Winners of Reel Sisters Scriptwriting Competition 2021

Congratulations to the winners of Reel Sisters 2^nd Scriptwriting Competition! Stay tuned for the announcement of our table reading of their scripts during Women’s History Month in 2022.

1st Place Screenplay Narrative Feature Award

Rain Soon Come by Sharony Green

Synopsis: A woman escapes death and finds love via time travel to — of all places — the slavery era.

Sharony Green was born and raised in Miami, Florida, the very place where RAIN COME SOON her script opens. Her kinfolk came to Florida from the Bahamas, Mississippi and Georgia. She co-directed THE GRANT GREEN STORY, a documentary about the late jazz guitarist who's been sampled by many hip hop performers. That film premiered at the 2016 Harlem International Film Festival. A former journalist, she teaches History at the University of Alabama where her students see a lot of movies. Since the days she sat at the drive-in on a blanket atop of her parents' station wagon, watching Claudine, she has loved a good visual story. Sharony can be contacted at www.sharonygreen.com.

Writer’s Statement:

“It’s one thing to be in the archives of libraries for years reading slave ledgers, letters, legal documents and business receipts and trying to better understand the horrors of slavery. Or running in the streets as a newspaper reporter during a civil disturbance, trying not to get killed. Both things inspired RAIN COME SOON, my script. It’s something else entirely to sit down and try to blend the past & present in a fictitious way without doing mayhem to, as we cranky historians say, the historical record. I had a blast. Writing this script (and making the tiny paintings from barn wood that were like mini-bio storyboards) kept me sane during the height of the pandemic. I figured if our ancestors could survive their own horrors, I’d better figure out how to do the same. I want the story to push us to have more empathy for each other, but to also take a chance on being honest and going for what we want. It’s within reach! Thank you for being part of this journey and for helping me build community, something for which I long in an isolating time. I want to tell stories in and outside of books and classrooms. Reel Sisters help me do that.”

2nd Place Screenplay Narrative Feature Award

Hot Girl Riders by Robin J. Hayes

Synopsis: Rookie INTERPOL agent Zora Pierce must choose where her loyalty lies when she infiltrates an underground surf scene to catch a clique that robs nefarious billionaires.

Made in Brooklyn, Dr. Robin J. Hayes earned scholarships to attend St. George's, an elite New England boarding school, and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. After graduating, she collaborated with veterans, clergy, and soccer moms to lead dozens of humanitarian aid caravans to Latin America. Later, she studied at the Sorbonne and Yale University—where she earned a PhD. As a professor, Robin wrote, produced, and directed the award-winning documentary BLACK AND CUBA, which was a hit at film festivals and currently streams on numerous platforms. She also published essays in THE ATLANTIC and produced the prize-winning play 9 GRAMS. A surfing and contemporary art enthusiast, Robin has participated in The Black List/Women in Film Episodic Lab and twice advanced to the second round of the Sundance Episodic Lab. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, her narrative history book—LOVE FOR LIBERATION: AFRICAN INDEPENDENCE, BLACK POWER, AND A DIASPORA UNDERGROUND— was released in July 2021. She's based in Los Angeles and represented by UTA.

1st Place Screenplay Short Narrative (tie)

The Mojave Experiment by Chinisha Scott

Synposis: Three Black women besties from NY, determined to eschew their tightly wound lives, embark on the road “trip” of a lifetime, taking ‘shrooms in The Mojave Desert, testing their friendships, their fortitude, and their sense of direction on a wild, wilderness car ride.

Chinisha Scott is a producer, writer, director, and multi-media artist with over 15 years of experience in TV, film, and live production. She is passionate about music, science, environmental and social justice, and learning – they find their way into all the media she creates. She began her musical training at the age of nine and continued through grad school, with a brief stint as an engineering major in her freshman year of college. (She had Mae Jemison dreams of becoming an astronaut – here’s hoping they need filmmakers in space). On a whim, she took a doc-production class during undergrad that changed her entire trajectory. Since then, she has been creating content for digital, broadcast, and theater spaces (with a slight tangent to start her own band in a basement after grad school). Her passions have followed her throughout her career, from her work at both DCTV and Okayplayer, to her independent narrative productions and video commissions. To contact Chinisha visit www.justchinisha.com.

Crocodile by Sola Bamis

Synopsis: Two exes meet for a lunch date. One gets closure.

Sola Bamis is an actress, writer, performance artist, and filmmaker committed to high-quality artmaking across media platforms. She also serves as the founder of Still Brave Productions, an entertainment production cooperative that specializes in the development, production, and curation of culturally enlightening projects for a global audience. Sola received her BA in Chemistry from the University of Miami and MFA in Acting from the California Institute of the Arts. She earned a SAG Award Nomination for Outstanding Performance By An Ensemble in a Drama Series for her work as Shirley on the final season of Mad Men, and appeared as Afeni Shakur, former Black Panther Party member and mother of rapper, actor, and artist Tupac Shakur, in USA Network’s Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. She has worked on regional theatre world premieres, performed in countless readings of new plays, and has also lent her voice talents to several video games and radio and television commercials. Sola’s filmmaking debut The Event, shot in Nigeria, was an official selection of the 2018 BlackStar and San Francisco Black Film Festivals, and the script for her next project Crocodile placed finalist and semifinalist in the 2018 Film Daily Screenwriting and Atlanta Film Festival Screenplay Competitions.

2nd Place Screenplay Short Narrative

Out Breaking by Priya Vashist

Synposis: Kashmira, an international student on a visa, is left with no choice but to continue working off-campus illegally to make her ends meet despite being infected by COVID-19.

Priya Vashist is an award-winning film director, screenwriter and editor. Priya is an Assistant Professor of Film at Old Dominion University. Priya works in various genres and styles of filmmaking including narrative, documentary, and experimental. Her work focuses on social justice and representation of minorities, especially queer people of color on screen. Priya's work has been screened and featured at various film festivals including Oscar qualifying film festivals such as Nashville Film Festival and Flicker's Rhode Island International Film Festival, and film conferences such as University Film and Video Association (UFVA). Priya received her MFA in Cinema Production from San Francisco State University.

Writer’s Statement:

“I’m incredibly honored and excited to have won at the Reel Sisters screenplay Competition. My screenplay ‘Out Breaking’ is inspired from a real story of a queer female international student who had no other choice but to work illegally off-campus during the COVID-19 pandemic to be able to pay her bills. Most international students of color come from underprivileged backgrounds with the hope of making their future better by means of getting higher educations degrees in the United States. Queer international students of color often face life threatening situations in their home countries due to unacceptability of homosexuality there. For them, leaving their home countries becomes a means to living their life as they are. International students, as a community, were deeply affected by the pandemic as campuses across the country were shut down. Due to this, they were unable to work on campuses, which forced many to work off campuses illegally with a looming threat of getting deported. The protagonist in my film contracts COVID-19, and therefore is forced to make a choice between continuing working or facing unemployment or possible deportation.”

3rd Place Screenplay Short Narrative

My Vacation Destination by Nella Citino

Synopsis: Like a fine wine, Merlot has aged beautifully but at sixty-five she finds herself alone and wanting to find a connection. She tries speed dating. As she scrolls through endless photos of men online, she draws the analogy between all the men she might meet and a vacation destination. To Merlot, looking at men on dating sites is like determining what type of vacation she wants. However, once the speed dating event begins, her experience becomes frustrating and she thinks she may never find her “vacation destination.”

Nella Citino is a media storyteller with over 20 year's experience in the video, broadcast, and film industries. Nella has supervised several national, regional, and local broadcast programs and a variety of online projects. She has produced, directed, and written documentaries, children's programs, and news segments as well as short and feature films. Her professional credits include the national children’s programs “Get Real!” and “Zoom” and nationally distributed documentaries covering a variety of social issues. She has received seven regional Emmys, five Gabriel Awards, Special Recognition from the National Association of Broadcasters, several Telly Awards and several Parents’ Choice Awards. Nella can be contacted at www.vacationdestinationfilm.com.

Writer’s Statement:

1st Place Screenplay Web Series

Bloodroot by Alicia Woods

Synposis: A troubled and failing academic, with an unwanted sensitivity to the supernatural, returns home to her colorful Lenape tribal community in Delaware to confront the hauntings that plague her.

Alicia Woods. My childhood in the rust belt fueled an interest in telling stories that focus on landscapes that are layered with both complex histories and resilience. I studied the history of race in America at UNM in Albuquerque, and I later earned a graduate degree in Indigenous media from the University of Washington. My thesis film “American Red and Black” screened at a variety of museums and festivals and was chosen in 2015 as a notable film by both Sundance TV and Indian Country Today. As an Independent Media Producer, I have worked on projects for the Indigenous Wellness and Research Institute and the Muckleshoot Food Sovereignty Project, and have also developed a writing program and created culturally specific curriculum as an educator with the Muckleshoot Tribal college. I was awarded a fellowship from Temple University and continued my graduate studies with a focus on screenwriting. My short film Voices of Still Waters, a ghost story that explores racial passing and history, will complete production post-Covid. For more info please visit: www.aliciafilm.com.

2nd Place Screenplay Web Series

The Artist’s Way Out by Jeananne Goossen

Synposis: Episodic scripts from the web series.

Jeananne Goossen has been acting in the film/TV industry for 15 years and has been coaching actors for the last 5. After starring in and executive producing the short film and online sensation HYPERLIGHT, she wrote/produced/directed the webseries THE ARTIST'S WAY OUT starring Kandyse McClure and Keon Alexander. She identifies as Queer, non-binary (she/her) and mixed-Chinese. She is currently working as an actor in The Handmaid's Tale. Jeananne can be contacted at www.artistswayout.com.

Writer’s Statement:

The short-form series THE ARTIST’S WAY OUT is intended to be entertaining and relatable, fresh and yet familiar. There is hopefully something for everyone in this intimate story of two people isolated together.

“I wanted very much to see BIPOC characters on screen in the Canadian winter, an unfortunately rare occurrence from my experience. I wrote this show in a two week blur while nursing my baby and recovering from back surgery. It features two of my dearest friends, and although the story raises issues of cultural and sexual identity, they serve more as a backdrop to the ins and outs of a new relationship in close quarters, and the struggles of becoming an artist. As well it speaks to the experience of being first/second generation immigrants in Canada.”

3rd Place Screenplay Web Series

Hoax by Melanie Ojwang

Synposis: Driven by conflicting desires to search for a legendary family heirloom, an aunt and nephew find that their biggest obstacle is their rapidly changing hometown.