25 Screenwriters to Watch
Austin Film Festival and MovieMaker Magazine are thrilled to present the first annual Screenwriters to Watch list. We’re proud to feature 25 writers whose work is furthering the art and craft of storytelling.
screenwriter extraordinaire
VJ Boyd
VJ Boyd got his break while working as an assistant in television and has now written for Justified and The Player. He is also the author of the graphic novel Ghost Cop and currently producing his pilot The Jury for ABC in Atlanta, Georgia.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
David Broyles
David Broyles grew up in California, New York, and on a dude ranch in Bandera, Texas. He attended the University of Texas and Columbia University, and served as a Pararescueman (PJ) in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has sold several screenplays and most recently co-created Six, an upcoming dramatic series for the History Channel.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Matt Cook
Matt Cook is a screenwriter, director, and producer of various studio and independent films and television. His work includes By Way of Helena, Triple Nine, and Patriot‘s Day. Both By Way of Helena (2010) and Triple Nine (2012) made the top 10 of The Black List. He is currently developing/writing several projects including Paul the Apostle at Warner Bros, writing/executive producing Matterhorn with director Peter Berg as a mini-series at HBO, and co-writing/executive producing an detective-theme drama with Ed Burns (co-creator of The Wire) for Studio 8.
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screenwriters extraordinaire
Mike Covino & Sam Kretchmar
Michael Covino is a writer, producer and actor from New York City. Keep in Touch, is his first film as a writer. His producing credits include Absence, which Cinedigm released in 2013, Babysitter (SXSW 2015), Hunter Gatherer (SXSW 2016) and Kicks (Tribeca 2016).
Sam Kretchmar is a writer and a filmmaker. He grew up in Chicago before moving to New York and graduating from NYU's Film and Television program. Sam's experiences in the film industry have taken him to all seven continents and both poles as both a camera operator and director. Keep in Touch is his first feature film.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Negin Farsad
Negin Farsad is an American comedian, actor, writer and filmmaker of Iranian descent based in New York City. Like most comedians, she has a Masters Degree in African-American Studies. She has written for/appeared on Comedy Central, MTV, PBS, IFC, Nickelodeon and others. She is director/producer of the feature films 3rd Steet Blackout starring Jeneane Garofalo, Nerdcore Rising starring Weird Al Yankovic, and The Muslims Are Coming! starring Jon Stewart, David Cross and Lewis Black. Her first book How to Make White People Laugh is out now.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Kieran Fitzgerald
Kieran Fitzgerald has a BA in English from Harvard University and a MFA in fiction and screenwriting from the Michener Center for Writers. He wrote and directed the feature documentary, The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández, which aired on PBS and was nominated for an Emmy in investigative journalism. With Tommy Lee Jones, he wrote The Homesman, starring Jones and Hilary Swank. He also wrote the Oliver Stone film Snowden, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Shailene Woodley.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Jared Frieder
After graduating from Columbia, Jared went on to write for ABC Family’s Chasing Life. His screenplay Three Months made the 2015 Blacklist, was accepted into Sundance Diversity Initiative, and won AFF’s Comedy Award. Jared is currently writing a feature for Lost City Works, adapting a YA novel for television, creating a digital series for Bento Box Entertainment, and writing for MTV’s upcoming show, Little Darlings.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Sasha Gordon
Sasha Gordon is an award-winning filmmaker and composer. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sasha immigrated to the US in 1989. Sasha has scored over 50 features and shorts (among them the Oscar-winning God Of Love) directed several award-winning shorts (including Manhattan Melody, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival) and is thrilled to have just completed her debut feature, It Had To Be You, a subversive romantic comedy starring Cristin Milioti and Dan Soder. Sasha is currently scoring Amazon‘s Gortimer Gibbon‘s Life On Normal Street and writing her next feature.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Kevin Hamedani
Kevin Hamedani began his filmmaking career with the feature ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction. ZMD was acquired by Lions Gate and premiered theatrically in January, 2010. In 2013, Hamedani‘s second feature, Junk was acquired by Breaking Glass Pictures and received a limited theatrical release and is available on DVD/VOD. The film won the Audience Award at the Austin Film Festival. In June of 2015, Hamedani won his second audience award for his short film In Her Place at the LA Film Festival. In Her Place is a show piece for the feature version currently in development.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Eric Haywood
Eric began his career as a music video director working with such artists as Usher, Cee-Lo Green, and Outkast. He has since written for Private Practice, Soul Food: The Series and Hawaii,. Most recently, Eric wrote and directed the feature film Four of Hearts, and currently co-produces/writes for the FOX network drama Empire.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Jules Howe
Since her script Jasper Milliken won the 2010 AFF Comedy Award, she has gone on to EP a pilot based on her Catty Wompus children’s book. After her script, Down on the Farm, won the 2014 Fresh Voices’ family category and was a quarterfinalist in the Page Competition in 2015, she teamed up with three other writer/producers to form Crooked Sidewalk, a co-op website to collectively host their respective projects.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Eric Hueber
Eric Hueber‘s first feature, Rainbows End, follows a colorful cast of characters from Nacogdoches, Texas as they travel west in search of their dreams. Flutter, Eric‘s second feature length film, won the Texas Grand Jury prize at the Dallas International Film Festival, the Audience Award at Austin Film Festival, and is currently distributed through MarVista.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Brian Klugman
Brian Klugman is a filmmaker and actor. Born in Philadelphia, he has been living and working in Los Angeles the last 25 years. His first feature, The Words which he wrote with Lee Sternthal starring Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana, Jeremy Irons, and Dennis Quaid premiered in 2012. His next feature Baby, Baby, Baby which he wrote, directed and also stars in recently premiered at the 2015 Austin Film Festival where is won the Jury Comedy Vanguard awards.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Andrew Lanham
Andrew Lanham received his MFA in screenwriting from UT Austin. In 2010 he won the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship, as well as the Drama and Latitude screenwriting awards at the Austin Film Festival, for his script The Jumper of Maine. He currently lives in LA with his wife and white dog.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Nina Ljeti
Nina Ljeti is a Bosnian-Canadian writer/director, and musician. She is a graduate of the prestigious NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Drama and Theatre Studies. Her first feature film, Memoria, an effort she wrote and directed with her collaborator Vladimir de Fontenay, had its World Premiere at the 2015 Austin Film Festival. Memoria stars James Franco, Thomas Mann and Keith Stanfield. Nina is currently adapting a biopic on Jerry Garcia and the early days of the Grateful Dead.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Troy Miller
Troy wrote and directed the film Severance, which premiered at AFF to audience and critical acclaim. His feature screenplay The Hitch, won AFF’s Horror Award in 2013 and is currently under option with Darkwoods Productions. In 2014, he was one of six writers selected for the Black List’s 2nd annual Screenwriter’s Lab.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Tess Morris
Tess Morris. Born and bred Londoner, Tess' first screenplay, the romantic comedy Man Up, made the 2011 Brit List, was picked up by Big Talk Pictures, co-produced by Studio Canal and BBC Films and released in 2015. It was directed by Ben Palmer and stars Simon Pegg and Lake Bell. Tess is currently writing original screenplay Textbook Behaviour for Big Talk/BBC Films, and co-writing original comedy drama Dead to Me, for NBC/Lucky Giant, with David Allison. Last year she was named a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Faraday Okoro
Faraday Okoro is a New York City based Nigerian-American filmmaker. He graduated cum laude from Howard University and is currently pursuing an MFA in filmmaking at NYU Film School. Faraday‘s debut short film Full-Windsor has screened in 14 major film festivals, including the Los Angeles Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival and the Seattle International Film Festival. His latest short film Blitz premiered at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival and was also accepted to the Palm Springs International Shortfest.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Maya Perez
Maya Perez is a screenwriter and fiction writer. She is a producer on the Emmy Award-winning television series On Story, now in its sixth season on PBS, and co-editor of the books On Story: Screenwriters and Their Craft and the upcoming On Story II: Screenwriters and Filmmakers on Their Iconic Films. Perez is a former Michener Fellow, Sundance Screenwriters Intensive Fellow, and New York Stage & Film Emerging Filmmaker. Perez holds a BA from Vassar College and an MFA from The University of Texas at Austin. Her stories have appeared in The Masters Review and Electric Literature.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Ed Ricourt
Edward Ricourt wrote the script for Now You See Me, produced by Summit Entertainment. Paramount bought his 2009 Black List script, Year 12 with Joe Roth producing. Ricourt also worked as Consulting Producer for Marvel/Netflix TV series, A.K.A. Jessica Jones and currently writes on the Fox TV series, Wayward Pines.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Arturo Ruiz Serrano
Arturo Ruiz Serrano is a law graduate with a degree in Filmmaking; he has been developing audiovisual projects since 2000, as a screenwriter, director and producer. His short films have received over 180 prizes both in Spanish and international festivals. He has been nominated twice by the Spanish Academy of Cinema.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Annie Silverstein
Annie Silverstein‘s films have screened at international festivals including Cannes, SXSW, Silverdocs, Hamptons International Film Festival and on PBS Independent Lens. Her latest short film, Skunk, won the jury award at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival– Cinéfondation, BAFTA-Los Angeles, and the Austin Film Festival. Shortly after, she was named one of the "25 New Faces of Independent Film" by Filmmaker Magazine. Annie is a Sundance Institute Fellow and recipient of the San Francisco Film Society/Kenneth Rainin Foundation Grant for her upcoming feature, Bull.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Ya’ke Smith
Ya’Ke Smith is a rising voice in independent cinema. His films have received world-wide acclaim, screening and winning awards at over 90 film festivals. The Director‘s Guild of America, the Student Academy Awards, HBO, Showtime, and the City of Buffalo, NY, which proclaimed February 23, 2013 as Ya‘Ke Smith Day, have honored him. His short, Katrina‘s Son, screened at over 40-film festivals and won 14 awards. His debut feature, Wolf, premiered at SXSW. His short films, dawn. and Hope's War are currently airing on HBO and Showtime. His latest film, one hitta quitta, won a Special Jury Recognition for Excellence in Short Filmmaking at DIFF.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Max Taxe
After receiving his BFA in screenwriting from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, Max’s script Goodbye, Felix Chester won the Comedy Award at AFF and appeared on the 2012 Black List. It’s currently in production with Autumn de Wilde directing. Max has since sold a pilot to Pivot and a movie to Disney Channel.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Monica Zanetti
Monica Zanetti is an award winning Australian Screenwriter and Actress. Her debut feature Skin Deep , was hand selected by The Weinstein Company‘s Dan Guando for the Honorable Mention Award for Best Narrative Feature at Austin Film Festival. The film also earned a 2015 AWGIE nomination for Best Original Screenplay and will be released in Australian cinemas in 2016. Since then, Monica has written the series Young Politicians and the short film On Hold For Taylor. She is in development with Director Leon Ford for her new feature film script Amy‘s Baby.
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