Storylines Lab / Taller de Líneas Argumentales

Elina Fessa is a screenwriter, director and script consultant from Thessaloniki, Greece. Her scripts have been selected at prestigious national and international film labs such as the Berlinale Script Station and the SGAE Foundation Screenwriting Lab. Her short films have played at numerous Oscar^®-qualifying international film festivals and have been awarded, among others, by the Directors Guild of America. Her latest short film, Tracks, was one of only two short films funded by the Greek Film Academy and Cosmote TV and won the Best Actress Award at the Athens International Film Festival.

Elina is currently developing two feature films — In the Shadow of Teide, a co-production between Greece and Spain which has received script development funding from the Greek Film Center and won the Initiative Film Award at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival Crossroads Co-Production Market, and The Girl with the Sun in Her Eyes, a project selected and developed at the SGAE Foundation Screenwriting Lab and the Mediterranean Film Institute (MFI) Script 2 Film Workshops, and starring Jone Laspiur, winner of the 2021 Goya Award for Best Newcomer Actress for Ane Is Missing.

Elina has directed commercials, produced the short film Cavo d’Oro, which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, and produced theater. She is the co-founder of EXTINT, a multilingual script consulting agency that helps filmmakers maximize the international potential of their scripts, and often collaborates with international labs or residencies such as Coofilm in Spain, Cine Qua Non Lab in Mexico, and The Owl Screenwriting Workshop in Greece. She has taught at The Core School, Séptima Ars and EFTI Centro Internacional de Fotografía y Cine in Madrid, and she is part of the selection committee of the MFI Script 2 Film Workshops.

Elina holds a B.A. in Photography from Yale University and an M.F.A. in Film Directing from Columbia University in New York City.