the business of screenwriting

ATHENA
THE BUSINESS OF SCREENWRITING
2009
RUN BY
ATHENA SCREENWRITERS
We are delighted to present the 12 women screenwriters who have been selected for
the second running of the Athena Screenwriting Lab.
From low-budget thrillers to international action films, and from period rom-coms
to coming-of-age dramas, this year’s Athena participants offer a highly diverse and
eclectic mix of material, which we believe offers outstanding opportunities for
producers and agents.
The 2009 programme runs over 10 months and features workshops with leading
screenwriters, producers and agents, one-to-one mentoring sessions and dedicated
marketing on a per-project basis both in the UK and internationally. The
Lab aims to go a little way to address the low representation of women as credited
screenwriters on UK feature films, as concluded in the 2007 UK Film Council report “Writing British Films - who writes British Films and how they are recruited”.
Athena also runs a producers’ and directors’ programme and is administered on a
ring-fenced not-for-profit basis through Initialize Films.
We hope you find projects and writers of interest to you in the brochure and if
you have any questions or would like to be involved in the 2009 programme
then please contact us at [email protected] or see
www.initialize-films.co.uk
Athena - The Business of Screenwriting Director: IAN DAVIES
Founding Advisory Committee:
JULIETTE TOWHIDI
SARAH GOLDING
PIPPA CROSS
MARTHA FIENNES
KATHERINE BUTLER
Many thanks to Emily Man,The Hospital,
Athena’s Advisory Committee and tutors for their support.
REBECCA WOLMAN
[email protected]
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After studying History of Art at the Sorbonne Paris, Drama at
Manchester University and several directing and screenwriting
courses, Rebecca ran her own physical theatre company, whose
shows toured internationally and performed on London’s West
End.
A frequent guest director at London drama schools, and abroad
for the British Council, she finally fulfilled her dream of running
away to the circus to direct Kirkas Florentine, Israel’s only
permanent (non-animal) circus.
Rebecca currently spends her time between London, Tel Aviv
and Los Angeles, writing for a variety of British, American
and Israeli film companies, emotional intense thrillers in which
richly distinct worlds in expansive settings are brought to life.
She is also Head of Content & Development for Snowball
Productions, Israel’s leading Animation Studio.
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PROJECTS
ADAMAS- A roller-coaster action thriller inspired by a true story.
Dave Lewis is a rough stone, lightly polished. A tough yet scrupulously honest street
kid who has worked his way out of the trash to be one of glitzy LA’s leading diamond
dealers. But when his trusted, diamond-dealing boss cons him, rather than lose all,
Dave resorts to his savvy and retaliates. The consequences are devastating as Dave
is dragged into a minefield of global state-backed diamond mafias, struggling to
hang on to his life.
ADAMAS exposes as never before, the real inside machinations of the secretive
and seductive diamond industry. It is a heroic David/Goliath story, in which the little
man of honour dares to battle against the mighty, armed with little more than his
wits and his integrity.
DESERT HEART- A powerful political love story thriller.
Set in the midst of a Fundamentalist Revolution in a semi-modern Islamic State,
this is one woman’s quest to be reunited with her estranged, secret husband – the
newly appointed, liberal reformist Crown Prince. Contact between them is fatal and
as the turbulence closes in, he begs her to flee with their child. But there are some
in power who have other ideas for their young son... The couple is trapped. Between
their love for each other, and the demands of the State (and the world), which he
must defend from the advancing “holy” war. As West meets the Middle East, this is
a contemporary Edward and Mrs Simpson, a modern day Romeo and Juliet.
DOUBLE ASPECT- A dark, intense psychological thriller with a chilling twist.
When sassy career girl, Charlie McDermott finds her dream, double-aspected house
perched high on the edge of Topanga Canyon, she does her usual spunky stuff and
convinces the enigmatic English owner he should sell it to her. He concedes. On one
condition: he remain as tenant. Charlie goes for it. And for him. And the two are
soon living together, in love. But as disturbing details about Danny’s past emerge, so
too surprises about Charlie are revealed. For when it comes to relationships, nothing
is ever quite what it seems – there’s always a double aspect.
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TRUDIE SHUTLER
[email protected]
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Trudie has completed several writing courses (including an
MA in Screenwriting) but found life experience has been a
much richer source of learning and inspiration. To this end,
she has worked in the newspaper industry, been a Child Care
Officer, a human resources manager, a retail buyer, a secretary,
a grape picker, and a voice over artist. She also went on holiday to Australia and stayed for 12 years.
She has written five feature film scripts which have been on the
final shortlists of nearly every scheme going – Film Commission 25 words or less, Pygmalion, Rocliffe, Australian Film
Commission, Moonstone etc and has received funding from the
UK Film Council. She was also selected for and attended the
BBC New Writers Initiative 2006.
Trudie currently works in an art house cinema as well as being
on the Board of Directors of Moviola, a rural cinema exhibitor
across the South of England.
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PROJECTS
ANGEL FACE- Feature film, thriller
When they are bad, they are very very bad but when they are good they are evil
An unrepentant teenager is released from detention into the care of an exclusive
boarding school where he must undergo a program of therapy aimed at preventing
him from reoffending. When his only friend is found dead, Billy is determined to find
out what happened to him and discovers the Alpha students, a self appointed judiciary court of teens who use increasingly brutal methods to impose order amongst
the pupils. As the Alpha students lose their grip on reality, Billy discovers that, unbeknownst to them, they are all the subjects of a drug experiment to make them
“good”. In fact, their erratic behaviour signals the failure of the experiment, but the
Head is not concerned, because Billy is going to be his star lab rat …
LAUNDRY- Feature film, romantic drama
The only place colours should be separated is the wash
Babita is a beautiful young Asian woman who arrives in the UK from Zimbabwe
and employs the gorgeous Afro-Carribean Ed to help her find the husband who absconded on her wedding night with her dowry. Babita is prepared to settle for commitment without love: Ed wants love without the commitment. They embark on a
road trip to find Babita’s errant husband, Vijay. When they lose their money, their
car and their dignity, they are forced to refuge on the Yorkshire moors. They are
about to admit their growing attraction for each other when the lovesick Vijay finds
them. They are both challenged to make a choice and take control of their destiny.
The only thing holding them back is themselves.
MOGGY BOY- Feature film, family/modern fairytale
A young boy discovers the mythical beast of Bodmin in a dark and forbidden forest,
and then kills it. Full of remorse, he becomes the guardian of its orphaned cub which
isn’t easy when you live in a tower block.
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LUCY HAY
[email protected]
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Lucy Hay is a professional script reader/editor, writer and
DIY filmmaker (www.lucyvee.blogspot.com). She has read
for the likes of TAPs, The Screenwriters’ Festival, Premiere
Picture and Scottish Screen as well as individual directors, producers and writers, new to professional. Lucy script
edited Triad gangster film ACT OF GRACE as well as
THE SERPENT PRINCIPLE, a detective thriller, packaging now. Recently she signed an option on her horror/satire
THE PLAYHOUSE with January Films and has projects
in development with Mead Kerr, Edinburgh and Touch Films,
Bath.
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PROJECTS
POSSESSION- Psychological thriller
A single mother believes her manipulative boyfriend is out to harm her and
her child, but he ensures no one else believes her, forcing her to take drastic
action.
GRACE- Drama
When her father murders the rest of his family then commits suicide, young
Grace is landed in care and then juvenile detention. As an adult, Grace is
forced to come to terms with her father’s heinous crime when she falls pregnant accidentally.
IN PROGRESS
HUNTER’S EYE- Horror
A party girl and her friends take a shortcut in their car across moorlands via
a rocky outcrop known locally as “The Hunter’s Eye” and become the target
of a sniper. They must make it to the village, but discover even worse things
are waiting for them on the other side.
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PHYLLIS McGOWAN
[email protected]
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A new graduate of Screen Academy Scotland (August 09)
with an MA in Screenwriting. Phyllis has a background in
psychology and is an experienced counsellor. Her first short
‘Everlastin Love’ is in development with Director William
Mager, her second ‘Fly Away’ is being edited by director Jim
Sullivan of Main Street Productions. Phyllis is being mentoredh
by Scottish Screen along with seven other Scottish writers
to attend Cheltenham Screenwriters Festival, with her feature
script Candy Floss, through the Scottish Writers Market
Ready for Cheltenham Scheme.
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PROJECTS
CANDY FLOSS- Feature- Relationship Drama with thriller elements
The bright lights of Blackpool illuminate a young girl’s desperate journey.
When fifteen year old innocent Rose, lost and desperate for love, runs to
Blackpool in search of her father, she quickly finds friends who are in a
worse place than herself. Rose falls in love with Mark who cannot save her
from the darker forces at work in Blackpool, while her dad, a tagged home
prisoner, searches for her. As Rose’s need for her father becomes even more
desperate, he too realises his salvation is dependent on finding her.
HUGH WITHOUT LIZ- Feature- Drama/Romance
A recently retired and bereaved man tries to hang on to his past but discovers that the present is all there is. Hugh’s house is full of his dead wife’s
things. With the approaching anniversary of her death his sisters are worried about him but they have problems enough of their own. Stella, stuck
in the past and the bitterness of a failed relationship and Miriam trying
desperately to propel herself into a better future while missing her son Martin grow up. When Hugh goes to Paris on holiday his sisters worry that he
is trying to relive past holidays with Liz, but a turn of events makes them all
view things in a different light.
MAXWELTON AVENUE- Television series
‘The Street’ for middle class women. The hanging baskets of Maxwellton
Avenue are well turned out, but the Bizzy Lizzies can’t always camouflage
the secrets of the women inside. A series of stories about middle class Scottish Suburban Life and the secrets that women keep.
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LINDSEY DARKING
[email protected]
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Lindsey writes innovative, satirical and quirky stories that
challenge what we take for granted, as well as psychological
dramas, comedies and thrillers. She is currently working
on West, an alternative Western, Rockers, an ageing-rock
comedy, Blue Zircon, a ghost thriller, Mr Right, Mr Wrong,
a romantic comedy and other TV and film ideas.
Lindsey’s feature script Shrink won top prize on her MA
course and was selected for the Media-funded European
Four Corners film project in 2008. She reached the finals
of the Screenwriters’ Festival live pitching competition in
2008 with Baby Love and in 2009 wrote TV series episode
Backlash with support from mentor Steve Matthews of
Size 9 Productions. She is an experienced journalist and
runs her own writing and PR company.
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PROJECTS
SHRINK- A sci-fi satire
Society has become obsessed by physical beauty, image and youth and an
underclass of old, fat, ugly rejects is getting seriously fed up. A mysterious
disease is also making people shrink, striking fear and panic into everyone.
Unfortunately it’s up to superficial, narcissistic PR guy Dan Delaney to sort
this mess out and to help the uglies improve their image.
BABY LOVE- TV drama
Retired nurse Marjorie Hart finds an abandoned newborn baby one night
while out walking her dog, but – troubled by the break-up of her marriage
– she keeps the baby rather than handing it in. When the baby’s teenage
mother Fiona turns up wanting to know why, Marjorie’s ordered life takes a
turn for the worse. Embroiled in the complicated relationship between Fiona
and her violent and unpredictable boyfriend, Marjorie has to fight to protect
both the baby and herself.
BACKLASH- TV series
The energy crisis has reached breaking point and Europe is in meltdown.
With emergency measures in place, citizens of London North Sector are
living almost medieval lives, grouped together in compounds. But with the
authorities up to something sinister and food and energy being monopolised
by the powerful, it’s time to fight back. Reluctant hero Locke – a cross between Banksy and Robin Hood – becomes the unlikely leader of an odd band
of rebels in their battle for survival. Along the way he risks it all by falling
for the dangerous and tantalising Leila.
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LOUISE SANDERSON
[email protected]
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TV junky and national enquirer reader, Louise is an edgy,
fast and funny writer. Her writing has international reach
and a commercial sensibility that works on an epic scale of
imagination.
Louise has worked for, amongst others, Warner Bros,
Alastair Graham Animation, Noel Gay Television, Asylum
Entertainment, Central Television and the BBC.
She has an MA in screenwriting from the London College
of Communication, and is also a visiting tutor on the MA’s
in screenwriting at Goldsmiths and the University of the
Arts London.
Louise is a co-director of 3witches Production, a newly
formed writer-led production company.
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PROJECTS
DANTE HIGH-Television – Returning series
When Jenny Smith, a seventeen-year-old hoodie you’d cross the road to
avoid, commits suicide, she finds herself in Dante High, a school that really
is hell.
Dante High re-invents the 13th century poem Inferno, by Dante Alighieri,
for a contemporary young adult audience. Relocated to an American High
School, the Headmaster, a cantankerous old bastard with bad breath is God,
Dr Jones the sexy crumpled Welsh science teacher is the Devil, and Jenny’s
life is their battle ground - whoever gains Jenny’s soul gets to rule Heaven,
Hell and the Other Bit.
DEMONS- Feature film
When your father makes a pact with the devil, sanity is not enough.
Rooted in the guilt of a devastated family relationship, Demons is a disturbing, psychological thriller. Discovering that her father has bartered her soul
in exchange for eternal life, Elan, an eminent psychologist, is confident that
she can cure him. But as dark forces begin to infiltrate Elan’s life, the divisions between mental instability and demonical interference are dissolved.
As everything Elan holds dear is stripped from her, she is soon forced to
decide what is more damaging, the demons you hide from, or (the demons
you) hide behind?
BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES- Slapstick rom-com.
When ‘Sensible, Perfect Helen’ falls in love at first sight with Scruffy Ash,
a cabaret stage hypnotist, she believes she’s been hypnotized, and will do
anything to resist acting ridiculous.
In an attempt to resist each other’s hold, Ash and Helen go to battle with
covert hypnotisim and other manipulations, until they finally realise that falling in love is like being hypnotized; scary, funny, ridiculous and you could just
end up clucking like a chicken.
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MAJA BODENSTEIN
[email protected]
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Maja is a London-based freelance Screenwriter who grew
up in Hong Kong. She graduated from Oxford Brookes University
in 2007 with a BA in Film Studies and Performing Arts
and completed Royal Holloway’s Feature Film Screenwriting
Masters with Distinction in 2009. She has consequently
been short-listed for the David Lean Award, with the outcome
to be decided later this year.
She is of German/Chinese heritage and deeply interested
in exploring themes of culture, race and identity through a
variety of genres. In addition to her features, she is currently
developing two shorts with an independent producer. She is
a native speaker of German and Mandarin and proficient in
French and Cantonese.
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PROJECTS
THE ARCHES- Chinese ghost story set in modern London
When mysterious deaths occur in London’s Chinatown during the Chinese
‘ghost month’, locals blame the FOX SPIRIT, a creature of ancient
mythology. Despite his initial scepticism, Anglo-Chinese detective JUSTIN
FALCONER is sucked into the case, seeking a way to feel closer to his
Chinese heritage after the death of his mother. As increasingly unquiet
spirits begin to haunt Chinatown, he joins forces with local exorcist BEN
WONG and discovers that the portal is being opened through the power
of Chinatown’s arches. He traces their disappearance to Ben’s son-in-law,
construction tycoon ADAM TOWNSEND, who has been driven mad with
grief over the loss of his wife and has created the conduit to retrieve her.
Justin chases Townsend through the abandoned tube tunnels beneath
Chinatown, the site of the ritual, while Ben attempts to keep the spirits
at bay. A battle between the living and the dead rages before the portal is
closed with Townsend on the other side.
HONEY- Black comedy / Twisted Fairytale
HONEY is an adorable tailor who runs her Lolita label out of a small city
in California. Unfortunately, the ruffles and lace hide strong psychopathic
tendencies and after an ‘accident’ with an impossible customer, Honey goes
on an amusing and only mildly offensive rampage, killing everyone who
conflicts with her design aesthetic. She soon falls in love with PARIS, the
beautiful but dim policeman examining the string of murders, though
complications arise when his boar-like partner GRADY remains wary.
Honey has to reconcile the blossoming relationship with her bloodlust and
the opportunity to take her business national, all the while maintaining her
cute image and striving towards a fairytale ending.
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ANNA THOMSON
[email protected]
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Anna is an innovative Director/Writer of drama-documentaries,
documentaries and short fiction films who has worked for top
production companies such as Lion Television, Wall to Wall and
Liberty Bell on productions as varied as the award winning Days
that Shook the World series and the docu-drama From Ape to Man
which won an Emmy and an American National Sciences Award.
Other than commercial directing work, her own projects include
the directing and writing of several short fiction films. Cacophony
was funded by London Arts and Awards for All and screened at the
Curzon Soho, Barcelona Film Festival, New York and the Paris film
festival.
Jo90, funded by Meridian television, was screened at the National
Film Theatre, the Lux Cinema, Southampton Harbour Lights Cinema,
Meridian Television and Paris Women’s Festival.
In January 2008 she completed a part-time MA in Screenwriting at
Royal Holloway University. Her main project was The Tall Lapp
Girl. She has written two other screenplays, No Room of My Own,
commissioned by Massa D’or Productions in Spain, and The Sun,
The Moon & the Truth. Currently she is developing a thriller from an
optioned Spanish novel- Trapped by the Mirror by Gemma Lienas.
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PROJECTS
THE TALL LAPP GIRL
1816. Lapland. Sweden. 18-year-old Stina has grown into a seven foot tall
giant. Tales of her size reach the streets of Stockholm and the ears of a
downtrodden German entrepreneur, Wolfenstein. He thinks he can make
millions with Stina and sets off on a quest to find her.
Keen to see the world and escape her tragic destiny, Stina accepts
Wolfenstein’s offer to travel through Europe in a travelling circus of freaks.
It is to be her last self made decision.
TRAPPED IN THE MIRROR
Laura is a young architect with her own practice. She is married to an
attractive and charming man and they have a six-year-old child. She has no
problems and appears to be happy. So when one night she drives herself off
the cliffs of El Garraf in Barcelona, no one knows why.
The police conclude that Laura died from an accident. But Laura’s best friend,
Gina, a young historian working on torture, is not so sure. Hoping to discover
what really happened Gina throws herself into Laura’s world. It is a gripping
and haunting journey into the darker recesses of the human condition. To find
out what really happened, Gina must experience the very same steps which led
to Laura’s death…
TO INVENT A GARDEN- A comic thriller about a painter who can’t see
Ray MacGregor is a 45-year-old painter content with his lot in life but who
would be even happier if he could share it with someone. Ray decides to try
out internet dating. But each date is far from the perfect match. Until one day
when Ray meets a woman who forces him to see all his previous encounters in
a radical new light…
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NANCY CRANE
[email protected]
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Born in California, Nancy trained at the Central School of
Speech and Drama and has lived in London ever since. Her
extensive theatre credits include productions at the Royal
Court, Royal National Theatre and West End. Film credits include: THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP, THE DARK
KNIGHT, THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO and THE MACHINIST. She also works in radio and television. Besides her
Athena projects, Nancy is currently co-writing a comedy
series with Felicity Montagu. She is developing a screenplay
set in the art world and has written a short film she will also
direct in Shanghai in 2010. In 2007 she was commissioned
by Poisson Rouge Productions to co-write a screenplay.
Her radio play ICE BLONDE was broadcast in 2002.
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PROJECTS
ONE- A comedy romance set in 18th-Century Paris and on a Georgian country
estate.
A comedy romance set in 18th-Century Paris and on a Georgian country estate.
ADELAIDE OLIVIER, a beautiful English actress living in Paris, learns that
her SISTER has met a mysterious end. She returns to England to discover the
truth. In order to avoid unwanted attentions on her journey, Adelaide disguises
herself as a man. She goes in search of CAPTAIN NEWTON, the bully her
sister married, who is about to re-marry. His fiancee is the COUNTESS OF
DRAKELOW. On her journey to the COUNTESS’ estate Adelaide meets opera
star NANCY STORACE, who is to sing at the wedding, and her companion, the
former slave and now best-selling author, GUSTAVUS VASSA. On arriving at
the estate they realise that the COUNTESS is unwittingly betrothed to a villain
and the three decide to expose him. Or at least, NANCY and GUSTAVUS do;
ADELAIDE finds herself falling for the lovely, science-mad COUNTESS. On the
day of the wedding the CAPTAIN’S villainy is exposed. And ADELAIDE and
the COUNTESS find themselves accidentally airborne in a helium balloon high
above her estate.
THE EDITORS OF LIFE- A bittersweet comedy set in Rio and MAD MEN-era
New York.
ELIZABETH BISHOP, the American poet expatriate in Brazil, accepts a commission from Life magazine to write a book about Brazil. She is given four
months to finish it; although she usually works at a snail’s pace, she’s sure she
can dash it off. But the more she thinks about it, the stranger her adopted home
starts to seem. Is home instead LOTA MACEDO DE SOARES, her brilliant,
mercurial Brazilian lover - the reason for her move 10 years before? LOTA is
now distracted by a controversial public works project she is masterminding in
Rio. Is home America? ELIZABETH hasn’t been back for five years and, when
she does return, it’s a foreign country. Maybe home is in ELIZABETH herself?
Maybe it’s time to pour another drink. As civil war brews in Brazil, the project
starts to unravel and ELIZABETH BISHOP initiates her own hostilities against
the Editors of Life.
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HELEN BRADY
[email protected]
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2002: Helen graduated MA Feature Film Screenwriting
from Royal Holloway. She was chosen by First Film Foundation
to further develop her thesis script, OUT OF DARKNESS.
Supernatural horror, HEARTSTRINGS, was developed
under the auspices of SCRIPT’s programme, Screen Visions.
Helen’s twice been awarded funding from Screen WM,
to THE SUMMER OF FIFI LA BELLE. And now, THIS
FRACTURED PAST is about to start development with
script editor Sarah Golding.
Helen provided additional scenes and dialogue for the feature
THE 13TH DAY – THE TRUE STORY OF FATIMA due for
release in the US and Portugal on 13th October ‘09.
Earlier this year, she wrote the pilot, and episode outlines,
for tv series, NO REST FOR THE WICKED, a dark tale of
gangsters, angels and demons, for Creative Bone.
Helen has several other spec projects, but is by no means
averse to working on other people’s material.
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PROJECTS
OUT OF DARKNESS- Science-fiction thriller
Mars 2059: A grubby, frontier mining colony and research station.
Glenda’s research is about programming androids as nurse/carers for Earth’s
elderly population. She finally succeeds, but D10 is different… articulate,
beautiful, he’s… perfect. Unexplained violent deaths cause the company to
dispatch their investigator, Tanner, Glenda’s ex, to Mars. Base commander
Marrison’s techs have secretly used Glenda’s data for experimental androids –
now they’ve lost one. Glenda’s forced to choose between the perfect man, who
isn’t human and the damaged man, who is. She chooses perfection – and pays
for it.
THE SUMMER OF FIFI LA BELLE- Teen-comedy caper.
What do 16 year-old boys want? Sex!
What do nice, rural, middle-class 16 year-old boys with pretensions to
sophistication want? Sex with a Frenchwoman! Gerry and Roger go to France
seeking their mythic icon of loveliness - ‘Fifi La Belle’… but life isn’t like their
beloved movies. They’re ripped-off, mugged, about to give up, until, Mathilde,
an exotic dancer, takes pity on them. Back home in England, Mathilde
arrives unexpectedly and their limited experience is tested: outwitting a nosy
Frenchman, grave-robbing, faking a burglary… and keeping their parents blissfully ignorant. And Mathilde? Can look after herself - because you never tell
men everything... especially that bit about being an undercover cop with the
drugs squad.
THIS FRACTURED PAST/STRANGER- Psychological/supernatural thriller WIP
Sarah, a feted war reporter, suffers amnesia and PTSD after a terrible
explosion in Iraq. Experimental treatments recover suppressed memories – sexual
abuse, a tragic death, and her imaginary childhood friend – a faerie. Not some
sparkly fey, but a Tuatha de Danaan, a six-foot warrior-elf, summoned for
protection by a frightened child. Everyone thinks she’s becoming dangerously
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PAULINE KIERNAN
[email protected]
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Pauline is a screenwriter, script consultant, award-winning
playwright, Shakespeare scholar, and former journalist and
agony aunt on a teen magazine. Commissioned features
GOZEL, A Romantic Tragedy set in Turkmenistan for an indie
Hollywood producer (in development), and a Coming-of-Age
Drama set in Africa for an indie UK producer; two spec
features optioned. She’s a visiting screenwriting tutor at
Oxford
University and runs her website www.unique-screenwriting.com
Pauline took an MA in Playwriting at Birmingham University
under the tutelage of Mark Ravenhill; a First in English
and a DPhil. both at Oxford University where she taught
English and Drama for many years, and was awarded a
Leverhulme Fellowship to work with actors and directors
at Shakespeare’s Globe in its first five years. She’s currently
working on a TV Drama series of hard-hitting updates of
the Jacobean Tragedies, a feature comedy and a radio play.
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PROJECTS
SEDITION- Historical Political Thriller
In a world where a whisper against the State can get your balls chopped off,
then your head, a hot-shot playwright from the sticks dares to put an attack on
the Head of State on a public stage. The play sends shockwaves throughout the
country - and the Queen into a flame of fear. This is the untold story of young
Shakespeare’s desperate struggle against state censorship to force Elizabeth I
to prevent his country being torn apart by civil war. And how the young father of
three finds himself falling helplessly in love with a beautiful young man. When
Will’s lover, Southampton, joins forces with Elizabeth’s former lover, Essex, to
plot to overthrow the Queen, Will is drawn into the most dangerous game of
all…
MANIC- Romantic Comedy with A Dark Twist
She’s addicted to her illness because it takes her to Heaven on earth. His job is
to treat her because it’s about to send her to Hell.
JACK, 30, sexy high-flying academic and bullshit-detector, may forget to put her
clothes on when she leaves her apartment and has bits of congealed pancake
on her kitchen ceiling, but at least she has her students in stitches. She’s facing the biggest challenge of her career, but she’s on a monumental manic high,
and any day now she could flip and kill herself. Will she let emotionally
blocked psychiatrist NICK, 32, try to save her? Or will she succumb to the
darkest shadows of her unpredictable disease? Will the power of love help her
to decide?
IN PROGRESS
BLOOD WILL HAVE BLOOD- ’TIS PITY SHE’S A WHORE - TV Drama
An adaptation for the 21st century of the 1633 shocking masterpiece - the
heart-wrenching tragedy of incestuous love between brother and sister.
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SONIA CASTANG
[email protected]
www.soniacastang.com
www.ashestheshortfilm.com
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A graduate of the National Film & Television School, Sonia
has written and directed two short films which have both
played at national and international film festivals. She has
also written two plays for young people, one of which, ‘Caravan’,
toured England for 6 weeks and was described by Time Out
magazine as ‘Gritty comedy at its best’.
She participated in Arista’s Story Editing Workshop and
Sources Script Development Workshop, as well as being
selected for the UK Film Council’s New Feature Writer
Scheme and the Berlinale Talent Campus. She is currently
in post with her new short film ‘Ashes’ which she also wrote
and directed.
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PROJECTS
REFUGE
Set on a council estate in London, Refuge is an occult/psychological horror
about Juliana, a 19 year old girl who finds herself the reluctant sole carer of
her younger sister Sherry, 7, when their alcoholic mother disappears on
holiday. A kindly old woman, Margaret, 65, who runs a prayer group from
her home next door, seeing that Juliana is unable to cope, offers to help her
look after Sherry. But when strange things start happening to Juliana
and her life starts unravelling even more, Juliana suspects Margaret’s
motives may not be as innocent as they seem and that Sherry may be in
danger.
WINDWARD
Windward is the story of Lucy, a confident 27 year afro-Caribbean woman
for whom everything seems to be going wrong. If it’s not her business
being close to bankruptcy, it’s her relationship on the rocks. Lucy however is
not one to keep stress in, believing that if her life is a misery then everyone
else’s may as well be too. But if people try and get close, she pushes them
away.
When Lucy’s estranged mother who had placed her in care dies, she reluctantly
returns with her body back to her Caribbean homeland and encounters
a family she never knew she had. Lucy, through alienating her new found
family and causing as much trouble as she can, discovers the truth about her
mother and her unhappy life which helps Lucy find peace and forgiveness.
A moving and funny family drama about how it’s easier to stay angry than
to forgive.
THATCHER’S CHILDREN
Was it love? Was it the drugs? Does it matter?
A rites of passage story based on the true story of the man that was ripping
off London Underground for thousands of pounds a week and the girl that
helped him spend it. Passionate love set against the eighties house music
revolution.
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