ALBERT: A SHORT FILM A woman attempts to return her childhood stuffed bunny to the department store where it came from. Her life in tatters, she looks for someone to take back all of her disappointment and grant her a clean slate. What she finds at the return counter, however, challenges her expectation of perfect happiness. MADE WITH SUPPORT FROM THE NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA, WITH A SOUNDTRACK BY MUSICIAN AND PERFORMANCE ARTIST, MAYLEE TODD. Screened at LA Shorts Fest, Filmstock, Cinefest Sudbury International Film Fest, KIngston Canadian Film Festival, Yorkton Film Festival (Nomination, Golden Sheaf) and WorldFest-Houston (Winner, Bronze Remi) Click image for link
COMIC STRIP: A ROCK OPERA A struggling South Asian actor torn between duty to take over his parents’ fading bodega and the desire to go all in on his dreams of stardom discovers that only a hallucinogenic desert ritual will bring him totality and reveal his true path. He beckons his best friend, an embittered star of the avant-garde, and his weary lover into the Mojave to take a sacred drug. The desert does its work on them, but not in the way they wanted. It strips them bare, confronting them with the emptiness of their own quest, revealing shattered dreams, and a world of longing. Frenzied, hallucinatory arbitrations of art, fame, love lost, race, and the unspoken resentments of their own friendship erupt…in musical numbers. SELECTED FOR CINE QUA NON'S STORYLINES LAB Click image for link.
ALL THE PRETTY ONES: A GOTHIC HORROR In the summer of '72, a mother of three girls escapes to an island off the coast of Maine to write the novel she hopes and prays will lift her from the ashes of her marriage, but the isolation that looked so glamorous back on the mainland turns dark when the ghost of a lady poet comes calling, demanding that she unearth the island's secret history and her mysterious death. QUARTERFINALIST - NICHOLL FELLOWSHIP, SECOND ROUNDER - AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL, SELECTED - SUN VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL HIGH SCRIBE LAB. Nicholl juror: "This script kicks ass. The writing is truly first-rate, ripe with visual metaphor, and the characters are so well done. This is a story about a single mother connecting with her daughters in a way that empowers them, not in an intellectual sense, but TRUE EMPOWERMENT."
THE YEAR OF THE MOTH: A CRIME DRAMA In the winter of 1934, a small-town bank teller mourning the death of her mother becomes obsessed with bank robbers, Bonnie and Clyde. Through them, she finds a way to blaze above her grief and her mundane existence to truly become one of the LIVING, weaving the details of their life on the lam into a dazzling escape she’ll risk everything to achieve. FINALIST, TELEFILM'S PITCH THIS CONTEST AT THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
MIDNIGHT SON, AN ARCTIC NOIR DRAMA: On a dying farm in Alaska, an ex-addict is trapped by her blind husband, once her savior, now her captor. When an undocumented man appears seeking employment, their erotic connection brings her new life, inspiring a doomed flight to freedom that will end in murder. SELECTED FOR NYWIFT'S FROM SCRIPT TO PRE-PRODUCTION LAB. The Blacklist: "From its sparse writing style to its cast of compelling characters, Midnight Son is a unique, slow-burn character drama set amid the Alaskan frontier. The screenplay explores themes as varied as immigration, intolerance, mercy and faith — in many ways, Midnight Son functions as a meditation on the human condition."
THE ANTELOPE: AN ORIGINAL SCI-FI SERIES Out in California’s parched Antelope Valley, the baby daughter of a nineteen-year-old girl working in a nail salon goes missing. As ecological collapse looms, an ancient, alien race circles, and the girl’s mother is thrown into a desperate hunt to find her, triggering a mother-daughter love story that will span three decades and the entire cosmos. The Blacklist: "This is an exquisitely written pilot from a talented writer. Beyond an identifiable, haunting writer's voice, the script is consistently visually stunning, both on the page and as it might be imagined to be reproduced through the camera. Additionally, the narrative's atmosphere is tangible and hypnotic, working to build a world just south of normal. The characters are an utterly fascinating collection of odd, complex individuals crafted with an addictive humanity, and the writer should be commended for the sheer force and memorability found in the majority of the ensemble.”
BABY SAIGON: A PUNK NOIR ORIGINAL SERIES A Vietnamese-American homicide detective is forced to dig into her past as a teenage refugee on the streets of Hollywood when she is called to the scene of a murder and discovers the victim to be her estranged bandmate, first love, and partner in a long- ago act of revolution. HONOURABLE MENTION FOR THE MAVEN SCREEN MEDIA FELLOWSHIP AT STOWE STORY LABS