Three finalists complete the 2023 Screenplay Showdown! by directing ten pages from their work chosen by the Festival! One finalist will be awarded Winning Feature Screenplay of the year.A shot from QueenZ written by Hedley Harlan and Roosevelt Davis
Thank you to all the writers who submitted their work and to the finalists for jumping in head first to cast, produce, and direct these scenes. It’s so great to get to hear the actors bringing the words to life!
A Man Called White
written by Randy Hines
(A reading of a segment from the screenplay, pages 60-69)
An oppressed black man who can pass for white struggles to defeat the specter of lynching and resolve the dilemma of his own identity in 1930s America as he takes the reins of the fledgling NAACP.
Hyper/Space
written by Moon Molson
(A reading of a segment from the screenplay, pages 61-70)
After years of taking psychiatric medication, Shawn, a Black Millennial living in Spanish Harlem, decides to cease his treatment, questioning whether his neurological disorder even exists. His ensuing mania awakens in him a burning need to solve the mystery of why his mother abandoned him as a child and committed suicide halfway across the country.
QueenZ
written by Hedley Harlan & Roosevelt Davis
(A reading of a segment from the screenplay, pages 43-52)
In the secluded Haitian mountains to the beat of goatskin drums, a scorned wife steals a very peculiar jar of ashes from a mischievous voodoo priestess. Back in Queens in a gross misjudgment of outsourcing, the wife hires Omar the Crackhead to douse her husband and his mistress in the soul-possessing ash as they take the Q5 bus home.
Omar’s usual level of screwing up has a much more carnivorous consequence when Queens is overrun by a new breed of zombies. Luckily the locals are armed to the teeth and the bodega owner, the gun runner, the drug dealer and the Chinese restaurant owner are forced to fight together before the mayor’s office uses the situation to bring something much more sinister to the neighborhood.