Wscripted has named the 12 finalists for the sixth edition of its Cannes Screenplay List, spotlighting feature screenplays by women and non-binary writers, with Elisabeth Moss among the jurors who picked them (Deadline).

The list was unveiled on 7 August 2026. Moss — an Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actress and executive producer known for The Handmaid's Tale and Mad Men — curated the selections alongside Daphne Schmon and Ash Mayfair. Schmon is a Greek-American filmmaker whose directorial debut The Eye won Best International Film at the London Independent Film Awards; she also serves as executive director of Breaking Through The Lens, an initiative supporting women and queer-led projects at the financing stage. Mayfair is a Vietnamese filmmaker whose first feature The Third Wife won nineteen awards and screened at over seventy international festivals. Her follow-up, Skin of Youth, described as the first film following the real-life transition of a transgender sex worker, won Best Feature at the International Film Festival of India (Deadline).

Since launching the list in 2021, Wscripted has championed 104 feature screenplays by women and non-binary writers. The platform, which helps get film, TV and book projects in front of producers while protecting intellectual property and limiting bias, has partnered with the streaming service Mubi on the initiative since 2022 (Deadline; Wscripted.com).

The 12 selected projects span horror, romance, historical drama, magical realism and true crime. The finalists are:

• Ada and the Doc — True Crime Drama by Matison LeBlanc (USA)
• Aphrodite's Shadow — Coming-of-Age Drama by Anoula Cilento (US)
• Arranged — Romantic Comedy by Mithra B. Alavi (US)
• Baby — Coming-of-Age Drama by Chaconne Martin-Berkowicz (US)
• Before the Echo makes a sound — Psychological Mystery Thriller by Chloe Abrahams (UK)
• Ecdysis — Psychological Drama by Angelique Knights (Canada)
• Felt — Psychological Horror by Ran Jing (US)
• Gift Girl — Crime Coming-of-Age by Kyla Simone Bruce (UK/Germany)
• Last Stop on the Q — Time Travel Romance by Suhashini Krishnan (US)
• Punk Never Dies — Historical Drama by Lindsay Stidham (US)
• The Girl who Cried Wolf — Magical Realism Drama by Alicia Herder (US)
• The Mystery Snail Wife — Horror by Jiwon Lee (US)

The list is timed to the Cannes Film Festival cycle, the annual industry marketplace on the French Riviera where films are bought, sold and launched. The 2026 festival, overseen by jury president Park Chan-wook, will also present honorary Palmes d'Or to Peter Jackson and Barbra Streisand (Screen Daily).

For the writers on this year's list, the value is straightforward: their scripts land in front of producers and financiers at the moment the industry is paying attention. Eleven of the twelve finalists are US-based, with the UK, Germany and Canada also represented. Genres run from romantic comedy to psychological horror, a spread that reflects the range of stories the jurors found worth backing.