Here is the list of 2023 screenplay winners from the FEMALE Festival.
Watch the 16 winning screenplay best scene readings:
TINU, by Nirali Shastri
TV Pilot – Toronto Festival
Tinu, an Indian woman in her 40s, is going through a divorce. Leaving her acting career in Los Angeles and moving in with her parents in Buffalo, NY, Tinu attempts to rebuild her life as she pursues her back up engineering career plan with a job as a Construction Inspector. What she expects to be a devastating life change turns out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to her.
Lucky For You, by Heidi Kozak Haddad, Caroline Somers
Feature Script – Toronto Festival
LUCKY FOR YOU is a comedy about a people-pleasing woman named Ellie who wins big in the lottery, but instead of lavishing herself with the best money can buy, she hides her winnings and uses the money to secretly transform her slacker husband into the successful man she always dreamt he would become; however, when her plan to rebuild his self-esteem works, Ellie’s life implodes when her husband becomes an unrecognizable douchebag.
Female Fest Best Scene: Lucky For You, by Heidi Kozak Haddad, Caroline Somers
THE BIRTHDAY LIST, by Jacqueline Escolme
Feature Script
Inspired by a young adventurer, a frustrated midlife wife escapes her marriage and flies to America with a birthday bucket list that helps her find truth, freedom and the future she’s waited twenty years for.
THE BIRTHDAY LIST. Female Festival Best Scene. by Jacqueline Escolme
BLACK SUNDAY, by Katreana Bellew
Feature Script
A young fireman, and father of four, jumps to his death to escape a Bronx fire alongside four other firemen. Upon inspection of the fire, it becomes clear that both the building owners and the city of New York are at fault. The fireman’s wife and the surviving, but chronically injured, men from the fire must grapple with the subsequent court case and their own trauma resulting from the tragic day.
Winning FEMALE Festival 1st Scene: Black Sunday, by Katreana Bellew
OUTER BANKERS, by Diann Ducharme
TV Pilot
When Nolan, a powerful plantation owner, moves his family to a new oceanside home in North Carolina in the late 1860s, his highly educated daughter Abigail struggles to accept the role she’s expected to play. Powerful forces work in the shadows, eager to corrupt the family and harness their power and influence to further a dark agenda.
FEMALE Festival Best Scene Script: Outer Bankers, by Diann Ducharme
EXPIRED, by Wendy Braff
TV Pilot
Five female friends over 50 have had enough of being dismissed and ignored by a society that thinks of them as “expired.” When they decide they’re no longer going to give a fuck, their lives truly begin.
Presumption, by Andy Healy
TV Pilot
As a jury deliberates, a desperate and disenfranchised African-American mother looks to balance the scales of justice by taking the lead prosecutor hostage and forcing her torelook atthe case against her son and prove his innocence before the verdict is handed down.
Switch With Me, by Lexi Morgan
Feature Script
Two sisters form a plan to switch lives after one’s husband is caught cheating.
Off The Rack, by Pilar Gibson
TV Pilot
Desperate to break into the New York fashion scene of the 1970s, a struggling designer funds her clothing line by teaming up with an ex-model to counterfeit luxury clothes.
LITTLE GREEN MEND, by Linda Whitmore
Feature Script
A plant-like-alien from a distant planet receives a school assignment to help another planet without revealing themselves and gets assigned Earth.
FEMALE Festival 1st Scene: LITTLE GREEN MEND, by Linda Whitmore
THE LOVELY MISS MERCER, by Heidi Lauren Duke
Feature Script
With the world at war, a penniless socialite must keep her affair with Franklin Delano Roosevelt a secret from his wife — as well as the rest of the nation.
FEMALE Festival 1st Scene: The Lovely Miss Mercer, by Heidi Lauren Duke
THE BLAKENEYS, by Brigid May
Feature Script
During the French Revolution, a band of heroes rises to combat the slaughter of innocents. Yet when a French spy looks to bring down the leader by blackmailing his estranged wife, the lines between the rescuer and rescued are blurred and the couple’s lives altered forever.
KISS OF DARKNESS, by Michael McClung
Feature Script
In 1960, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has recently been evacuated by Belgian forces in the face of violent uprisings, leaving new Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba’s, 35, shaky government to ward off both America and Russia, who contend for the rich natural resources of uranium, diamonds, copper, and cobalt. The capital city of Kinshasa is war-torn and violent, prone to constant uprisings and full of security checkpoints. Fires and gunfights rage day and night.
FEMALE Festival 1st Scene Reading: KISS OF DARKNESS, by Michael McClung
GOLD MOUNTAIN EXPRESS, by Gene Lassers
Feature Script
The Nazis conquer Warsaw at the beginning of World War II and take-over the infamous Jewish Ghetto. The last shipment of valuables leaves Berlin for
FEMALE Festival BEST SCENE: GOLD MOUNTAIN EXPRESS, by Gene Lassers
ALL THAT YOU LOVE, by Ken Gire
Feature Script
A teenager’s idyllic life on a German farm is shattered during World War II by a ruthless Soviet invasion that separates her from her family, putting
MOTHER SUPERIOR, by James W Goulde
Feature Script
In 1350s Florence, an insecure nun unwillingly becomes the Mother Superior after the Plague kills the leaders of her nearly bankrupt convent. To save her convent, she must find the strength to confront the male dominated Church, Guilds and civil authorities, and her own demons.
FEMALE Festival Best Scene: MOTHER SUPERIOR, by James W Goulde
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