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 coproduction between Greece (Plays2place) and Spain (Pecado Films) 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. Also The Girl with the Sun in Her Eyes, selected and developed at the prestigious SGAE Foundation Screenwriting Lab and the Mediterranean Film Institute (MFI) Script 2 Film Workshops.
Elina has directed commercials, produced the short film Cavo d’Oro which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and produced theatre. She combines filmmaking with teaching screenwriting at different schools in Madrid such as Séptima Ars and EFTI Centro Internacional de Fotografía y Cine and script consulting at international residencies such as Coofilm in Spain and Cine Qua Non Lab in Mexico. She is also part of the selection committee of the MFI Script 2 Film Lab.
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.