EXCLUSIVE: Italy’s TorinoFilmLab (TFL) has selected 10 feature film projects for the 2026 edition of its flagship FeatureLab development programme, including Catarina Vasconcelos’s Unfinished Painting.
Unfinished Painting is Portuguese filmmaker Vasconcelos’s second feature, after The Metamorphosis Of Birds, which won the Fipresci prize in Encounters at the 2020 Berlinale and was Portugal’s international feature Oscar entry for 2021. Produced by Pedro Fernandes Duarte of Primeira Idade, Unfinished Painting follows a woman who falls ill with cancer after dedicating her life to restoring ancient paintings.
Also selected is Worse Together, the second feature by Canadian-Italian filmmaker Luis De Filippis. It sees a woman descend into nightlife with her closest friends, while in the middle of a breakup, she doesn’t fully understand.
Canada’s Jessica Adams produces for her JA Productions. De Filippis’s first feature, Something You Said Last Night, won awards at Toronto, San Sebastian and Rotterdam in 2022-2023.
Debut films in the FeatureLab selection include Isabel, about a soil scientist in Guatemala who recognises her estranged father in a documentary about migrants in the US. Writer-director Giorgio Giampa has been nominated for Italy’s David di Donatello awards, as producer of the feature Vittoria in 2025 and director of short film Astronauta this year.
Scroll down for the full list of projects
The 10 features comprise seven debuts and three second feature films, from 10 writer-directors, one co-writer, and 10 producers. The group consists of 13 men and eight women, from 10 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
The programme received 236 applications this year, up from 179 for last year’s edition.
The selected projects will take part in a development process from June to November 2026, including two residential workshops in Turin, Italy, and an online module in September.
The FeatureLab will conclude in TorinoFilmLab’s TFL Meeting Event co-production market in late November, where each team will present their project to an industry audience.
Mentors for the programme are: TFL head of studies Violeta Bava and curator Vincenzo Bugno; script consultants Chiara Laudani, Miguel Machalski and Magali Negroni; director of photography Muriel Aboulrouss; producer Marta Andreu; editor Jorge Jacome; director Athina Rachel Tsangari; sound designer Jean-Guy Veran; and pitching trainer Stefano Tealdi.
“We are particularly impressed by our selected teams of writers, directors and producers, whose work clearly and sensitively reflects the complexity of the contemporary world with artistic ambition,” said a statement from Bava and Bugno. “The ten projects selected this year, chosen from an increasingly global pool of submissions, stand out for their daring stories, distinctive visual styles and the powerful intersection of the personal and the political.
“They all represent intensive artistic experiences and demonstrate an inventive and courageous approach to narrative structures, challenging established cinematic forms and engaging with themes that combine strong local identity with universal potential.”
Audience Design Fund
TFL has also selected two film projects for the 2026 run of its Audience Design Fund, which aims to support the distribution stage of a film through financial backing with audience engagement and outreach strategies.
The two projects are Luis E. Pares’s documentary Dancing With Death, which traces the interlinking histories of flamenco, Spanish cinema, and Spain under Franco’s dictatorship; and Isabelle Mecattaf’s May You Outlive Us, a feature debut about four women navigating life in Lebanon four years after the Beirut port explosion.
Both the FeatureLab and Audience Design Fund are organised by TorinoFilmLab – Museo Nazionale del Cinema with the support of Creative Europe – MEDIA Sub-programme of the European Union, with the 2026 FeatureLab run in partnership with German Films.
TorinoFilmLab FeatureLab, Audience Design Fund 2026
FeatureLab
Synopses provided by TFL
900 Tons (Por)
Dir-scr: Daniel Soares
Prod: Luis Urbano
Prod co: O Som e a Fúria
With newborn twins and opposite schedules, Sandro works nights as a garbage collector and cares for the babies by day, while Cléo works at a supermarket and builds a fragile hairstyling career using Sandro’s long hair for her videos. As she moves forward, he refuses to sell a sports car he can’t afford, renting it out for television shoots and finding increasingly absurd ways to keep the illusion alive.
Almanstadt (Ger)
Dir-scr: Thomas Taube
Prod: Dominik Eder
Prod co: Oksuperdanke Filmproduktion
The absurd drama Almanstadt takes us through a housing estate across different times and timespans. Nestled between urban chic and the idyllic Alpine foothills, the somewhat absurd sociotope itself becomes a protagonist, shaping the lives of six residents and their conflicts as they navigate their search for identity and belonging.
Bumper Cars (Chile)
Dir-scr: Maximilian Bungarten
Co-wri: Massimiliano Camaiti
Prod: Felix Herrmann
Prod co: Planta
An 18-year-old plumber living in a small suburban town feels haunted by the accidental death of his best friend. When he meets Isaac, a Romanian fairground worker who stops in the village for a few days, he tries to recreate the relationship he lost.
Holy Mother (Indonesia)
Dir-scr: Sinung Winahyoko
Prod: Fadhila Dwi Ristianty
Prod co: Krosskultur Media
A trans woman discovers she is mysteriously pregnant. Shunned by society, she flees to her submerged hometown to make sense of the impossible and reconnect with the spirit of her lost twin, where memory, nature, and body begin to merge.
Isabel (It)
Dir-scr Giorgio Giampa
Prod: Lorenzo Cioffi
Prod cos: Zoe Films, LaDoc
Isabel, a young agronomist working in the Guatemalan jungle, recognises her estranged father in an old documentary about migrants in the United States. Amid shocking revelations about his past, she discovers that once he reached the US, he longed for his family to join him. Restless dreams push her on a journey across landscapes and memory to piece together the truth and try to reconnect with him.
Name And Surname (Col)
Dir-scr: Duvan Duque Vargas
Prod: Capucine Mahe
Prod co: Evidencia Films
Upon returning to Bogotá after a failed attempt to get away from his father, Willy (17) is in for a surprise: the home in crisis from which he had fled has changed. Brand new apartment, new car, piles of cash…However, when Willy discovers the violence and lies of his father’s new street money lending business, he tries to run away again. But the more he tries to drift apart from his father, the more he becomes like him
Star Girls (Mal)
Dir-scr Chee Sum Chia
Prod: Jing Xuan Chua
Prod co: The Commonist
At a squatter village in Kuala Lumpur, four young women from across Southeast Asia reunite after bonding through a gaming chat group. When one of them quietly vanishes, the others stay behind, unaware she had planned to end her life.
The Void Is Immense In Idle Hours (Phi-Indonesia)
Dir-scr: Sam Manacsa
Prod: Chad Cabigon
Prod cos: NextLives, Kawan Kawan Media
When 19-year-old Rosemary is the last to see a young boy before he disappears, she finds herself alongside his grieving mother, Agnes, in search of him. In the stillness of their shared days, they are drawn to confront their unspoken grief and forgotten dreams.
Unfinished Painting (Por)
Dir-scr: Catarina Vasconcelos
Prod: Pedro Fernandes Duarte
Prod co: Primera Idade
Maria Ana’s body began to disappear. Having dedicated all her life to restoring ancient paintings, Maria Ana is now faced with the impossibility of restoring her own body. Her cancer weighs heavily on her husband and children. On New Year’s Eve, Maria Ana and Death meet for the first time. And from that day on, they establish an unusual friendship. There seems to be no one else that could appease Maria Ana’s concern: How to die well?
Worse Together (Can)
Dir-scr: Luis De Filippis
Prod: Jessica Adams
Prod co: JA Productions
In the middle of a breakup she doesn’t fully understand, Iris descends into the abyss of nightlife with her closest friends.
Audience Design Fund
Dancing With Death (Sp)
Dir: Luis E. Pares
Prod co: LaCima Producciones
A film that narrates the convergence of three stories: the history of flamenco, the history of Spanish cinema, and the history of Spain during Franco’s dictatorship
May You Outlive Us (Fr)
Wri-dir: Isabell Mecattaf
Prod co: Rouge International
Four years after the Beirut port explosion, four women navigate daily life in a collapsing Lebanon, where tenderness and connection quietly endure.
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