Locarno Film Festival has selected Ivorian-American filmmaker Dominic Yarabe as one of three winners for the fifth Locarno Residency, a year-long screenwriting and development program for directors preparing their first feature films.
The three (including Brazilian-American filmmaker Julia Mellen and Swiss-Italian filmmaker Anna Simonetti) were chosen from 12 finalists during the ongoing 79th Locarno Film Festival.
Yarabe was selected with “Feu de Lune,” a hybrid docufiction set in Bobia, a rural village in Côte d’Ivoire. It follows 10-year-old twins whose reenactment of an epic myth uncovers memories of a civil conflict largely absent from the country’s official record.
The project develops family history previously addressed in Yarabe’s 2024 short, “Entre le Feu et le Clair de Lune,” which premiered at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival in Colorado and screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2025.
“Feu de Lune” has received support from Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, the LEF Foundation, and the Harvard Film Study Center.
On 11 June 2026, Yarabe was named the 2026–27 Harvard Film Study Center–LEF Foundation Fellow, receiving US$15,000 and access to Harvard production facilities.
The filmmakers will attend a residency in Italy in December 2026, continue with online sessions, and meet again in March 2027 at LUMA Arles, an interdisciplinary arts campus in southern France. One project will receive a CHF 5,000 production scholarship.