ABOUT OXBELLY
About Oxbelly
Oxbelly, the Greek non-profit founded by Christos V. Konstantakopoulos, the producer and founder of Faliro House Productions, serves international storytellers through its annual Retreat held in Costa Navarino, Greece, while helping shape a burgeoning Greek film industry through year-round offerings in Athens.
Oxbelly, “Voidokoilia” in Greek, is named after a nearby beach in Messinia, featured in Homer’s The Odyssey, where the first written account of hospitality in the western world took place. It is in this very culture of where storytelling meets hospitality that Oxbelly was founded.
The Oxbelly Retreat is an annual gathering of international storytellers, dedicated to the exchange of ideas, deepening of craft and broadening of artistic horizons through intercultural dialogue. Each year, the gathering is built around distinct, innovative programs for storytellers working in different mediums. In 2024, the Oxbelly Retreat will support fellows working in film, television and literature to workshop their writing with both advisors and peers and to engage in dialogue across mediums through the interdisciplinary evening sessions. Each program is led by established writers in their respective fields - the Screenwriters program led by Nicole Perlman, Episodic Writers program led by Joerg Winger and the Fiction Writers program led by Chigozie Obioma.
Oxbelly supports Greek filmmakers through the Film and Television short courses, in a partnership with the National Film and Television School out of London (NFTS). This program addresses professionals who are based in Greece and want to broaden and deepen their skills and expertise, as well as people who are strongly interested in becoming a part of the film industry.
Past Programs
Oxbelly Retreat
Past editions of the Oxbelly Retreat have included variations of the Screenwriters & Directors Labs, under the artistic direction of filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari, originally held in partnership with the Sundance Institute.
In 2023, Oxbelly expanded its commitment to writers by expanding its offerings to early career writers through the first editions of the Fiction Writers and Episodic Writers programs. In these new programs, Oxbelly continued to break the traditional lab model by building in cross-programmatic opportunities for the fellows, thereby expanding these writers’ networks and the cross-pollination between the literary and TV industries.
Past Oxbelly Advisors include the Maren Ade, Paul Thomas Anderson, Willem Dafoe, Dee Rees, Barry Jenkins, Mati Diop, Michael Almereyda, Nick Kroll, Lulu Wang, Sue Naegle, Fiammetta Rocco, Rebecca Makkai and Bill Clegg among others.
Oxbelly Collaborations
In 2022, Oxbelly collaborated with the Production Designers Collective to support the historic Production Designers Gathering, an international conference for production designers to share knowledge and experience. 300 production designers from over 35 countries journeyed to Greece to attend the inaugural PDG. In 2023, Oxbelly presented the Greek program as part of the inaugural International Production Design Week, where production designers gathered around the world to celebrate the craft of production design.
Oxbelly Team
Konstantakopoulos
Founder, President
Christos V. Konstantakopoulos is a producer and financier based in Athens, Greece. He is the founder of Faliro House, a production company operating in Europe and the United States. His latest films include KNOCK AT THE CABIN by M. Night Shyamalan, THE LOST DAUGHTER by Maggie Gyllenhaal, THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, DIGGER by Georgis Grigorakis, and PROLOGOS by Mantas Kvedaravicius. He has further supported the work of filmmakers such as Yannis Economides, Abel Ferrara, Armando Iannucci, Jim Jarmusch, Yorgos Lanthimos, Richard Linklater, Babis Makridis, Terrence Malick, Jeff Nichols, Argyris Papadimitropoulos, Eva Stefani, and Athina Rachel Tsangari. In 2015, Christos founded Oxbelly, an international community of storytellers with a mission to bring benefits to creatives from around the world. Oxbelly’s Screenwriters and Directors Labs have enjoyed the patronage of filmmakers such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Willem Dafoe, Miguel Gomes, Lucrecia Martel, Ruben Östlund, and Lulu Wang.
Executive Director
Caroline von Kühn is the Executive Director of Oxbelly. She was most recently Director of Industry & Catalyst at Sundance Institute, an independent film financing initiative for investors and filmmakers. Prior to this, von Kühn was Director of Artist Development at SFFILM where she launched SFFILM Invest, a film investment program in partnership with Cinereach. She was Co-Founder and Managing Director of Points North Institute (Camden) after eight years in film publicity in New York, including with Tribeca. von Kühn produced industry panels for Doha Tribeca Film Festival (Qatar) and programmed the launch of Seed&Spark. Recent producing work includes SLOW MACHINE (2020 Rotterdam, NYFF), BURN COUNTRY (2016 Tribeca winner,) and directing a US/UK/Norwegian theatre production of Ibsen's PEER GYNT with Norway's National Theatre. She serves on the Board of Catapult Film Fund and as Board Chair of Points North Institute. She has a BA in Financial Economics from University of Virginia and an MFA from University of Manchester (UK).
Hospitality Director
Lelia Andronikou was born in Cyprus, currently based in Athens, Greece. She is the Hospitality Director of Oxbelly (2015-present). She is also a producer at Faliro House Productions (2008-present). Her credits include: Producer in LOVE ME NOT and Associate Producer in MISS VIOLENCE and BEFORE MIDNIGHT. From July 1996 until June 2006, she worked as Duty and Quality Manager for Le Méridien Hotels (a member of Starwood Hotels).
Episodic Program Manager
Caroline Demopoulos studied film in Paris, before moving to London to become an assistant producer in TV news and documentaries. In 2015 she started working as an assistant to producer Paulo Branco at Alfama films in Paris before completing the Atelier Ludwigsburg-Paris, a Media programme for European producers. From 2016 until 2020 she worked for French production company Ecce Films to strengthen and expand the company's international co-productions. Among the films she produced during her time at Ecce is Konstantina Kotzamani's ELECTRIC SWAN which premiered at Venice Film Festival in 2019 and went on to win many awards including the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics’ Best Short Film Award. Caroline joined Oxbelly in September 2022 and manages the Episodic Program.
Screenwriters Program Manager
Leah Giblin is a moving image lover, based between New York City and wanderlust. After over fifteen years working at the forefront of resources for filmmaker development and project progression- at places including Cinereach and the Tribeca Film Institute- she continues to consult on an individual basis. Over the last two years she has also returned to her festival roots- with contributions to IDFA, Hot Docs, Camden International Film Fest and the Rockaway Film Festival. Grateful to have been positioned in support of many filmmakers' creative intentions, she credits closeness to films like THE MOLE AGENT, SHIRKERS, THE ASSISTANT and Khalik Allah's BLACK MOTHER for deepening her appreciation of the generative processes and necessary perseverance that this form summons.
Program Coordinator
Daphne Kokkinis is a first-generation Greek-American with a passion for film and television. Prior to moving to Greece and joining the Oxbelly team, she worked at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin coordinating the Film & TV Submissions and programming in the Music Video, Narrative Short, and Texas High School Short categories as an Associate Shorts Programmer. In her free time, she enjoys visiting all the beaches and mountains Greece has to offer and sewing her own clothes.
Writers Program Manager
Katerina Papanikolopoulos joined Faliro House in 2022 as Manager of Special Projects – a position that evolved into her role acting as the 2023 Oxbelly Writers Retreat Manager. Following her graduation from UCLA (Summa Cum Laude, Art History), Papanikolopoulos founded the non-profit Athens Design Forum (ADF), a platform advocating for design principles that amplify narratives interwoven with heritage and migration patterns. Collaborators of ADF include Rooms Studio (GE), Dima Srouji (PS), and BASE Milano, while ADF was invited to be the cultural partners of Collectible Fair 2022 (BE). ADF’s 2023 programming has unearthed the archival films of Menelaos Karamaghiolis (GR), Mohamed Khan (EG), and Marta Rodríguez (CO) after inaugurating Shasha Movies’ presence in Athens with a selection of Iraqi contemporary video art. Previously, she has written for the exhibition catalogues of Blum & Poe (New Images of Man) and held engagements with Autre Magazine and The Hammer Museum.
Film & TV Courses Manager
Elli Skreta is based in Athens, Greece. She is the Film & TV Courses Manager of Oxbelly. Previous positions include: Coordinator of the curatorial team Connectiva (2016-2022); Office Assistant, Athens at the Artistic Director’s office of Documenta 14 (2016-2017); Web - TV Production Manager for the Champs-Élysées Film Festival, Paris France (2016); Head of PR & Communications for the International Film Festival of Patmos (2015-2016); Exhibition Assistant for Kunsthalle Athena (2014- 2015) and Skoufa Gallery (2013); Managing Editor’s Assistant for South as a State of Mind Magazine (2015). She is also the Special Projects Advisor of Outset Greece. She holds a BA degree in Theory & History of Art at the Athens School of Fine Arts.
Operations Director
Greg Tselentis was born in Athens, Greece. He is the Operations Director for Oxbelly (2018-present). He attended Athens College, and after completing his military service, went on to receive his post-graduate diploma in Shipping Management from City College in London. He has been a film buff since his father gave him his first movie on a Betamax tape and has been with Faliro House Productions since 2009, after working for ten years in the shipping industry. Since he joined the company, he has worked in all facets of the film industry from production to post-production.