for us is a narrative that evokes emotions and addresses themes that linger with the viewers long after watching,” Balans has told Locarno Pro. At Locarno with “I Got It From Her,” by Edyta Sewruk, described as a family drama with elements of a thriller and dark comedy.

Dagmara Piasecka, Green Rat Production

An exception. “We are primarily interested in productions aimed at a wide audience, but we are also happy to participate in highly artistic projects,” says Piasecka. This includes a strong line in family films. Moving at Locarno Pro Krzysztof Komander’s “Encounter,” “a mix of a coming-of-age story and horror,” low budget, produced “guerrilla filmmaking style driven by our passion and creativity,” in which Melka, 13, meets the ghost of her grandmother, forming a deep emotional bond.

Barbara Webel-Vaknin, UNI-SOLO Studio

Founded in 2015 by director and screenwriter Jarek Wszedybyl and producer Karolina Śmigiel with Webel-Vaknin acting as a creative producer. Credits include Berlin Panorama “Letters from Wolf Street.” At Locarno with “Good Night, Princesses,” a story of transformation in late ‘80s/early ‘90s Poland, captured on VHS home tapes a a girl becomes a woman, confronting her family expectations and rigid gender roles.  

Portugal

Elisa Bogalheiro, Maria Zimbro

Founded in 2018 in central Portugal’s Fundão, its location shaping the company interest in “what connects memory to the present, territory to the body, the intimate to the political,” says Elisa Bogalheiro. Now unveiling “Stella Maris,” set during an 11-year-old girl’s family holiday on Spain’s Isla Cristina. Real event based, “‘Stella Maris’ is an intimate coming-of-age story set against Spain’s challenging 1980s transition,” says Bogalheiro. 

Frederico Mesquita, Seara Filmes

“Familiar Feelings,” Lisbon-based Seara Filmes’ first feature, is backed by the ICA Portuguese Film Institute, the country’s PIC Cash Rebate Incentive, public broadcaster RTP and the Portuguese Society of Authors (SPA) – an auspicious start for the newly-launched company. From Mónica Lima (“Human Life”), the ecology-themed feature turns on Liz who is welcomed back at her family home after years abroad, establishing a “phantasmal intimacy” with her relatives.

Inês von Bonhorst, The Makkina

Originally founded in London by Inês von Bonhorst and Yuri Pirondi, The Makkina creates “powerful, thought-provoking cinema that fuses emotional depth with visual innovation,” says von Bonhorst. One title at Locarno, “Dark Tides,” turns on Dara, a migrant woman trapped by a human trafficking network which forces her to harvest clams on the Tejo River, in Lisbon – a reality hidden in plain sight. “A narrative that blends harsh realism with poetic imagery,” say Pirondi and von Bonhorst.  

Spain

Andrés Sanjurjo, Acariño Films

Based out of Galicia, North-West Spain, at Acarina Films, set up in 2022, a boutique arthouse producer behind doc acquitted by Filmin and DaFilms. At Match Me! with “Proto,” a “poetic and essayistic fiction feature;” says Sanjurjo. It turns on four individuals who live in the same warehouse and seemingly build a cinema.    

Carla Sospedra, Edna Cine 

Founded in 2021 in the foothills of Barcelona, “driven by the desire to discover and support emerging filmmakers exploring a unique and personal cinematic voice,” says Sospedra Salvadó.  At Locarno with “Climacteric” (“Climateri”), the next from Liliana Torres, director of SXSW winner 2024 “Mamífera,” also produced by Edna Cine.  “Our slate leans toward art-house projects with strong international appeal,” Sospedra adds.

Sofia Monardo, Montecine

Located in Cantabria, northern Spain, a production company specializing in doc-fiction hybrids, such as “Level,” about memories of landscapes which no longer exist, grounded in a universal human narrative of mourning and new beginnings.  “This is a film that could find a home on alternative distribution platforms, especially those focused on documentary and educational content,” says Monardo.

Uruguay

Belén Ballesteros, Bitácora Cine

Launched in 2022 and focused on auteur-driven cinema, “bold and sensitive storytelling, often rooted in Latin American territories and voices, Ballesteros says. She will bring to Match Me! “The Burned Ones,” from writer-director Paula Botana. In it, after 20 years in exile, Marina returns to her oppressive hometown with her teenage daughter Elena. As the village prepares for carnival, old prejudices resurface. “Through the intimate bond between a mother and daughter, the film portrays resistance as something quiet, emotional and deeply feminine,” says Ballesteros.

Facundo Umpiérrez, Dulce Cine

Behind short “Before Madrid,” which played Berlin’s 2023 Generation 14Plus, now developing its first features. One candidate – and a prize winner at Ventana Sur and José Ignacio Festival – “The Visitor” (WT), from scribe-helmer Lucía Nieto Salazar, winner of a special mention (“Eanna”) and best short (“Negra”) at the Uruguay Intl. Film Festival. In it, Helena, 30, a young psychologist, returns to Uruguay after her estranged mother’s death, to the mansion where her mother once worked and from which they fled one night when Helena was a child. “It aims to move and disturb, while offering a bold, auteur-driven vision from one of Uruguay’s most distinctive voices,” says Umpiérrez.