The Athena Film Festival has announced the participants for its first-ever Virtual Writers Lab. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Athena team is bringing their annual Film & TV lab, usually held in June in Los Angeles, online. Set to take place July 27-29, the lab is hosted in partnership with both the Stephens College Master of Fine Arts Program in Television and Screenwriting and WIST. Sixteen emerging women writers, half of whom identify as women of color, have been selected to work with each other and industry professionals to develop and polish their projects.
The lab, which is sponsored by Lifetime, will provide emerging women storytellers with training, skills, and a robust supportive network so they can advance their projects and careers. The program includes one-on-one mentoring sessions with industry professionals, peer-to-peer and group workshops, and an Industry Day with panels on select topics. This year’s Industry Day will focus on helping writers understand when they need representation and working in a writers room, and will feature a keynote conversation with Athena List winner Chinonye Chukwu.
As part of a multi-year commitment to developing women in STEM projects, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation sponsors two lab participants working on feature-length scripts featuring women in STEM. Sloan Fellows will receive additional mentorship throughout the year to continue to develop their projects.
Co-founded by Women and Hollywood Founder and Publisher Melissa Silverstein, Athena Film Festival at Barnard College celebrates stories about fierce and fearless women leaders from around the world.
The Artemis Rising Foundation, and its CEO Regina K. Scully, is the festival’s founding sponsor.
Check out all of the lab participants and details about their projects below. For more information about Athena Film Festival, head over to its website.
SCREENWRITING LAB PARTICIPANTS
African Dogs Don’t Choke by Jane Barr
When a first-generation African American high school student is the sole Black kid in a class studying Huckleberry Finn, she uses the opportunity to raise her status with the popular crowd.
forward by Mary Ann Anane
After moving to a working-class part of the Hamptons, a Latina teen cleaning for the elite explores identity and love in the shadow of gentrification and inevitable loss.
Malpelo by Victoria Rivera
A solitary free-diver makes the perilous voyage to the remote island of Malpelo in Colombia to investigate the troubling disappearance of hammerhead sharks, with a crew of men who prove to be as dangerous as the predators she’s studying.
Phantom by Jennifer Noonan – Alfred P. Sloan Fellow
A double amputee combat veteran returns from Afghanistan and faces a new battle she must wage to regain herself.
Ray of Life by Kate Sheffield – Alfred P. Sloan Fellow
When biologist Rachel Carson earns literary success with her seminal book SILENT SPRING, she fights the efforts of the military industrial complex to silence her, seeding the modern environmental movement.
Shrimp by Nicole Jones
Decades after her birth in the depths of the Great Salt Lake to a doomed polygamist girl, an introverted woman with supernatural abilities must decide if she will venture into the world and share her unique powers.
The Firefly in the Jar by Deboleena Maitra
A nine-year-old maid in Kolkata, India, draws on her own tenacity and a little magic to realize her dream of going to school.
We Are Golden by Keri Lee
When a misanthropic housesitter discovers a colony of mutant rats that threatens humanity, she approaches the ensuing battle like she approaches life: stoned, armed, and angry.
Screenwriting Lab Mentors include:
Hazuki Aikawa
Maryam Keshavarz
Nijla Baseema Mu’min
Rania Attieh
S. Casper Wong
TELEVISION LAB PARTICIPANTS
#adulting by Naa Adei Mante
A straight-laced engineer tries to shed her neurotic tendencies to chase her creative dreams. She and her friends navigate the struggles of adulthood while all striving to find success in DC.
Black Sands by Shahnaz Mahmud
Set in the desolate sands of Saudi Arabia, oil discovery creates a new world order. As the Americans enter into its vast lands, a conflict of culture emerges as each seeks power on the world stage in the prelude to World War II. Adventure, intrigue, forbidden passion and ultimately betrayal transpire in the depths of the Black Sands.
Crumb Bums by Leslie A. Nipkow
A young female boxer comes of age contending with gender and sexuality as she fights for her place among the city’s top male sports journalists, while American athletes lead the 60s civil rights revolution. What if you were trans before there was a word for it?
Make It Happen by Akil Kumarasamy & Mona Kareem
Make it Happen is a show that tells a spectrum of immigrant stories from brown America, with a cast of young characters in their twenties and thirties navigating a diverse yet hectic place like New York City.
Plan C by Shanice Williamson
A young woman reroutes her mission to save the world and reclaims her dream of becoming a psychologist while working in a mental hospital.
Speak Easy by Sydney Haven
Three women in a small town during Prohibition set up a speakeasy in the basement of their local church.
Two-Dimensional by Sam Mallari
A half-hour, half-animated comedy about a Filipino mother who is extremely overprotective over her teenage son with cerebral palsy. When her son’s acting career takes off and leaves her feeling sidelined, interdimensional beings suddenly summon her to save the multiverse from imminent danger.
Water by Pamela Winfrey
In a world where water defines class, a young girl from a water desert is forced to befriend a girl who is being raised to be sold to the highest bidder.
TV writing lab mentors include:
Amy Toomin Straus
Dawn Comer Jefferson
Jon Vandergriff
Laura Brennan
Liz Keyishian
Rashaan Dozier-Escalante
