guests
september 2025
Laurence Coriat
Laurence Coriat was born in France and moved to London in her early twenties. She wrote Michael Winterbottom’s WONDERLAND, which was selected in competition at Cannes in 1999 and won the best British Independent Film award that year. She cowrote Sandra Goldbacher’s ME WITHOUT YOU, starring Michelle Williams and Anna Friel, which was unveiled at the Venice Film Festival in 2001. She went on to collaborate with Michael Winterbottom in 2006 on A MIGHTY HEART, an adaptation of Marianne Pearl’s account of her husband’s kidnapping and murder, starring Angelina Jolie. She co-wrote Winterbottom’s GENOVA, which starred Colin Firth as a man struggling to cope with the death of his wife.
She worked with Marc Evans on PATAGONIA (2010), a Welsh-Argentine drama starring Mathew Rhys, and HUNKY DORY (2011), starring Minnie Driver. In 2012 Coriat continued her collaboration with Winterbottom on the film EVERYDAY, which charts the relationship between a man imprisoned for drug smuggling and his wife, and was shot over the course of five years, a few weeks at a time. The film was nominated for a Best Single Drama Bafta in 2013.
2015 sees the release of LADY GREY, set in South Africa, starring Peter Sarsgaard and Emily Mortimer and directed by Alain Choquart. In 2016, she took part in a writers room with show-runner Hossein Amini and wrote two episodes (5&6) of McMAFIA, Amini’s International Emmy award winning BBC series, directed by James Watkins. She worked on ICARUS, an Iain Softley project about British astronaut Michael Foale, who overcame a series of crises aboard the Mir space station.
Răzvan Rădulescu
Răzvan Rădulescu was born in Bucharest, where he studied at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and the Music Academy. As a screenwriter, he has collaborated with numerous Romanian directors, including Cristi Puiu, Radu Muntean, Călin Peter Netzer, Radu Gabrea and Lucian Pintilie.
He has written numerous screenplays, including Stuff and Dough (2001), Niki and Flo (2003) and The Death of Mr Lazarescu (2005), which were co-written with Puiu, and The Paper Will Be Blue (2006), Tuesday, After Christmas (2010) and Întregalde, written in collaboration with Alexandru Baciu and Muntean.
He also wrote and directed, together with Melissa de Raaf, First of All, Felicia (2010), and he published two novels: 2007’s The Life and Deeds of Elijah Cazane, which won the Romanian Writers’ Union prize for Best Debut, and 2006’s Theodosius the Small, which received the European Union Prize for Literature.
Joanna Duncombe
Jo is a film and cultural relations specialist, based between London and Marseille. Spanning creative production, film programming and new talent development, Jo has a wealth of experience developing innovative, international film and arts programmes. She cares deeply about connecting audiences to original storytelling through intrinsically global projects, and building thriving communities around creative culture. Through her work at British Council, she has developed a unique sensitivity to developing cultural programmes that connect artists and communities across many global contexts.
Jo has presented programmes across numerous world-renowned festivals, and hosted talks and Q&As at events including Cannes Film Festival, London Film Festival and IFFR. Her current clients include British Council, BAFTA, the National Film & Television School and the Victoria Film Festival. At British Council, Jo is the senior consultant responsible for the Film Department’s New Talent programmes. She is also a senior consultant for the International Collaboration Programme, working with artists across multiple disciplines around the world to facilitate community and connections.
Jo is a film festival expert and offers regular consultancies to short and early-career filmmakers, both privately, and through tutoring at film schools like the National Film & Television School. She has previously worked as a film programmer for the Independent Cinema Office in the UK, and was programme director at London Short Film Festival. She was the creative producer and programmer at Birds Eye View Films, where she helped to develop and launch their highly successful Reclaim the Frame programme alongside Mia Bays.
Bianca Oana
Bianca Oana is a creative producer dedicated to boundary-pushing film and art. Her credits include Touch Me Not (Berlinale Golden Bear, 2018), Collective (two Oscar nominations, 2020), and Anhell69 (SIC Venice, 2022). She produced the Romanian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Art Biennale and is now working on Adina Pintilie’s second feature, Death and the Maiden. She’s an Emerging Producer (2016), Producer on the Move (2021), and member of AMPAS.
Delia Vasile
Delia Vasile is a communicator, psychologist and psychotherapist with a humanistic approach, based in Bucharest, Romania. She graduated from the Faculty of Letters and the Faculty of Psychology and since 2012 she has started her training in Transactional Analysis with Yorkshire Training Centre International. She has had learning experiences and professional training in Romania, Great Britain, Germany, France and the USA. She has a professional background in communication, public relations and entrepreneurship, which she uses in order to understand human and social experience from a wide range of perspectives. Since 2015, she has worked in private practice as a psychotherapist, with individuals and couples. Her therapeutic approach is a narrative one, being passionate about understanding life stories and the scripts people act out in their lives.
residents
september 2025
Adelina
Borets
Adelina Borets is a director, screenwriter, and dancer, as well as a laureate of the Sergei Parajanov Award and a recipient of the Gaude Polonia Scholarship from the Polish Minister of Culture. Born in Mariupol, eastern Ukraine, she holds a directing degree from the Warsaw Film School, the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School in Katowice, and has completed the Script course at the Wajda School. Adelina is the founder and director of NGO STROOM, a creative organization producing films and documentary shorts. She is also an alumna of Esodoc 2022, Ekran+ 2022, and Film Independent 2024.
Amy Omar
Amy is a Turkish-American writer-director from New York and currently based in Rome, Italy. Amy is particularly interested in female character driven narratives around Middle Eastern / Muslim characters and themes of cultural isolation, superstitions, and religion.
Amy is a recipient of Wavelength Productions' WAVE Grant for BIPOC, first time female filmmakers and wrote and directed her first short film, Breaking Fast with a Coca-Cola which premiered at SXSW in 2023. Amy's second short film, Ayşegül on Tuesdays, was a top three finalist for the Tony Cox Short Screenplay Award at the 2023 Nantucket Film Festival and premiered at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in 2025. In 2024, Amy directed the pilot episode for the Film Independent & Sloan Foundation supported scripted TV series, The Feather Detective.
Carla Linares
Carla Linares works in cinema as a director, screenwriter, and actress. Her debut short film Daucus Carota premiered at Zinebi. As an actress, she has worked in movies like Creatura, awarded in Cannes and at the Gaudí Awards 2024, and several series in Spain. Currently, she is co-writing Underdog with Eva Pauné and the support of the Screenwriting Residency of the Catalan Academy of Cinema by Carla Simón.
Christofer Nilsson
Christofer Nilsson is a writer-director based in Malmö, Sweden, drawn to portraying problematic characters through themes of loneliness, class and broken dreams in rural settings.
His short The Ballad (SE-FR) was broadcast by ARTE France and SVT. Christofer’s latest short, Dancing Pigeons (also SE-FR), was selected for European Short Pitch 23|24, and was shot in late 2024 with support from CNC and the Swedish Film Institute.
Hồng Anh Nguyễn
Hồng Anh Nguyễn is a queer Viet-German screenwriter, director, and editor based in Frankfurt am Main and Hà Nội. Her short film Saigon Kiss premiered at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, earning a Queer Jury Special Mention, the Saxon Film Prize at the Filmfest Dresden - the festival's highest endowed award and the Jury Award for Best Short Film at Chéries-Chéris Paris. She has directed documentaries for EST Eastern Standard Times, amplifying the voices of modern Vietnamese women. Supported by the British Council Vietnam, Goethe-Institut, and Asia-Europe Foundation, she is also an alumna of Torino Film Lab, a STEP writers' stipend recipient from Hessen Film & Media and a Kyoto Filmmakers Lab fellow.
Leonardo Balestrieri
Leonardo Balestrieri trained between Italy and Scotland, graduating in Italian Literature and in film editing from Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. Leonardo tends to explore human fallibility and fragility, which his short film Safari investigates in relation to issues known to the LGBT+ community. The short premiered at Alice Nella Città (Festa del Cinema di Roma) and was selected at the Nastri D’Argento. He has worked as an editing assistant under the mentorship of Walter Fasano (from Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams by Luca Guadagnino to, more recently, Dostoevskij, a Sky TV series by D’Innocenzo Brothers). He is now developing his first feature film, Unhappy Animals.
Octavian Saramet
Octavian Saramet is a Romanian film director. With a strong background in theatre, he decided to pursue a career in filmmaking. The master degree short documentary Thy Will Be Done (2023) has premiered at Astra Film Festival. His first short-fiction film Fine (2024) was selected at Torino Film Festival. His latest short film Celebration Day (2025) was selected at Transylvania Film Festival.
Tatiana Delaunay
Tatiana Delaunay is French by birth, Italian by blood, and from a bunch of other places, by choice. She is a comedy writer and film director. Her comedy short, Have a Nice Day Forever (2021) was awarded and shown at numerous international festivals including IndieLisboa, Glasgow Short Film Festival, Brest European Short Film Festival and Brussels Short Film Festival. Her second short film, We’re Here for You (2025) is supported by the Norwegian Film Institute and was shown internationally. She holds a BA in Performance Practice from Central Saint Martins and an MA in Theatre specialising in directing from Oslo National Academy of the Arts. As a playwright, she has received grants from The Norwegian Centre for New Playwriting and the Norwegian Arts Council.