The Athena Film Festival at Barnard College, in partnership with the Stephens College Master of Fine Arts in Television and Screenwriting and WIST, (Women in the Script Trade, formerly IRIS) are pleased to announce the winners for the 2019 Athena Film Festival LA TV & Screenwriting Lab.
2019 Screenplay Participants
After the Jump by Marquette Jones
When a law student’s life comes crashing down, she decides to jump off a bridge – but an intrigued bystander offers an alternative.
Auto High by Nina Kentsis
Needing money to attend her dream school, a young girl with a knack for mechanics risks everything to enter the underworld of New York street racing.
Brave Woman by Melissa Duge Spiers
A Native American girl overcomes abuse and abandonment to find family, future, and a very special horse in the vicious, dangerous world of Indian Relay.
Daughters Lost to the Desert by A.M. Sanchez
In Juarez, Mexico, a protective mother seeks justice for her youngest daughter’s murder amidst systemic corruption and accusations of being a murderous vigilante herself.
Mother-Daughter by Tricia Lee
A church-going, undocumented Asian woman who has a strained relationship with her daughter forms an unlikely friendship with a transgender teen.
North to the Future by Cassidy Louwerse
After her husband is murdered, an Alaskan Native struggles to reconnect with her identity and daughter in a politically divided town.
Sins of My Father by Jane Therese
A young mother in Ireland grapples with the love she has for her father after bringing charges of abuse against him.
The Minder of Dying Men by Mary Elder
Set amidst the chaos and carnage of the Crimean War, a mathematical genius fights to pursue her own idea of meaning and gender. Her name was Florence Nightingale.
2019 Television Participants
The War Girls by Alyssa Ross
The War Girls is a one-hour episodic about two women working as war correspondents in 1990s Bosnia. Set against the dramatic backdrop of the longest siege in modern history, The War Girls is about the devastating cost and powerful attraction of war. Most of all, it’s a story of friendship — and love.
Spinster Punks by Rachel Cohn
A group of never married friends who met at the reject table of a wedding 25 years earlier navigate the trials, tribulations and badassery of middle age together.
The Education of Ebony Stone by Crystal Garland
A single mother is recruited to aid an underground radical network in 1980s America.
Night Witches by Nic Yulo
When Germany betrays their Russian armistice and all men are fighting at the front, a group of civilian female fighter pilots must defend their home against the invading Nazi forces.
Stripped by Marisa Forrest
After being disbarred, a hotshot Houston attorney returns to her hometown and learns that she has inherited a strip club.
Badlands by Lisa Scott
After a Navy psychologist’s counseling fails to keep an active-duty serviceman from going ballistic and gunning down several innocent people before killing himself, she is sent on assignment to an Indian Reservation to fix their teen suicide epidemic; a serious problem that takes much longer than her two-week deadline.
Back to Then by Keri Ferencz
When she loses all memories of her adult life, Carly Stevens is forced confront the woman she’s become and decides she must go BACK TO THEN to rectify the mistakes that took her away from the life she planned to live.
Legacy by Kellen Hertz
After a violent act of vandalism unsettles prestigious Cabot University, former homicide detective (now college cop) MEM BOYLE investigates its link to a 27 year old campus murder … and unearths a conspiracy of silence that stretches all the way to the White House.
Skinderella by Amy Banks
In a world she’s never been exposed to, a girl nicknamed Skinderella must retain her Native identity as she searches for the true definition of family.
Thirst by Horton Emory
It’s life as usual in a mid-Missouri bottling plant, until nuclear war strikes America and the night shift is left to fend for themselves.
