Winners
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RANGER CREED
Travis Opgenorth • Action • Feature • 107 pages
When his half-brother, a U.S. Army Ranger, is taken hostage by extremists in North Africa, a wayward and guilt-ridden former Ranger reluctantly enlists the help of his estranged father, a retired, decorated Ranger veteran. The two men will have to work through years of resentment and mistrust before they can find redemption in rescuing the missing Ranger.
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The 49th Day
Craig Peters • Horror • Feature • 106 pages
A young girl's imaginary friend starts killing her family off, one by one. But how can you stop Death when she wants to play? (This script has won myriad contests, including a couple of Grand Prizes, and was selected for the prestigious BloodList.)
Finalists
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Mrs. McGuire’s Christmas Spirit
George Petersen • Family • Feature • 122 pages
An elderly woman drowning in grief over her son's overdose decades earlier gets carjacked by a scatterbrained teenager — whose uncanny resemblance to her dead son invokes his haywire wraith. Now she finds herself having to do battle with two teenagers: one alive, one not so much.
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How to Catch A Time Traveler
Graham Parke • Drama • Feature • 102 pages
In 2009 Stephen Hawking proved time travel was impossible. He did this by holding a time traveler's convention and sending out the invitations after the fact. This way only time travelers could attend. No one showed up. If time travelers just needed a forum to prove their abilities, this experiment might have worked, but how do you catch a time traveler who doesn't want to get caught? Pilot Logline: Years after Rick's mother and sister mysteriously vanish, he creates special facial recognition software that shows a girl, who doesn't seem to age, popping up in the background of his childhood photos. But when this software gets him arrested on hacking charges, he is recruited by a shadowy organization to help capture the first ever time traveler. The girl who springs his traps, however, looks all too familiar.
Semifinalists
Quarterfinalists
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Obadiah
Tony Schweikle • Historical • Feature • 106 pages
OBADIAH is a faithful retelling of I Kings 21, which prophesies King Ahab’s downfall and the House of Omri’s destruction. It’s a lesser-known biblical chapter rich in drama and political conflict, making for compelling source material for theatrical adaption.
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The Ni'ihau Incident
andrew klukowski • Drama • Feature • 136 pages
An Hawaiian leader on the privately owned, "Forbidden Island", of Ni'ihau must act against his Christian upbringing and defend the island against a downed and desperate Japanese pilot, immediately following the attack on Pearl harbor.
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The Revolutionist
Joel Turtel, Julie Paupe • Historical • Feature • 120 pages
Once he was André-Louis Moreau, a young lawyer raised by nobility, unconcerned with the growing discontent among France’s lower class—until his best friend was mercilessly struck down by a member of the aristocracy. Now he is Scaramouche, an outlaw and relentless avenger of his friend’s death, and his path to vengeance sparks the French Revolution.
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THE ABOLITIONISTS
Leslie Lyshkov • Western • Feature • 150 pages
In 1853, a Manchu nobleman ventures to gold rush era California to end the shipment of Sharps rifles to China's Taiping rebels. He finds the gunrunners are a cartel of Southern Secessionists and Chinese Tongs and forges an alliance between armed, bleeding-Kansas Abolitionists and recently conquered Mexican-Americans to bring the cartel down.
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3D AT THE PALACE
KENT WILSON • Drama • Feature • 120 pages
Mourning the death of his father, a teenager in this small Missouri town is determined to keep his dad's beloved movie palace afloat against rising competition from Television and boiling racial tensions over the theatre's colored section in the 1950s.
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Ninja Love Story
Rodney Lawrence Bernardo • Action • Feature • 112 pages
A kind and socially awkward ninja loses his hand in a freak accident and is forced to take daredevil missions in order to survive. His latest assignment sends him to a sleepy mountain town, where he quickly learns that love and friendship, are equally as challenging as the warlord he must eliminate, in this unusually sophisticated and character-driven, martial-arts adventure.
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Sardis the Merciful
Christian Thomas • Horror • Feature • 106 pages
When a king wakes up to the sound of assassins creeping into his bedchamber, he knows his past has caught up with him. He must escape and make his way through mysterious caves, rowdy brothels, and savage battlefields... all for one last chance at redemption, and bloody revenge.
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Catch!
Jerry Nield • Drama • 107 pages
Based on the true story of a 10yr old Irish cross-eyed boy's struggle to escape the coal mines and rescue his family from Hell in the 1870s. Eventually he finds love, self-worth, becomes a father and a champion but tragically it's all taken away by a corrupt Chicagoan sports promoter who wears a priest's collar and is called "The Parson". A struggle for justice is inevitable.
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INVISIBLE SCARS
Edward Klau • Thriller • Feature • 90 pages
When three dead bodies are discovered in their backyard, Charly Cahill and her mother Rebecca must survive a serial killer who has left them a note announcing them as next on his menu. What’s worse, a brutal snowstorm has stranded them on The Hill, the remote mountain they call home but now may become their final resting place.
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The Remarkable Tale of Phineas P. Gage
Tom Vecchio • Drama • Feature • 106 pages
In 1848, railroad worker Phineas Gage had a horrific accident blowing a hole in his left frontal lobe. Church going Phineas emerged from a coma into a libertine with a photographic memory, a P.T. Barnum actor frequenting brothels and opium dens . Was this life-altering event physiological or an excuse to leave behind Puritan society?
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COYOTE AND THE DUST DEVIL
Jonah Jones • Feature • 93 pages
Anna - a thirteen year old girl walks away from the remote farm in New Mexico that she has destroyed by creating a tornado, killing her parents in the process. She has lost faith in the fundamentalist church to which the family belonged and is trying to get to the sea where she knows Jesus lives, in order to gain his forgiveness. A Navajo policewoman – Maria - is concerned about her safety, even more so as she learns that a young Mescalero Apache with a history of anti-government behaviour is leading her towards his reservation. The FBI - or possibly a less well-known government organisation - becomes involved. This child could be a new means of waging war. Anna leaves the reservation when the young Apache's mother explains that he wants to use her as a weapon against the uranium mining bosses who killed his father. Led by Coyote, Anna makes her way to a policewoman's house and stays there until she is kidnapped by the shadow-FBI. The police, together with a rag-tag group of Mescalero, confront the FBI at a lonely farmhouse. Anna is taken back to the reservation where it's thought she will be safe. The army sends in two Chinooks and two attack helicopters to extract Anna but she has already gone. They and the police follow her into the White Sands desert where she calls upon her animal friends and her understanding of the Apache ceremonial dancing to bring down the helicopters. Anna walks way to the Trinity Shrine and then westwards, towards the sea, Coyote following her, the dust-devil wiping her tracks clean.
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The Flid Show
Richard Willett • Drama • Feature • 111 pages
A charismatic, belligerent English nightclub singer, born with flipper-like arms because his pregnant mother took the drug thalidomide, believes his deformity will keep him from ever finding love -- until he falls for a pretty young American doctor, with intimacy issues of her own, and must confront his own dark past in order to win her.
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The Intruder
Robert Rhyne • Horror • Feature • 107 pages
After a tragic death, a grieving mother moves into an isolated farm to start a new life – only to discover the farm is haunted by the ghost of a young man who committed suicide there, and he’s targeted her troubled teenage son as his next victim.
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Just Kill Me Already
Sundae Jahant-Osborn • Comedy • Feature • 102 pages
JUST KILL ME ALREADY (comedy) Desperate to win the role of a lifetime, down and out actor Johnnie drunkenly hires a hitman to “eliminate” his competition. But acting is a risky business, and without the money to pay up, Johnnie soon realizes hiring a hitman can actually have deadly consequences.
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The Last Execution
Tom Vecchio • Historical • Feature • 113 pages
The bizarre true story of Elizabeth “Ma” Duncan, last woman executed in California for having her daughter-in-law murdered because of an uncomfortably close relationship with her attorney son. Elizabeth was addicted to pills, a bigamist, turned tricks to pay for her son’s law school whose trial became an international sensation.
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Inked In Blood
PAUL CORRICELLI • Horror • Feature • 108 pages
A tortured man returns to the town he ran away from as a child to exact his revenge on all those who wronged him. Not only to mend the shattered pieces of his own life, but for his mother's suffering as well, and ultimately face the one man he fears the most. His father.
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A Labour of Love
Olga Holtz • Historical • Feature • 117 pages
Striving to restore the epic film NAPOLEON, an obsessed English film-maker sacrifices all - money, personal life, career - to his idol: the delusional genius director of the mutilated masterpiece, who sabotages the restoration. Based on a true story.