Lebanese filmmaker Mounia Akl is officially entering her Kate Winslet era. The Costa Brava, Lebanon director is set to direct The Unheard, a new five-part Netflix thriller starring Winslet and Maxine Peake, written by Adolescence creator Jack Thorne. The series follows two sisters who go on the run after a revenge plot goes very, very wrong. Production is set to begin in 2027, with a release date still to be announced.
It’s a pretty exciting next chapter for a filmmaker whose work has always had one foot firmly in Lebanon, even when the stories themselves stretch far beyond it. So, before we see what she does with The Unheard, here’s a look back at some of Mounia Akl’s work that got her here.
Submarine
Long before Costa Brava, Lebanon, there was Submarine, Akl’s 2016 short about Hala, a woman who refuses to evacuate her home as Lebanon’s garbage crisis closes in around her.
The film was selected for the Cinéfondation section at Cannes and later screened at festivals including TIFF and Dubai, where it won the Muhr Jury Prize.
And Submarine wasn’t just a standalone idea. Akl has described it as a kind of fragment of what would eventually become Costa Brava, Lebanon. Which makes sense: she has long been interested in using families and their relationships as a way of looking at what is happening in the larger society around them.
As she once put it, she’s “always been obsessed with family” and how its cracks can reveal the cracks in society.
Costa Brava, Lebanon
A family leaves a polluted Beirut behind and retreats to a supposedly self-sufficient home in the mountains. Sounds peaceful enough — until a garbage landfill appears right outside their fence.
Suddenly, the family has a choice: leave again or stay and fight.
That premise became Akl’s feature debut, Costa Brava, Lebanon, which premiered at Venice in 2021 before making its way through TIFF and BFI London. It picked up the NETPAC Prize at TIFF, the BFI London audience award and the FIPRESCI Award for Best Debut at El Gouna, among other recognition.
Despite being set mostly in the mountains, Akl has said the film is ultimately about Beirut — and, more broadly, that complicated feeling of loving a place that keeps giving you reasons to leave.
That tension between home and escape has become one of the most recognizable threads in her work.
Boiling Point
Then came a very different kind of pressure cooker.
Akl directed episodes three and four of the BBC’s Boiling Point, following Carly as she tries to keep her new restaurant afloat while juggling an increasingly chaotic kitchen and an even messier personal life. The first two episodes were directed by creator Phil Barantini, with Akl taking over for the second half.
It might sound like a departure from her earlier work, but the obsession with people under pressure is still very much there. Only this time, instead of a landfill creeping toward the family home, it’s a restaurant kitchen coming apart at the seams.
The Responder Series 2
Akl then stepped into the world of British crime drama, directing episodes of BBC’s The Responder series 2, starring Martin Freeman.
The series follows a Liverpool police responder working punishing night shifts while his professional and personal lives unravel around him. Akl’s episodes marked another move into large-scale television while still fitting neatly into her interest in characters navigating pressure, instability and complicated moral choices.
House of Guinness
Then came Netflix’s House of Guinness.
The period drama chronicles the Guinness family following the death of Sir Benjamin Guinness in 1868 and the battle over what happens to the empire he leaves behind. Akl directed the final three episodes of the eight-part series, following the first five directed by Tom Shankland.
And even though the Guinness family is a very long way from the Badris of Costa Brava, Akl found something familiar in the material: dysfunctional families, power struggles and the way larger political tensions can seep into the most personal relationships.
“I always try to find a way to make it personal,” she has said about taking on projects she hasn’t written.
For Akl, being Lebanese is part of that perspective. She has described the “pain and love” she has for Lebanon as something that helps her understand people with complicated relationships to their homes and families.
A Sad and Beautiful World
Akl hasn’t only been behind the camera.
She also starred in A Sad and Beautiful World, playing Yasmina alongside Hasan Akil. The film follows a couple whose relationship unfolds across decades, with their love, family and decisions constantly shaped by Lebanon’s political realities.
So even when she isn’t directing, that familiar Akl territory — love, home, family, Lebanon and the question of whether you stay or go — keeps showing up.
And Now, The Unheard
Which brings us back to Kate Winslet.
The Unheard will see Akl directing a five-episode Netflix thriller about two sisters who flee after an act of revenge goes sideways. Winslet and Maxine Peake lead the cast, with Jack Thorne writing and production expected to begin in 2027.
It’s a much bigger international stage, but in some ways, the premise feels perfectly suited to Akl: complicated women, complicated families, secrets, violence and the messy reasons people make impossible choices.
And if there’s one thing her filmography has made pretty clear, it’s that Mounia Akl doesn’t really do simple relationships with home, family or anything else.
Now she gets to bring that perspective to Netflix — with Kate Winslet along for the ride.
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