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Open Cities Names First 11 Projects for Lisbon Film Accelerator

Jonah VillalbaPublished 3m ago2 min readBased on 1 source
Open Cities Names First 11 Projects for Lisbon Film Accelerator
Photo by Noom Peerapong on Unsplash

Open Cities has chosen the first 11 projects for its inaugural cohort, Deadline reported on 11 November 2026. The accelerator is a tech-focused film project, and it is based in Lisbon, Portugal.

The company was launched earlier this year. It is led by Joana Vicente, its co-founder and chief executive, who was previously chief executive of the Sundance Institute. Her co-founder, Jason Kliot, is an Oscar-nominated producer. An accelerator is a programme that gives filmmakers development help, mentoring and contacts over a set period, before a project is ready to be financed and shot.

Open Cities lists Google, Luma AI, Beeble, Publikum, Cinelytic, Plural Group, ZeroSpace and Wonder Studios among its partners. Luma AI and Beeble work on artificial intelligence tools for making images and video. Cinelytic makes software that helps film companies analyse data about projects and audiences.

The cohort spent from 2 to 10 November in Lisbon for an in-person residency. Before that, they had taken part in several virtual sessions. Towards the end of the residency, the filmmakers presented their projects to financiers, producers, distributors and other industry partners, which is the kind of pitch room that can decide whether a film gets made.

Among the 11 projects are four that have been named so far:

  • The Dead God, written and directed by Néstor López and produced by Pilar Sancho, from Spain.
  • The Diamond Eye, written and directed by Benjamin Dickinson and produced by Ted Hope, from the United States. Hope is also an early supporter of Open Cities.
  • Fever, written and directed by Christian Goue, from the United Kingdom and Ivory Coast.
  • Mirage, directed by Hallvard Braein.

The accelerator is not the end of the road for every project. After this phase, Open Cities plans to pick a number of projects to keep supporting towards financing and production. No timetable for those choices has been announced.

Accelerators like this one sit early in a long chain. A project that enters a lab in one year may not reach cinemas or streaming for another two or three. For the 11 teams in Lisbon, the next step is the one that follows the pitches: meetings, money and the question of who will sell the finished film.

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