ACTION & SCI-FI
Winner
Purebred by Sam Robotham
Sam Robotham is an award-winning screenwriter and non-award-winning filmmaker and podcaster currently based in Brooklyn. With roots in playwriting, his genre bending, character driven scripts have received placements in the Nicholl Fellowship, Austin Film Festival, Screencraft, and was named one of the ISA Top 50.
In 2023, his short film, Deadcoats, had its world premiere at the Lake Placid Film Festival. His career is just beginning and he hopes to have more to put in his bio someday.
Follow on: IG
Runner-up
Avalanche by Andrew
Andrew Vasconcelles has worked on series for CBS, Showtime, USA, and OWN. He is also an avid skier with AIARE 1 avalanche training, and much of his own experience went into writing his feature Avalanche, which has garnered industry interest.
Andrew explores stories that feature thrilling sports, exotic locales, and healthy doses of action and adventure, all of which, unsurprisingly, he prefers in his own life as well.
COMEDY
Winner
Tafheet by Mashael Alqahtani
Mashael Alqahtani is a Saudi Arabian, Muslim writer based between Los Angeles and Saudi Arabia. Her work often depicts women confronting their stunted adolescence, their innermost desires, and the horrifying perils of being a grown-up—she writes what she knows.
Mashael earned a BA in Film Production from Emerson College, an MFA in Writing for Screen & Television from USC, and another MFA in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute. Feel free to ask her why she literally can’t stop going to school. Mashael’s romantic comedy, The Wedding, was a top 10 finalist in the Script Pipeline Screenwriting competition. Her 1-hour dramedy pilot, Shabab, was a quarterfinalist in the 2019 Austin Film Festival.
Mashael spends her free time baking, doom-scrolling, and spinning basketballs on her fingertips.
Follow on: IG
Runner-up
Save the Date by Alex Rubin
Alex Rubin is a fixer. A former press manager, she can fix your image. A former Apple Genius, she can fix your phone. A former PA for the Radio City Rockettes, she can fix… anything.
And while she doesn’t recommend fixing people, her work explores broken families as they attempt to piece themselves back together. Alex’s credits include Netflix’s Sweet Magnolias, iHeart Radio’s Solve, and PEG’s Jackie Cox Variety Show.
She graduated from USC with her MFA in Writing for Film & Television and has placed in competitions including Final Draft Big Break, Austin Film Festival, Barnstorm, and ScreenCraft. She was selected for the 2021 WIF/Black List Episodic Lab with her pilot Lost Hope Hotel and was on ISA’s 25 Screenwriters to Watch in 2023 list. As a playwright and lyricist she’s been awarded the Writers Digest Award in Playwriting, Big Vision Empty Wallet Playwriting Fellowship, and residencies at SPACE on Ryder, SWS, and HBMG’s National Winter Playwrights Retreat.
Her plays and musicals have been produced across the US, Canada, Mexico, and the UK.
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DRAMA
Winner
Sunshower by Stefanos Tai
Stefanos Tai is a Chinese–Greek–American filmmaker. In 2023 he released his debut feature, We Don’t Dance for Nothing— a super-16 love letter to the Filipina Domestic Workers of Hong Kong. Described as La Jetée meets La La Land, the film screened everywhere from festivals to universities to the UN, and was written up by Asia Society, Vice, Tatler, Huffington Post, Kodak, and Vogue, and is now available on Amazon and Tubi. His work has been recognized by Tribeca, SFFILM, Film Lincoln Center, EAVE, Scholastic, TAICCA, and the Hong Kong Asia Financing Forum. He’s also an alum of the Google Creative Lab, and was previously Head of Film for TBWA\ Hong Kong, where he cut his teeth directing branded content.
His feature about aging is in development, in order to convince the world of lessons shared by his grandmother with dementia, to confront his current reality caring for two aging parents, and to make peace with his own potential predisposition for the disease.
Runner-up
Snow Factory by Kelly Royer
Katie Royer (she/they) is a writer, director, and producer based in Los Angeles. She wrote and directed the short film Tea starring Peter Vack and Ellie Sachs, and co-wrote and directed Perpetual Care starring Bonnie Discepolo and Monique Coleman.
Their essay “Here’s What It’s Really like to Work in a Funeral Home” appears in The Huffington Post. Katie is part of the film faculty at Berridge Programs in France.
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HORROR & THRILLER
Winner
The Stag & the Bull by Kelly Walker
Kelly Walker is an Australian multi-hyphenate award-winning filmmaker. Initially, she dreamed of becoming a stripper because she was obsessed with Flashdance as a kid, but her mom suggested that an artist track might be a “wiser” choice (ha! in this economy?!).
Walker made a slew of deliciously bad feature films in her teen years and, upon graduating, was off to Hollywood to go “pro.” And by pro, we’re talking babysitting, video editing gigs, and recurred on a couple of TV shows for the next ten-ish years. The “artist” track is never linear.
With her first feature screenplay, My Fiona, Walker was selected for Australians In Film’s Writers Lab. Walker went on to direct My Fiona, which premiered at London’s BFI LGBTIQ+ Festival, had an award-winning festival run, and secured a ReFrame Stamp. My Fiona was distributed through Freestyle Digital and is available on-demand. If you need a good cry, this movie is for you.
Walker’s Audrey Hepburn biopic, The Beauty of a Woman, was a Semi-Finalist for The Black List x Stowe Story Labs and a second-rounder for Austin Film Festival. Walker wrote the adaptation of The Upside of Falling Down, based on the novel by Rebekah Crane, for Embankment Films. Walker’s original screenplays delve into the complexities of women navigating intimate relationships, blending emotional depth with a dash of dark humor.
When she’s not writing, you’ll find Walker obsessively reading everything and anything—books, reddit, tarot, and birth charts … she’s a self-proclaimed nosy lil’ voyeur.
Walker is a member of WIF, AIF, Film Fatales, ULSC & Gotham, and is a 2024 WIF Writer Fellow.
Follow on: IG
Runner-up
Jean Jacket by Nat Rovit
Nat Rovit is a multi-disciplinary artist and award-winning filmmaker.
His screenplays have been recognized by the Austin Film Festival and the Academy Nicholl Fellowship and his films have played at festivals all over the world including Cannes, IndieLisboa, and San Sebastian. Nat’s 1970’s grindhouse throwback Honeymoon at Cold Hollow premiered in competition at the 2023 Seattle International Film Festival and went on to win the award for Best Short at the Nightmares Film Festival in Columbus, OH.
Nat holds a BFA in Film Production from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He resides in Los Angeles with his wife and son where, in addition to writing and directing, he has worked at several of the industry’s premiere film studios including Searchlight Pictures and Paramount Pictures. As an executive, Nat produces creative advertising for major features. Credits include Gladiator 2, and Academy Award winners The Shape of Water, The Favourite, Jojo Rabbit, and Nomadland.
TV (HOURLONG)
Winner
Hell LP by Stacy Adelman
Stacy Adelman is a writer who accidentally went to law school and then was a lawyer for a few years. Stacy would like her parents to know she really tried everything she could to not be a writer, including running business affairs for SNL, but it was impossible—she left to pursue writing full-time in 2021.
Stacy was the writers’ assistant on the first season of NBC’s “Night Court,” where she co-wrote Episode 114 (“When Abby Met Gabby”) featuring Melissa Villaseñor. Her feature is in development with Sorry Mom Pictures.
Follow on: IG
Runner-up
The Monster Hypothesis by Romily Bernard
Before her debut novel, Find Me, released, Romily Bernard worked as an exercise rider, sales assistant, groom, and during a very dark time, customer service rep. So don’t let anyone tell you a BA degree will keep you unemployed.
Since then, she’s written multiple young adult and middle grade books for publishers such as Harper-Collins, Disney-Hyperion, and Simon and Schuster, UK.
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TV (HALF-HOUR)
Winner
Superfakes by Yagmur Tok
Yagmur Tok is a Turkish immigrant and comedy writer based in Los Angeles. A graduate of Northwestern University’s theatre department, Yagmur writes irreverent coming-of-age stories with global appeal, centered around misfit female protagonists. When she’s not using humor as a coping mechanism, Yagmur can be found producing Webby award-winning marketing campaigns, launching viral TikTok accounts, and cuddling with her designer British Shorthair cat, Raisin.
Yagmur’s scripts have also placed in Big Break, Launchpad, WeScreenplay, Sundance Episodic, CineStory, and the Coverfly Red List. Yagmur was recently in S2 of Amy Aniobi’s (Insecure) TRIBE Writers’ Program.
Runner-up
Nic of Time by Mayuran Tiruchelvam & Willem Lee
Mayuran Tiruchelvam is a screenwriter and producer of film and television. Their filmmaking is fueled by a vision for a more compassionate and openhearted world. They are the Marcus Endowed Chair of Social Justice Filmmaking at San Francisco State University.
Mayuran’s feature screenplay The Girl is in Trouble (2015) was executive produced by Spike Lee and a critics’ pick from the Village Voice and RogerEbert.com
Mayuran’s producing credits include To Be Takei (Sundance 2014), The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin (Audience Award, SXSW 2017), Across The Sea (Audience Award, Slamdance 2015), The Mend (SXSW 2014), and My First Kiss and the People Involved (LA Film Festival 2016).
Mayuran is a Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellow, Film Independent Documentary and FastTrack Fellow, and a member of the Directors Guild of America.
Willem Lee is a New York based writer and director.
He wrote and directed The End of the World – about an analytic boy who befriends a classmate belonging to an apocalyptic cult – screened at the Sedona Film Festival, Napa Valley Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Kustendorf Film & Music Festival (Serbia), and won Best Short at the Korean American Film Festival. He co-wrote the short film The Loyalist – about the relationship of a boarding school student and her father, a North Korean general – which screened at the Sarasota, Boston International, Ojai, and NBC Universal Film Festivals.
Willem was the cinematographer on the documentary North Korea: People Are The Sky, for which he traveled to North Korea twice.
Willem currently teaches screenwriting to undergraduates at SUNY FIT in Manhattan. He obtained a B.A. in philosophy from Gordon College in Massachusetts and an MFA in Directing from Columbia University.