Screenplay Competition 2021 Finalists
A screenplay serves as the written plan for a film or television program. It provides the guidelines and dialogue for creating a new cinematic event. Each year the Ojai Film Festival holds a competition seeking the best new screenplays.
This year the Ojai Film Festival’s sixth annual Screenplay Competition received submissions from across America, Europe and Asia. A panel of readers read each entry and a panel of industry-veteran judges wil review the finalists. The winning screenwriter receives a Festival trophy, a “live read” of the screenplay during the Film Festival by a group of Ojai and area actors, and the opportunity to create a five minute “promo” video.
2021 finalists:
- School Story by Jit Fong Oon (Singapore)
- More Than One Idiot Brother by Pearce Lehane (Edenbridge, Kent, UK)
- The Confessor by Melissa Birks (Los Angeles, CA)
Semifinalists:
- I Knew It Was You by Drew Wagner
- The Ant Colony by Frances Spencer (Ventura, CA)
- Ghosties by Julie Sharbutt (Los Angeles, CA)
- Face Painters by Giovanni Sanseviero (New Hyde Park, NY)
- Tears On the Wind by Jeri Fonté
- The King’s Crown by Jack McLaughlin
- In the Sack by Arthur Tiersky
- The Passage of Sun by Aaron Braxton (Roxbury, MA)
- Penelope’s War! by Nancy “Sunny” Ellis and Marc L. Ellis (Ojai, CA)
Bruce Novotny, the curator of this program and an OFF board member, commented: “The screenplay is the starting point of the movie making process, and these writers have all crafted fascinating blueprints for the movies they have imagined.”