25 Screenwriters to Watch
We're proud to present our second annual 25 Screenwriters to Watch list, featuring writers whose work has already done what we at AFF are all about: furthering the art and craft of storytelling.
screenwriter extraordinaire
Kevin Arbouet
Kevin Arbouet is a writer, director, producer and film executive whose career has been about expanding the idea of what diversity in filmmaking really means. With surprising influences that range from Nora Ephron and Mike Nichols to Bong Joon Ho, he is not only a rising African-American writer/director with a penchant for classic storytelling, but one who is defying stereotyped expectations – “It's important to me that the movie industry offers audiences a wide range of diverse voices telling stories.”
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Minhal Baig
Minhal Baig is a writer/director. She is a graduate of Yale University with a BA in Fine Arts. Her first feature film, One Night, which she wrote and directed, had its World Premiere at the 2016 Austin Film Festival. One Night will have its theatrical release in February 2017. One Night stars Anna Camp, Justin Chatwin, Kyle Allen and Isabelle Fuhrman.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Josh Barkey
Josh Barkey grew up paddling a dugout canoe around the Amazon Basin, fishing for piranhas. Then he moved to Canada and bought himself an English degree by hand-planting hundreds of thousands of baby trees in the wilds of British Columbia. Now he spends his days rearranging words in a snug, ivy-wrapped home in North Carolina, where he lives with his wife and nine-year-old son.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Wes Brown
Wes Brown was born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, and spent a couple of years as an antitrust attorney in Washington, D.C., before deciding to write.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Kyle Bugg
Kyle Bugg is a 24 year-old screenwriter based in Los Angeles. Kyle grew up in the Bay Area and studied film production at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. After school, he worked in New York as an NBC Page, before moving back to LA to work in the CAA mailroom. After winning the AMC One-Hour Pilot award at the Austin Film Festival, he left CAA to write full-time.
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screenwriters extraordinaire
Etta Devine & Gabriel Diani
Gabriel Diani and Etta Devine are award-winning filmmakers, actors, and writers. Their first film, “The Selling,” premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival, played at over 30 film festivals, was in the Top 10 of About.com’s Best Horror Movies of 2012, and received rave reviews from The Huffington Post, Ain’t It Cool News, and Filmthreat. Written by Gabe, the duo both produced and starred in the feature.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Henry Jones
A scribe in multiple platforms and genres, Henry wrote one of the vanguard of free MMORPG games for Acclaim, 2Moons. At its peak, it boasted over 3 million players. He has written original screenplays for New Line, MGM, Universal, Paramount and Bad Robot and was a featured speaker at the TEDx Teusaquillo conference on imagination in Bogotá, Colombia.
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screenwriters extraordinaire
Damir and Dario Konjicija
Damir and Dario Konjicija are a brother comedy writing duo originally from Sarajevo, Bosnia. They fell in love with American television watching poorly dubbed episodes of such classic sitcoms like "The Wonder Years," "MASH" and "Seinfeld." After a civil war broke out in their homeland, they sought refuge in America and resettled in Louisville, Kentucky. Before moving to LA as a writing team, Damir pursued playwriting while Dario performed as a stand-up comedian. They've won the Sitcom Teleplay Award from the Austin Film Festival, the Humanitas New Voices Prize and took part in the CBS Writers Program. They are currently staffed on "The Great Indoors."
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Elizabeth Guest
Elizabeth Guest was born on a film set in Eugene, Oregon, which explains why she likes movies and why she likes the rain. How could she not? She grew up in Los Angeles and spent most of her life taking acting classes, singing, playing basketball and playing with her Barbies in her room for hours - making up stories, playing characters and improvising. Not much has changed actually as she currently spends most of her days making stuff up and she even still plays basketball (Barbies are no longer in the picture). She started studying when she was 8 at the Lee Strasberg Institute in Los Angeles and she did numerous plays in high school and took the teen classes offered at Second City in Los Angeles.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Geeta Malik
Geeta Malik grew up in Aurora, Colorado, and received her BA in English from UC Irvine. She went on to UCLA’s graduate film program, where she received her MFA in directing. She wrote and directed the viral narrative short, Aunty Gs, which earned a College Television Award (a “student Emmy”) in comedy production from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Geeta is a recipient of the Edie and Lew Wasserman Film Production Award, the Coppel Screenwriting Award and the Jack Nicholson Distinguished Director Award.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Jimmy Mosqueda
Jimmy Mosqueda is a California native, Stanford grad, avid eater of scones, and a current fellow in Film Independent’s Project Involve program. Previously, he participated in Sundance’s Screenwriters Intensive where he workshopped his dark comedy Valedictorian.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Kate Nowlin
Kate Nowlin holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama and a BFA from Southern Methodist University. Primarily a professional actress for the past 15 years, Kate has recently branched out as a writer/producer, forming the Minneapolis based production company, Wakemup Productions. Her most recent work as a writer was on her first narrative feature: BLOOD STRIPE, which won the Jury Award for US fiction at the Los Angeles Film Fest 2016, as well as multiple audience awards at subsequent festivals, including the Austin Film Fest. Kate was awarded a breakout performance award for her work in the film.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Megan Park
Megan Park is a veteran actress having starred in dozens of feature films and appearing in several TV series, most notably six seasons as a series regular on the hit teen show, "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" opposite Shailene Woodley. She most recently worked on "Room" with Brie Larson, "Central Intelligence" with the Rock and Kevin Hart and can be seen next as the lead in the feature film, "Deported" opposite Nick Swardsen and in Uma Thurman's new TV series "My So Called Wife". "Lucy In My Eyes" was Megan's directorial debut and her first writing project. She has since written a TV pilot that was optioned by a major TV network and has two more in the works. She recently started working as a director commercially with Pretty Bird and is writing a feature film.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Ben Snyder
& Ari Issler
Long time friends and collaborators, Ari Issler and Ben Snyder have teamed up to write, produce, and direct film and television projects. Ari and Ben's feature film directorial debut 11:55, premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival, and went on to play the Seattle Film Festival, Woodstock Film Festival, Austin Film Festivak and the Aspen Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award. 11:55 will be in select theaters this summer. They are currently developing a mini-series for Lionsgate/C4 London, an original series for T.I., as well as writing a feature film based on the solo-shows of John Leguizamo.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Clint Bentley & Greg Kwedar
Clint Bentley was raised on a cattle ranch in Florida, where two of his great-grandfathers were shot to death and a third was killed by lighting. He's still trying to figure out what all that means. After college he worked a series of odd jobs (waiter, day-laborer on a sod farm, journalist) before beginning to work in film. He co-wrote and produced Transpecos, which won the Audience Award at the 2016 SXSW Film Festival and was released by Samuel Goldwyn Films.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Lena Khan
Lena Khan is a writer and director who allows her work to be an organic blend of her varied experiences, the multi-faceted elements of her identity, her witty outlook on life, and her rich emotional aptitude. Lena graduated summa cum laude and received undergraduate degrees at the University of California, Los Angeles in Political Science and History, after which she went on to graduate from the prestigious UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Louisiana Kreutz
Louisiana Kreutz (Lucy for short) is a director and producer based out of Austin, Texas and her home town of New York City. Louisiana's films include JUNGLE FISH, a documentary about the changing landscape of Guyana's rain forests, which won the Sundance Institute’s Sustainability Award in 2013, and 61 BULLETS (2014), a feature documentary she co-directed with David Modigliani about the shooting of Senator Huey Long. Her first narrative feature, QUAKER OATHS recently premiered at the Austin Film Festival.
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screenwriters extraordinaire
Justin Lader & Charlie McDowell
After receiving a film degree from the University of Central Florida, Justin went on to attend the American Film Institute (AFI) where he received his Masters in Screenwriting. While at AFI, Justin met Charlie McDowell who was enrolled in the directing program. Their partnership culminated with the film "The One I Love", which starred Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss. The film premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, where it was purchased by The Weinstein Company for distribution. For his efforts, Justin was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Juanjo Moscardo Rius
Juanjo Moscardó Rius was born in 1980 in Valencia, Spain. Following a degree in engineering, he becomes a screenwriter. He has worked in a number of tv shows for a spanish TV broadcast (RTVV). Now he is focused on the big screen. His first feature film,"Family games", was released on 2016. "Paella today", his second feature film, will be released this year. Now, he is producing his third script "Instant love" that will be released on 2018.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Michael Noonan
Michael Noonan has written and directed more than 20 film projects. His feature scripts "Alternate Ending" and "#Escape" were Top 50 semifinalists in the Academy Nicholl Fellowship and finalists in the 2016 Script Pipeline competition. "#Escape" also made the finals of the Enderby Entertainment Award at Austin Film Festival 2016.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Tracy Oliver
Tracy Oliver is a writer, actor, producer, and director in the TV, feature, and digital space. She recently co -wrote Barbershop III with Black-ish creator, Kenya Barris, as well as the upcoming Girls Trip movie from Universal Pictures. Oliver has also been tapped to adapt the New York Times best-selling novel, “The Sun is Also a Star” for MGM and Warner Brothers. In the television space, she is currently developing a dance drama with American Ballet Theatre’s Misty Copeland for Fox. She’s written for several TV shows, most recently Survivor’s Remorse on Starz. In the digital space, Oliver is known for writing, producing, and acting in the hit comedic web series entitled, "The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.” She is set to make her directorial debut later this year from a script she co-wrote.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Ryan Piers Williams
Born and raised in El Paso, TX, Ryan Piers Williams is a filmmaker with over 20 years of experience. Williams attended the University of Texas at Austin and graduated from the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. Upon graduation, he worked for Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney on several productions including Ocean’s 12, Ocean’s 13, Goodnight and Good Luck, and The Good German.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Trey Selman
Born and raised in a myth called Texas. Studied business at The University of Texas. Somehow became a writer. Eventually wrote THE FRUITCAKE which ended up on the 2016 Black List.
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screenwriter extraordinaire
Nicholas Verso
In 2016, Nicholas directed his debut feature film, Boys In The Trees, a supernatural skater film. This script won the NewDraft Award at NewFest 2011,received a rehearsed reading at the Lincoln Center in New York and was also nominated for the Monte Miller AWGIE Award. It made its world premiere in September 2016 at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival.
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screenwriters extraordinaire
Jono Matt & Glen Powell
Two southern boys who met when they both separately snuck into the Golden Globes and only talked to each other because Leonardo DiCaprio looked busy. Six years later, they're writing 'Captain Planet' for Leo's company.
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