Women accounted for just 10 percent of the writers behind 2017’s 100 highest-grossing films. The Athena IRIS Screenwriting Lab is designed to help improve this figure and get more female leaders behind the scenes and on-screen. This year’s participants have been announced.
A collaboration between The Athena Film Festival (AFF) and IRIS, The Lab consists of two days of intensive script development with industry mentors. The program is designed for female writers who haven’t had a feature-length fictional script produced yet. In order to be eligible, screenplays must be feature-length narratives and include one or more strong female characters in leadership roles at the center of the story.
This year’s Lab Writers are Joy Goodwin, Kellee Terrell, Elizabeth Richardson, and G. Michelle Robinson. Their selected scripts include a portrait of three enslaved men and women in antebellum Maryland, and a story about an overrun neurologist who hires a nanny and is forced to deal with unexpected consequences.
Serving as Mentors this year are “Toy Story 3” screenwriter Michael Arndt, “American Splendor” writer-director Shari Springer Berman, “Monsoon Wedding” scribe Sabrina Dhawan, and Maria Maggenti, screenwriter of “Before I Fall.”
The Athena IRIS Lab will take place February 22 and 23, 2018 during the 8th Annual AFF.
This year AFF is honoring two-time Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple, BAFTA-winning writer and director Amma Asante, cabaret artist and actress Bridget Everett, and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” writer-director J.J. Abrams.
You can find more info about The Athena IRIS LAB film scripts and mentors below.
RUN
by Joy Goodwin
In antebellum Maryland, three enslaved men and women are forced to decide whether to stay or to run.
GEMMA
by Kellee Terrell
A Black lesbian grieving the death of her wife moves into an isolated Wisconsin farmhouse and befriends a resident ghost.
A FOREST WITHOUT HOURS
by Elizabeth Richardson
When an overworked neurologist hires a new nanny, her relationships with her family and her work begin to unravel.
PLACAGE
by G. Michelle Robinson
In 1820s New Orleans, a young quadroon woman rejects a white man’s patronage, and strikes out to the Missouri territories to forge her own way.
2018 Athena IRIS Screenwriting Lab Mentors
Michael Arndt wrote the screenplays for Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and Toy Story 3 (2010), among others. He lives in New York.
Shari Springer Berman is an Oscar- and Emmy-nominated filmmaker. She and her partner, Robert Pulcini, have written and directed American Splendor (2003), The Nanny Diaries (2007), Cinema Verite (2011) and most recently, Ten Thousand Saints (2015).
Sabrina Dhawan is a Professor and Writer who wrote the scripts for Monsoon Wedding (2001), Ishqiya (2010), and Rangoon (2017).
Maria Maggenti is a filmmaker, screenwriter and TV producer best known for her movies Puccini for Beginners and The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love. Her most recent film, Before I Fall directed by Ry Russo Young, was released by Open Road in 2017.
