Austin Film Festival |
2024
Known as the “Writers Festival” since its inception 27 years ago, Austin Film Festival recognizes the importance of narrative at the core of film & TV
Placement
Genre
Format
Representation Status
Winners
Winner
Feature
· Drama
· 98 Pages
Five years after getting attacked and hanged by racists, a mixed-race alcoholic is forced to attend AA, where he ends up being sponsored by one of his attackers.
London, GB
Born in Thailand to an English and German father, and a Malaysian mother. I've lived in seven countries, moving 24 times in 29 years, currently based in London.
Due to several experiences in my life, I found myself drawn to trauma, and when I began to write, it quickly became evident that my interest lay in exploring it, and the relationship peop...
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Winner
Feature
· Comedy
· 100 Pages
Lifelong serial-dater Megan helps her shy best friend Hunter navigate the chaotic Brooklyn dating scene as she struggles to commit to her first serious relationship with a woman, and both are forced to wrestle with how their friendship fits into their evolving lives.
Forrest is a writer of fiction, commentary, and now screenplays. He loves romantic comedies, and his work focuses on quiet, honest stories with complicated and lovable characters. His script Love That For You won the Comedy Feature Prize at the 2024 Austin Film Festival, and was also a finalist for the YMH Studios Comedy Fellowship. A career educato...
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Winner
Feature
· Comedy
· 103 Pages
After playing the Megaball lottery for over a decade, a financially struggling couple's numbers finally come up on the one day they didn't buy a ticket. As the traumatic disappointment begins to destroy their marriage, they must find a way to repair the damage done, or risk losing it all.
Los Angeles, CA
Ever since he first scooped popcorn at AMC in high school, Aaron's entire professional career has revolved around movies and TV. Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros, and Landmark Theatres are just a few companies with whom Aaron has worked, spending 16 years in LA in nearly every phase of production, while pursuing his own creative ventures. Aaron is a six...
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Winner
Podcast
· Sci-fi
· 24 Pages
Cassandra – a living vampire 'cured' of her bloodthirst – desperately searches for her missing scientist father, while fighting the suspicions of an anti-vampire Federal Agent and the terrifying realisation that she is beginning to crave human blood.
Sydney, New South Wales, AU
Growing up in rural Australia, Zaity figured her only means of escape was through science fiction and fantasy stories. Funnily enough, when she later studied at the Australian Film Television and Radio School, those country memories made an indelible impact on her writing (and unfortunately her accent). Zaity has worked as a Development Coordinator...
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SCREECH OF BETRAYAL- THE EAGLE MASCOT VENDETTA
Private
Winner
TV Script
· Comedy
· 32 Pages
No logline available.
No bio available.
Winner
Short
· Sci-fi
· 29 Pages
In a future where a super technology enables humanity to harvest our sun's energy like never before, a glitch in the system puts a distant engineer’s family on Earth in danger, forcing them to come up with creative solutions from millions of miles away.
New York, NY
Sci-Fi & Fantasy writer & author. AFF2024 Winner.
Published: League of Legends tie-in stories (English); Kickstarter-funded comic Split Earth Saga (English); 6 novels & 1 bestselling nonfiction (Mandarin). Inaugural recipient of George R. R. Martin's Terran Award. Love world-building!
Winner
TV Script
· Comedy
· 32 Pages
When a neurotic woman spends her life savings to rescue her hometown’s infamous gym, she and her ragtag employees must turn their shithole into shinola to compete with the fancy fitness chain across the street.
Brooklyn, NY
Dani Hanks (they/she) is a disabled writer/director who subverts the status quo with a bit of comedic flair. They have worked on projects in development at FilmRise, RKO, and TikTok. They are a full-time meme connoisseur, NYU Tisch grad, former member of Mensa, anxious bisexual, and have 10 years of experience cutting animal tissue (much to the dism...
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Winner
Feature
· Drama
· 94 Pages
Three siblings, tasked with settling their grandfather's affairs after his passing, discover shocking evidence suggesting he might be the real killer of Malcolm X. Now, they must decide together how to handle this revelation before the rest of the family arrives for the wake.
Van Nuys, CA
Mason's most recent successes include WINNING the Big Indie Pictures Fellowship Award at the Austin Film Festival, becoming a semi finalist in the Warner Bros/Blklst Incubator Challenge as well as a finalist in the Filmocracy Screenwriter Showdown.
Finalists
Abbot Elementary: Has-Been
Finalist
Television
Comedy
No logline available.
Finalist
Web Series
· Horror
· 8 Pages
When an ancient vampire defies the impossible and turns her coven’s human blood supplier into a vampire--something no vampire has done in over 200
years--a dangerous shift in power between humans and vampires ensues.
Wildomar, CA
No bio available.
Audrey
Finalist
Feature
Sci-fi
No logline available.
Beat Box
Finalist
Television
Drama
No logline available.
Finalist
Podcast
· Drama
· 36 Pages
When a high schooler falsely claims to be a victim of sexual abuse by her counselor to support another survivor, she must uphold her lie as the truth threatens to unravel.
New Haven, CT
Molly Smith is a writer, filmmaker and cancer survivor from the sunshine state who loves writing historical fiction dramedy with female leads. Previously a child model, she found her passion for writing when an acting coach asked her to write and perform her own scene. In 2023, she interned on the Show Writing team with Universal Creative, developin...
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Finalist
Feature
· Horror
· 106 Pages
On Halloween night, four teenagers discover a mysterious substance that transforms them into their costumes. After a classmate is found brutally murdered, they realize they weren't the only ones transformed. Now, they must use their newfound abilities to catch this monster before it kills again.
South Pasadena, California
Kristian grew up in Wisconsin. He received his BA from the University of California, Irvine and MA in History from Cal State Fullerton and in an effort to go to as much school as humanly possible, got his masters in screenwriting from AFI.
Finalist
Feature
· Horror
· 93 Pages
A bloodthirsty maniac terrorizes a group of teenagers trapped inside a "haunted" car wash.
New York, New York
I'm a screenwriter.
Finalist
Web Series
· Other
· 16 Pages
A lone big city newsstand may be ground zero for the death of print and whatever comes next in the age of image
Valley Village, California
Working journalist, LA Times bestelling YA author, published writer of trickster tales, playwright, Austin Film Fest finalist, intermittent raconteur and occasional wandering bard.
Finalist
Feature
· Comedy
· 110 Pages
AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL WINNER!
When the relationship of a long-time married couple suffers from benign neglect, they must decide if it is better to face life on their own or with each other. All while guided by their own wits and the hallucinations of each other.
Denver, Colorado
I am a Colorado native who splits time between Southern California and Denver. Mostly because it doesn't snow in California. There are other reasons but this section is limited. My background is comedy and there's humor in everything I write. My stories are character-driven about people who must change to move forward. My material is in the smaller...
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Finalist
TV Script
· Sci-fi
· 54 Pages
Amidst a devastating oil spill, a marine biologist wrestles with belief as she struggles to find a way to move and understand a colossal, amorphous sea creature that has arrived on shore and claims that it is God.
Bobby Marino is a genre-leaning screenwriter who grew up in the urban decay of Connecticut. He crafts unique, lived-in, often high-concept stories with a personal edge. Stories about outcasts and downtrodden folks desperate for connection or purpose.
Bobby first learned the fundamentals of screenwriting with online resources and numerous books b...
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Drop Dead Funny
Private
Finalist
TV Script
· Comedy
· 36 Pages
The life and career of a Black standup comedian implodes when she discovers she's dying and has five years left to live. With nothing left to lose (but her life), she goes rogue on and off stage.
Los Angeles, CA
Ama writes dark comedies about characters wrestling with the intersecting identities of race, motherhood, and inconvenient love. Her work finds the light in the dark comedy of life.
Many of the themes, settings, and characters in Ama’s scripts are inspired by her community work. She’s been an educator in the prison and public school system and a ...
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Finalist
Feature
· Comedy
· 115 Pages
New York-based journalist, Dia, returns to India for her best friend's wedding—a fairy-tale weekend of opulence, festivity and murder.
Paris, FR
** Indian-born screenwriter
** Graduate of The Oxford School of Drama
** Winner of the CANNESFILMS Unlimited residency (2021)
** Winner of the Geneva International Science in Fiction Screenplay Awards (2023)
** Austin Film Festival Finalist - Enderby Entertainment Screenwriting Award (2024)
Florence Unfiltered
Private
Finalist
TV Script
· Comedy
No logline available.
No bio available.
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Finalist
Feature
· Animated
· 105 Pages
Two bird brothers must forge their own paths after they're both drafted by the worst team in the bird baseball league.
Sherman Oaks, CA
Peter Macaluso is a Latinx writer/director who specializes in horror and rom coms (sometimes at the same time).
His scripts have won 37 awards including comedies, MISCHIEF NIGHT, (Top 20% Nicholl) and FOWL BALL (AFF Finalist).
His horror short, AS LONG AS YOU BOTH SHALL LIVE, led to the optioning of a thriller he co-wrote.
He was a Top 200 Fi...
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Finalist
Feature
· Comedy
· 105 Pages
When a young man struggling with a break up discovers that, with the help of his favorite Cher song, he can travel back in time to key moments in his failed relationship, he attempts to do things differently in order to keep him and his love together. However, he learns that making things work is harder than he thought...
Miles City, MT
James Love felt awkward referring to himself in the third person. And yet, he pressed on, highlighting the grit and determination that earned him a finalist spot at the 2024 Austin Film Festival. What this identical twin and Montana native lacks in industry experience... Well, he actually fails to make up for in formal writing education. But he love...
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Insertion
Finalist
Stage Play
No logline available.
My Marshall
Finalist
Television
Comedy
No logline available.
Novel Romance
Finalist
Television
Comedy
No logline available.
Pound For Pound
Finalist
Feature
Horror
No logline available.
Finalist
Short
· Drama
· 37 Pages
A grieving musician is haunted by a shrouded figure that forces her to confront her loss head-on.
Los Angeles, CA
With a BA in biology and Japanese, Ted has no trouble dissecting a fruit fly or navigating Tokyo. But his greatest passion, storytelling, led him to pursue an MFA in screenwriting at LMU. Ted uses the visual and visceral strengths of sci-fi and horror to externalize struggles like mental illness, grief, and heartbreak, exploring how his characters c...
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Finalist
Feature
· Comedy
· 94 Pages
Following a chance encounter while throwing up in the same public bathroom, a fifty-five year old alcoholic and a twenty-four year old bulimic form an unlikely bond as they attempt to address their unresolved trauma, mend fences with estranged family and slowly head down the path toward recovery.
New York City, NY
Nelson is a screenwriter and lighting designer based in NYC. His scripts have advanced to later rounds in screenwriting programs and contests including Sundance, ScreenCraft, Roadmap Writers, AFF, Page, BlueCat, ISA and Final Draft’s Big Break. Nelson has multiple projects on The Red List, in their respective genres. He recently finished an MFA in ...
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Finalist
Feature
· Drama
· 110 Pages
A Mexican immigrant turned border guard becomes torn between her Americanization and the unexpected bond she forms with a child separated from her father at the height of the border crisis.
Los Angeles, CA
Lily Malm is a Los Angeles-based screenwriter and AFI Fellow. Her feature screenplay "Scent of Marigold", co-written by Laila Matuk, was selected as an American Zoetrope finalist by judge Francis Ford Coppola. The drama also advanced into the Top 5 finalist round in Final Draft's Big Break Screenwriting Contest, the Austin Film Festival, PAGE Awards...
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Show 1 more writers
Finalist
Feature
· Drama
· 110 Pages
When a Marine struggling with PTSD befriends a child whose parents have been detained by ICE, she promises to keep the child safe, but a deadly confrontation turns her into the target of a nationwide manhunt.
Granger, IN
Jessica Sieff is a middle child with a soft-spot for self-deprecating characters forced to confront their deepest fears and vulnerabilities.
As a journalist and communications professional with experience in public relations, corporate communications and science writing, she has interviewed business leaders, athletes, world renowned scientists, g...
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Shrinking: And Breathe
Finalist
Television
Comedy
No logline available.
Signature
Finalist
Television
Drama
No logline available.
Sorry But We're Going to Conceive Tonight
Finalist
Feature
Comedy
No logline available.
Finalist
Stage Play
· Comedy
· 100 Pages
When a spot opens up on the annual family trip, a recently widowed engineer invites his estranged sister to join him and his two teenage children in Bali. Desperate to pretend everything is normal, he must learn to face reality or risk his family slipping further away.
Auckland, Auckland, NZ
Alex is a lapsed lawyer, former actor, and current playwright and screenwriter of New Zealand / Canadian origin. He is an Austin and Screencraft finalist and two-time awardee of script development funding from the New Zealand Writers Guild's competitive Seed Grant initiative. Alex writes energetic, sharp-edged comedies with a deeply felt core; stori...
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The Bear: Water
Finalist
Television
Drama
No logline available.
Finalist
Feature
· Sci-fi
· 104 Pages
Years after 1.3 million people mysteriously appeared from a parallel dimension, a dogged homicide detective is partnered with his parallel counterpart in order to solve a high-profile murder in the heart of Chicago.
Portland, Oregon
Vijay Ilankamban is a science fiction and drama writer based in Portland, Oregon.
His script, These Cuffs Followed Me Home, has received five+ 8 overall reviews on The Black List website and was featured #1 on the Black List Top Lists.
His script, The Dead Bird Sings, was a finalist in the Austin Film Festival and Final Draft Big Break.
...
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Finalist
TV Script
· Drama
· 63 Pages
A misfit band of international aid workers must outmaneuver the dreaded Janjaweed militia to bring lifesaving assistance to victims of the Darfur genocide.
Ottawa, Ontario, CA
No bio available.
The Great: A Hole in the Horizon
Finalist
Television
Drama
No logline available.
Finalist
TV Script
· Drama
· 67 Pages
Based on a true story, the six aristocratic Mitford sisters struggle to find love and meaning in their lives as their family is torn between fascism and communism in turbulent pre-World War II Britain.
Los Angeles, CA
Vivian Kerr is an actor, writer, director, and producer with her company Rue Dangeau. She won the Drama Teleplay category in 2024 at the Austin Film Festival with her pilot THE MITFORDS.
Her debut feature, SCRAP, co-starring Anthony Rapp and Lana Parrilla, which she wrote/directed/starred in had its World Premiere in 2022 at the Deauville-Americ...
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Finalist
Feature
· Drama
· 107 Pages
An unhoused teenager blames herself for an accident that injures her rascally 9-year-old brother, forcing them into a group home where a strangely intuitive social worker pushes her to stop hiding the truth about their mom.
Sherman Oaks, CA
Andrea George Turner's first screenplay, SAGE, won the Hopwood Award & Lawrence Kasdan Award at the University of Michigan. After finishing a YA novel, THE OTHER SIDE OF SLEEP, she jumped back into screenwriting with THE RULE OF THIRDS, which was a semifinalist in The Black List/WIF Feature Residency and won the Grand Prize in Creative Screenwriting...
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THE TREASURES OF PICADILLY'S CROSS
Private
Finalist
Feature
· Adventure
· 108 Pages
After discovering a necklace with time-traveling powers, two bickering cash-strapped writers--a marine archeology student and a struggling rock musician--fall back to 1622 where they search for treasure and a way home before their ship sinks in a devastating hurricane. It's UNCHARTED meets THE LOST CITY.
The Driftless Area, Wisconsin
When Karen declared herself a writer, her reliable middle-class family feared she would starve to death -- or need to borrow money. Either consequence was equally not ideal. She's a 2024 Austin Film Festival finalist with a romantic action/adventure script and a 2024 semifinalist with a romantic comedy script. She's a 2020 WeScreenplay Diverse Voic...
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Finalist
Feature
· Historical
· 112 Pages
A promising but risk-averse college student falls in love with a charismatic activist and joins the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests against government corruption, endangering everything she holds dear.
Salt Lake City, UT
No bio available.
Finalist
Stage Play
· Comedy
· 88 Pages
A near-future love story. In the midst of natural disaster, Sam and Amil clash, lust, fight, and feast, all while defending their positions on what actually makes life worth living—or saving.
New York, NY
Naya is a writer of plays and films, actor and producer in NYC. Much of her work is in the realm of speculative fiction with pop twists of comedy, full-throttle action, even song and dance.
UR KILLING ME
Finalist
Web Series
No logline available.
Finalist
Short
· Thriller
· 21 Pages
A Wall Street wannabe is swept into the underbelly of New York after meeting a seductive drifter.
Los Angeles, CA
Liam’s screenwriting journey started as a Rod Serling fan in their shared hometown in upstate New York. Inspired by Serling’s allegorical storytelling, he attended USC’s film school where his thesis film was selected in over 30 festivals internationally. Since then, he has worked on the production-side of the industry, most recently wrapping as the ...
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Finalist
Feature
· Drama
· 106 Pages
After the sudden death of his brother, high schooler Sonny Guerrero joins the team to face his brother’s rival, whom he holds responsible for his death. While dealing with a guilt, grief, and a deteriorating household.
Marco Rodriguez was born in Chula Vista, California, USA. He is a Location Manager, Writer, and Producer, known for Jinx (2024), The Present (2024), The Blackening (2022), Barry (2022), and Woe (2020). His work has earned him top honors in several film festivals, making him both an award-winning Producer and an award-winning Writer.
We Come in Peace™
Finalist
Television
Comedy
No logline available.
What We Do in the Shadows: Beyond Blood
Finalist
Television
Comedy
No logline available.