Director Mounia Akl ’16 recently won the Audience Award at the 65th BFI London Film Festival for her debut feature film Costa Brava Lebanon, which Akl co-wrote with fellow alumna Clara Roquet ’16.
In Costa Brava Lebanon, tensions rise among the members of a free-spirited family living up in the mountains when a garbage landfill site is built on their doorstep, bringing with it the trash and corruption of a whole country.
Judges hailed Akl’s film as “a dazzling debut, heralding a striking new cinematic voice.” In recent years, the popular Audience Award has been seen as a precursor to global award success.
Mounia Akl is a Lebanese director and writer living between Beirut and New York. While developing Costa Brava Lebanon, Akl was selected to participate in the Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Labs, the Cannes Cinefondation Residency, the Tribeca Film Institute and the Torino Film Lab. Mounia has a BA in Architecture from ALBA, Lebanon and an MFA in Directing from Columbia University. She is currently developing new projects for both TV and Film as well as a second feature film, Love at last sight, set in the United States.
