EXCLUSIVE: Mounia Akl and Diego Cespedes are among 13 screenwriters selected for the 2026 Oxbelly Retreat, the writers’ lab taking place in Messinia, Greece from July 1-9.
Costa Brava, Lebanon director Akl and The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo filmmaker Cespedes are participating in the Screenwriters programme of the lab, for writer-directors developing their second feature film projects.
Scroll down for the full list of participants
Akl is participating with Hold Me (If You Want), which follows a woman estranged from herself in a world she has built using humour, resilience and denial to survive Lebanon’s crises. The project won the International Emerging Film Talent Association prize at last year’s TorinoFilmLab, and has also participated in Marrakech Film Festival’s Atlas Workshops.
Cespedes’ project is The Case Of The Boy Who Lost His Heart, produced by Chile and US-based Quijote Films. The Chilean filmmaker was on the Competition jury at Cannes last month.
The 13 screenwriters will receive tailored mentoring programmes during the day, followed by curated evenings where all attendees at the lab will gather for screenings, readings and conversations.
Advisors and special guests for the 2026 lab include Richard Linklater, Barry Jenkins, Lulu Wang, Annemarie Jacir, Charlie Kaufman, Pawel Pawlikowski, and programme director Radu Jude.
The lab also includes a fiction writers strand, which has selected 10 participants.
The 2026 edition received over 2,000 applications from writers from 181 countries and 205 nationalities.
“What distinguishes this year’s cohort is not only the originality of their voices, but their willingness to wrestle with complexity and contradiction,” said Oxbelly’s executive director Caroline von Kuhn. “The Oxbelly Retreat invites fellows, advisors and special guests into an environment where ideas move freely across borders, disciplines and experiences, generating conversations that often become as consequential as the work itself.”
Oxbelly Screenwriters Fellows 2026
Mounia Akl (Leb) Hold Me (If You Want)
Diego Cespedes (Chile) The Case Of The Boy Who Lost His Heart
Celine Devaux (Fr) Memoria
Andrei Epure, Ana Gheorghe (Rom) Beautiful Solids
Alexis Langlois, Charlotte Sanson (Fr) Totally Scum
Janis Rafa, Mathieu Delaunay (Gr-Fr) Giant Mothers
Saumyananda Sahi, Tanushree Das (India) Working Title: Guruji
Dusan Zoric, Matija Gluscevic (Cro-Serb) The Memory Of Hari
No comments yet