TWENTIETH ANNUAL AMERICAN ZOETROPE SCREENPLAY COMPETITION
Many thanks to all who entered the 2022 American Zoetrope Screenplay Competition. We appreciate the opportunity to read such diverse and innovative work.
From nearly 2,000 submissions, Judge Francis Coppola and the American Zoetrope staff honored the scripts below. Because of the particular strength and originality of the top two submissions, we named a winner and a runner-up this year.
Winner:
Par 3 by Todd Scheiperpeter (Los Angeles, CA)
Runner-up:
The Anklebiter by Andy Jones (Los Angeles, CA)
Finalists:
Mae McKenzie’s Last Stand by Sera Barbieri and Heather Barbieri (Seattle, WA)
Yours Truly by Carmine Bicchetti (Los Angeles, CA)
Orwell’s War by Lawrence Bogad (Berkeley, CA)
Small World by Eric Glawe (Long Beach, CA)
Hanging Gardens of the Sea and Sky by Zoë Greenbaum (Brooklyn, NY)
Sanderson (pilot) by Michael O’Rourke (Burbank, CA)
The Raven’s Gift by Don Rearden (Anchorage, AK)
Masterpiece by Paul Sellars (London, England)
Semifinalists:
Alien Boy by Fawaz Al-Matrouk (San Francisco, CA)
Fats by Laurie Ashbourne (Culver City, CA)
Once the Sun Rises by Shaun Crawford (Calgary, Canada)
The Green Beyond the Sky by Pete Eliot (Bedford, England)
Not Haunted by Katie Ennis (Bronx, NY)
The Forgotten Burrough by Jeff Ingber (Cranford, NJ)
An Ideal Wife by Sarah Knight (New York, NY)
The Coal Train by Cameron Lindsey (Boise, ID)
Wild Man by Maureen McEly (Cincinnati, OH)
The Nesting Dolls by Craig Metts and Colleen Dolan Metts (Lexington, SC)
Aurora (pilot) by Yoko Miyao (Cardiff, CA)
Booker Carmichael and the Tree of Life by Isaiah Mouw (Chattanooga, TN)
Casus Belli (pilot) by Kathryn Orwig (MI)
Party Animals (pilot) by Robert Phillips (Los Angeles, CA)
American Sons by Roger Stigliano (Los Angeles, CA)
Quarterfinalists:
Salaam George Michael by Irshad Ashraf (Manchester, England)
Jack of All Trades by Mel Barrett (Somerville, MA)
Raw Materials by Stephen Bell and J. Brett VanderMale (Los Angeles, CA)
Dream Factory by Victoria De La Torre and Christian Contreras (San Bernardino, CA)
Spine by Danny Glasgow (Newport Beach, CA)
The Green House by Zach Grossman (Los Angeles, CA)
When the Break Came by Alar Kivilo (Los Angeles, CA)
Black Powder by Eleanor Labine and Thomas Nesbitt (Somers, CT)
Small by Arlene Leigh and Alex Davies (Los Angeles, CA)
The Postman’s Letter by Ellen Johnson (Stanhope, NJ)
The Feasting Fray by Jason Mann (San Francisco, CA)
The Little Mariachis by Robert Morales and Miles Enriquez-Morales (Whittier, CA)
Class of 1940 by James Morrison (Moneta, VA)
Sammy by David Charles Murphy (Apache Junction, AZ)
Yellow Cabin by Kent Perlmutter (Holliston, MA)
The Science of Fitting In by Angie Piccirillo (Palmdale, CA)
One Thread by Adam Nichols Russell (Brooklyn, NY)
By Blood and Moonlight by JMR Serrato (Louisville, CO)
Death Sentence by Ben Weiss (New York, NY)
Say You Love Me by Omar Salas Zamora (Los Angeles, CA)
The winner will receive the grand prize of $5,000. The runner-up will receive an American Zoetrope gift package.
The winner, runner-up, and eight finalists will be considered for representation by the agencies CAA, Circle of Confusion, Energy Entertainment, Exile Entertainment, the Gersh Agency, ICM, Oasis Media Group, the Radmin Company, UTA, and William Morris Endeavor. Their scripts will be considered for option and development by the production companies American Zoetrope, Anonymous Content, Cats & Dogs Productions, Double Hope Films, Forward Movement (an ARRAY Company), Fox Searchlight, Groundswell Productions, Icon Films, IFC Films, Jean Doumanian Productions, Lionsgate, LIT Entertainment Group, Lleju Productions, Number 9 Films, Oasis Media Group, Pretty Pictures Productions, Roserock Films, Sony Pictures Classics, Verisimilitude, and Working Title Films.
The 2023 American Zoetrope Screenplay Competition will open for submissions on June 1; for details, please visit the website this summer. To receive updates by email, please write us at contests@zoetrope.com.
Thanks again, and all good wishes for your writing!