This year, the 15th edition of LabMed brings together 10 writers and directors developing their first or second feature films from across the Mediterranean region. Guided by artistic director Adriano Valerio, they will benefit from the support of Aude Py, Laïla Marrakchi, Ayman El Amir, and Jasmin Bašić.
Bringing together filmmakers from diverse backgrounds, including both newcomers and long-standing members of the Meditalents community, this edition promises to be a memorable one.
A lonely construction worker joins an activist group for the protection of abused dogs and soon becomes its leader. Through its actions, the group will be led into situations that will test its limits.
In a dystopian system placing elderly inmates in low-income homes, a young woman caring for a woman prisoner begins to question justice and freedom as buried family secrets surface.
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A family of four on holiday is forced to spend a night on a remote beach. When they wake up, their teenage daughter has disappeared. The others tacitly decide to pretend she was never there and continue their holiday as if nothing had happened.
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In Beirut, a couple struggling with the crisis is shaken by the promise of a lifesaving passport. A secretly arranged sales meeting turns, during a family gathering, into a heated debate about identity, survival, and belonging.
Dona Emília, 78, has lived in isolation for years inside a storage unit. Her life changes when she finds an abandoned child in the warehouse. She ventures out of her confinement and into a labyrinth-like space. After being separated from the child, she finally escapes and discovers a wild, unfamiliar outside world, symbolizing a new beginning.
A teenage girl helps her immigrant family run a bakery in Croatia while secretly dreaming of a future beyond.
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One evening, Nadim, exiled in Paris after the 2019 Lebanese revolution, mysteriously vanishes and reappears in Beirut. Now invisible and trapped between life and death, he wanders through a city haunted by his memories. He meets Carla, the only one who can see him, who reveals the existence of the “Invisibles”, souls suspended between two worlds seeking to revive the memory of the revolution.
Malik, a teenage boy in his twenties, goes on the run with a strange, elusive girl (Noura) haunted by a crime involving is twin brother. As they travel across the cities of Egypt, his human instincts begin to unravel, giving way to something feral.
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In Marseille, Diego, a young footballer from a modest background, tries to overcome his brother’s death while pursuing his dream career, pushed by a father ready to do anything for his success.
Laïla Marrakchi is a Moroccan director and screenwriter, and a graduate of the Sorbonne and La Fémis. She directed her first feature film, Marock, in 2005. Selected for Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, the film received wide international attention. She went on to direct works such as Rock the Casbah (2013), a French-Moroccan co-production, and several episodes of the Canal+ series The Bureau. Through her films, Laïla Marrakchi explores social, familial, and cultural dynamics, often through the lens of contemporary Moroccan society. She is currently developing projects between Morocco, France, and the international scene.
Franco-Swiss and trained as a philosopher, Aude lives and works in Paris. A screenwriter, author, script doctor, and curator, her films have been screened at major international festivals including Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, London, Locarno, Rotterdam, Montreal, Yerevan, Moscow, Taiwan, Annecy, San Sebastián, and Bucheon (South Korea), among others.
In 2026, she was nominated in the United States for Best Screenplay at the Annie Awards. She was also nominated in 2025 by the Florida Film Critics Circle for Best Adaptation, and in 2017 for Best Screenplay at the Swiss Film Awards.
Aude co-wrote the screenplay for Amélie and the Metaphysics of Tubes, selected for the Official Selection at Cannes in 2025, awarded the Audience Prize at Annecy in 2025, nominated for the Golden Globes in 2026 and for the European Film Awards in 2026. The film is also nominated for the 2026 Academy Awards in the category of Best Animated Feature Film.
She co-heads the screenwriting department at La Fémis in Paris and serves as curator and head of the artistic program at the Edgelands Institute, founded at Harvard and active in Medellín, Houston, Nairobi, and Geneva. In this context, she has created several artist residencies and is currently preparing an exhibition in collaboration with photographers from Magnum Photos in Geneva in May 2026.
Jasmin Bašić is a film historian and programmer with a Master’s degree in Film Studies from the University of Lausanne. She has worked with numerous film festivals in Switzerland and internationally, including Visions du Réel, the NIFFF, Animafest Zagreb, and the Geneva International Film Festival on Human Rights. She has curated retrospectives dedicated to major filmmakers such as David Cronenberg, Michael Mann, and Harun Farocki, and developed programs focused on international television series. She has also collaborated with several European cultural institutions, including the Cinémathèque française, the Centre Pompidou, and Cahiers du Cinéma. She has served as an expert for the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, been a member of the Geneva Film Commission, and co-founded Pro Short, the Swiss short film association. Since 2017, she has also worked as an associate producer with production companies based in Paris and Geneva.
Ayman El Amir is an egyptian filmmaker and script consultant working across documentary and fiction. With Nada Riyadh, he co-directed The Brink of Dreams, which premiered at the Cannes Critics’ Week and won the Golden Eye for Best Documentary at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024. He has also produced and co-directed award-selected films screened at major festivals including Cannes, Venice, TIFF, and IDFA. bAs a script consultant and mentor, he has worked with institutions such as Torino Film Lab, the Doha Film Institute, EAVE, and Hot Docs, supporting international films including Goodbye Julia, The Settlers, and Yuni. Through his Cairo-based company Felucca Films, he focuses on developing emerging voices and socially engaged cinema. He also leads Egypt’s Dahshur Genre Script Development Residency and holds an MFA in filmmaking, with early academic collaborations including the creation of a film production program at Effat University in Saudi Arabia.
