Tanzanian director Neema Ngelime is developing her first feature documentary, The Ones With the Tempered Flowers, an essayistic film about womanhood, bodily autonomy and family expectations in Tanzania. Presented at Locarno Film Festival’s 2026 Open Doors programme, the project matters for centring the experiences of young African women while examining social and political pressures that shape decisions about marriage, motherhood and identity.

The Tanzania-Kenya co-production is produced by Ivy Kiru and won both the Sørfond Award and the ARTEKino International Award at the programme. Ngelime draws on her own experience of fibroids and on a multi-religious upbringing, using performances with family members, memory and metaphor to explore expectations around fertility, faith and women’s roles; the film also considers how older women’s lives can become obscured once they are defined as wives or mothers.