CASA CINE 2026 - SCREENWRITERS

Welcome, residents of CASA CINE 2026!

Our jury, composed of Raja Amari, Pierre Pinaud, Dominique Hoff, Anna Glogowski, and Mary-Lyn Chambers has selected the candidates who will develop their first or second feature film projects in May at the Château de La Napoule. The projects selected this year all tell stories of upheaval and resistance, and reflect more than ever the chaos of the world we live in.

CASA CINE will welcome Katia Jarjoura with Robbing Beirut (Lebanon), Marcel Beltrán with A Room Outside the World (Cuba/Brazil), Christina Tynkevych with All Clear (Ukraine), Parsa Ansari with Shooting Stars (Iran), and Louis Hanquet with Body and Soul (France).

Katia Jarjoura

Writer-Director
Lebanon

Feature Fiction

Robbing Beirut

Katia Jarjoura is a journalist, screenwriter, and director of Lebanese-Canadian origin.

She has traveled extensively through the Middle East and conflict zones — including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Gaza, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Egypt — where she has produced numerous reports and documentaries for international media outlets, including the Arte channel. In her films, Katia Jarjoura explores the consequences of war and social turmoil on ordinary people, and their struggle to overcome them.

Katia Jarjoura directed the documentary films Entre Deux Fronts (Best Lebanese Film at the Ayyam al Cinemaiyya Festival in Beirut), L'Appel de Kerbala (FIGRA and FIPA 2004), Goodbye Mubarak! (Best Film at the Beirut International Film Festival), and Liban, de fracture en fracture (screened at the 2014 Prix Bayeux des Correspondants de Guerre). In the realm of fiction, she has made two short films that have garnered significant attention at international festivals: In Their Blood (2009), which addresses the harmful legacy of the Lebanese Civil War, premiered aux Rencontres du Moyen Métrage de Brive and won the France 2 Award at the Brest Film Festival; and Only Silence (2018), about the silent violence of exile endured by Syrian refugees - was screened at the Beirut Lebanese Film Festival, the Festival Del Cinema dei Diretti Umani, the BBC Arabic Film Festival, the Panorama des Cinémas du Maghreb et du Moyen-Orient, and broadcast on France 3. She recently directed her first feature-length documentary, Les Échappées, which portrays Syrian women artists in exile in Europe, selected for competition at FIPADOC 2022.

At CASA CINE, she will be working on her first feature-length fiction film, Robbing Beirut, a drama set against the backdrop of Lebanon's recent collapse of the banking sector. Inspired by real events, the film follows a young woman who risks everything to ensure her family's survival, revealing the violent desperation and rage of citizens abandoned by the state.

Marcel Beltrán

Writer-Director
Cuba/Brazil

Feature Fiction

A Room Outside the World

Marcel Beltrán is a Cuban-Brazilian screenwriter and director based in São Paulo.

Born into a family of painters and musicians, Marcel Beltrán studied film at the University of the Arts in Havana. He then specialised in documentary filmmaking at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (Cuba), before receiving a scholarship to Concordia University (Canada). Over the years, he has explored various analog and digital formats, utilizing archival footage and experimenting with photochemical sustainable processes, notably in short films such as Cisne Cuello Negro, Cuello Blanco (MoMA Doc Fortnight) and Casa de la Noche (TIFF, The Free Screen). Blending documentary and fiction, his work is characterized by intimate portraits of Cuba and its displacement.

His short film La nube was awarded the Best Short Film prize at the Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana. La opción cero, his first feature-length documentary, premiered at IDFA and screened at Locarno, Hot Docs, and DOC NYC. It also won the Best Documentary award at MiradasDoc and FIDBA. In 2025, his fiction short film Ponto Cego, co-directed with Luciana Vieira, premiered at the Quinzaine des Cinéastes at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Best Short Film award at the Festival do Rio.

At CASA CINE, he will be developing his first feature-length fiction film, A Room Outside the World. The project is a sensitive portrait of a Cuban artist forced to start over from scratch in Brazil, navigating a limbo between the country she left behind and her new reality. Marcel Beltrán captures the nuances of this solitary process, permeated by a sense of “solastalgia” — the pain of a world of one’s own that continues to exist but no longer offers refuge. At its heart, A Room Outside the World is a contemporary exploration of the fundamental search for one’s place in the world.

Christina Tynkevych

Writer-Director
Ukraine

Feature Fiction

All Clear

Christina Tynkevych is a Ukrainian filmmaker from Kyiv.

At age 19, she moved to London, where she studied film at the University of the Arts London and the University of Westminster. In her work, Christina Tynkevych adopts an intimate perspective to explore the current Ukrainian context, focusing on strong female characters.

She directed two short films, Kraina (2016) and Solatium (2017), which were selected at various international film festivals, among which Ethnocineca - International Documentary Film Festival Vienna, Atlanta Film Festival, Ghent International Film Festival and the Brooklyn Film Festival. With Kraina, she was distinguished with the Jury Award for Best Documentary Short at the Atlanta Film Festival. She is also the director of the documentary Generation 91 (2018), which offers a kaleidoscope of the first post-soviet generation in Ukraine. Her first feature-length fiction film, How Is Katia? (2022), premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, where it received a Special Jury Prize in the “Concorso Cineasti del Presente” section, and the lead actress, Anastasiya Karpenko, was honored as Best Actress. The film was subsequently screened at over 40 international festivals, including the Warsaw Film Festival and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Christina Tynkevych is a member of the European Film Academy and the Ukrainian Film Academy.

At CASA CINE, she will be developing her second feature film, All Clear. Set in Kyiv during the early months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Christina Tynkevych portrays a young couple torn between the decision to leave and to stay. The project explores the ongoing impact of the war by focusing on the fragility of daily life and the necessary adaptation to a new reality, questioning the concepts of home, patriotism, and courage.

Parsa Ansari

Writer-Director
Iran

Feature Documentary

Shooting Stars

Parsa Ansari is an Iranian writer-director.

He began his artistic career at the age of 16, graduating from the screenwriting program at the Darolfunun Cinema School. He later studied film directing at Tehran University of Art, where his work began to merge personal storytelling with sociopolitical themes.

During his student years, he directed several short fiction films, but in the wake of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in Iran in 2022, his artistic focus shifted from fiction toward documentary filmmaking.

His first short documentary, The Villain (2024), brought him widespread recognition. The film received the Young Talent of the Year award at Image of the Year Film Festival and screened at numerous festivals across Iran, and won several Audience Awards and Best Documentary prizes. It was also selected for the Academy awards qualifying Tehran International Short Film Festival and was named Best Short Film of the Year by FIDAN Iranian Short Film Magazine. Parsa Ansari is an alumnus of IDFAcademy, IDFA Project Space and Docs by the Sea, and is a member of the International Documentary Association and the Documentary Association of Europe.

During CASA CINE, he will be developing his first feature-length film, Shooting Stars, a hybrid documentary that blends archival footage and animation to explore how societies label, exclude and construct "the other." Through an investigation into the mysterious UFO sightings that marked his childhood, Parsa Ansari reflects on questions of identity and alienation, tracing the lives of the invisible "stars" who live among us.

Louis Hanquet

Writer-Director
France

Feature Documentary

Body and Soul

Louis Hanquet is a French filmmaker and cinematographer. After studying literature and cinema in Paris (La Sorbonne) and Buenos Aires (UNSAM), he worked as an assistant director to Serge Viallet on the series Mystères d'archives, and later assisted Sébastien Lifshitz on several of his films (Adolescentes, Petite fille and Madame Hofmann).

Over time, Louis Hanquet shifted his focus toward cinematography. He has worked as director of photography on several short and feature-length documentaries selected for major festivals including Visions du Réel, Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, FIPADOC, Les États Généraux du Film Documentaire de Lussas and Traces de Vie.

In 2024, he completed his first feature-length documentary, Un pasteur. The film is a delicate portrait of Félix, a melancholic and secretive young shepherd who lives a solitary life in the southern Alps. It was screened at over forty festivals around the world (including Visions du Réel, Les États Généraux du Film Documentaire de Lussas, Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, DokFest München and Verzio Human Rights Film Festival) and was broadcast on French and Swiss national television. It received multiple awards, including the Grand Prize and the Best Original Music Award at FIPADOC 2024 as well as an Étoile de la Scam in 2025.

At CASA CINE, Louis Hanquet is developing his second feature-length documentary, Body And Soul. Filmed in southern Thailand, the film follows Erdem and Luna, two immigrant Muay Thai fighters who have come to the island of Samui to chase their dream of greatness. United by an obsessive devotion to physical and mental self-improvement, they live according to the relentless rhythm of training, sacrifice and competition. Through their fragile love story, Louis Hanquet portrays a world where bodies and minds become instruments of performance, revealing the tensions between desire, ambition, and the harsh realities of a world governed by a cruel form of ultraliberalism.

SERENA Productions and La Napoule Art Foundation once again thank all the candidates for their applications and congratulate the participants of the 2026 edition of CASA CINE, which will take place at the Château de la Napoule, from May 6th to 29th.