2023 JumpStart Writing Competition - Top 25 Features

Script Title

Writer(s)

Logline

BABY POOTY AND THE BEAR

Brian Tuttle

When Vladimir Putin's backup, backup, backup body double stationed in a remote farming town is finally called into action, Baby Pooty must take on politicians, assassins, and conniving hotel managers in order to make it out of the hinterlands alive.

BLACK DRAGON

Roy Hsu

After her Japanese-American lover is sent to the Internment camps during WWII, a half-Japanese woman passing as white joins a resistance in Seattle, covertly communicating with him to collect evidence of government corruption at the camps to bolster ACLU court cases to shut them down.

BLUE WINTER

Madison Sean Flannery

Upon learning of her estranged sister's disappearance, a woman struggling with mental illness journeys to her brother-in-law's remote mansion where she battles demons both real and imagined to uncover the truth.

BROKEN FIELD

John Washburn

After a hazing incident in rural Montana goes too far, a high school football coach and the quarterback’s girlfriend each must make difficult choices that could tear their town apart.

DAD ASSES

Michael Harris

Falling Down meets Dude, Where’s my Car? Over 24 hours, a recently divorced accountant loses his job, his Jeep, and accidentally, traffics Heroin. His only escape? Become a Beige Pants Bad Ass--aka a Dad Ass.

FLYING BLIND

Scott Billings

When the pilots on a private jet suddenly drop dead, a hapless assistant DA has to overcome his paralyzing fear of flying to save himself and a government whistleblower he’s escorting to New York.

GRITTY

Gregory Wakeman

Desperate to increase their popularity, the Philadelphia Flyers hire a scientist to create a sentient mascot Gritty. But when the creature starts to wreak havoc, they must decide whether to alter his personality or just let Gritty be Gritty. Think, Frankenstein and Paddington meets Rocky.

HI, LIBIDO

Farook Qais

On her journey into adulthood, a devout Muslim woman navigates the delicate balance between her family's expectations, sexual fulfillment, and the idea of marrying for love.

I GOT YOU, BABE

Timoteo Camponeschi & Tamra Teig 

A downtrodden musician must choose between turning drag queen to save his mom from nursing home eviction, or being his authentic straight self to win the woman he loves.

I, BROWNIE!

Stanislav Rubakhin

A disobedient boy, who made friends with a cunning house creature called Brownie and swapped bodies with him, must change back before the next new moon to avoid becoming a Brownie forever.

ICE CREAM DON'T MELT IN ENGLEWOOD

Richard Ehrenreich

When a prominent African-American businessman witnesses a police-involved shooting, powerful people attempt to bribe him to corroborate the police department’s version of events. 

MALCOLM & MAY

Marcus Crawford Guy

Malcolm is tortured knowing that he may never serve King and Country and become a village hero, so when a sharp-tongued dreamer, dares him to take her to see the Eiffel Tower, Malcolm spies his chance to impress. But the foolish decision to take his brother’s uniform leads Malcolm into a lie of stolen valor, forcing him to reckon with the fact that men can fall from grace without being soldiers or heroes. Such a fall might just be what Malcolm needs in order to break the curse of being an obedient family man.

NOBODY'S HEROES

Michael Elliott

A disillusioned Vietnam combat vet defies the FBI to help a notorious antiwar activist escape to Canada.

POD 6

Kevin M. Jones

When her father is critically injured during a deep-water expedition in the Farallon Trench, a young geophysicist is forced to travel to the bottom of the ocean in order to save him. In doing so, she discovers a conspiracy that could ruin the world.

PRESS JUNKET HEIST

Chris Logan

When a zealous publicist is blackmailed during the most important press junket of his career -- a heist movie starring a reclusive A-lister -- he must pull off a heist of his own to save his job. It's a heist movie...set during a press junket...promoting a heist movie.

SAIGON DOLL 

In the final chaotic hours of the US exodus from Saigon, a grieving Marine struggles against enemy soldiers — some of whom share his uniform — in order to shepherd an orphaned 8-year-old Vietnamese girl to the American embassy.

SINK

Kyle Jutkiewicz & Alexander Seltzer 

A closed-off young woman returns home to the remote Canadian Oil Sands to bury her estranged father, but when his bitter legacy resurfaces as an ancient evil that feeds on trauma, she must finally confront her past… or drown in it.

THE ESCAPIST 

Rudi O'Meara

In a bid to survive WWII without firing a shot, a naive, young, jazz-obsessed musician joins the Musikkorps Leibstandarte-SS (Hitler's personal orchestra) and soon finds himself thrust into some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

THE GARDEN

Nathan Patton

When humanity becomes immune to death, a frantic mother must traverse a dangerous and unstable country to find a mysterious medical facility before her diabetic daughter slips into a permanent coma.

TRAGIC BEAUTY

Jace Serrano

The story of Donyale Luna, who before tragically succumbing to heroin addiction, rose to the height of fame as the world’s first Black supermodel.

TWO KGS OF MARMALADE

Megan Mazer

In German occupied Poland, following the erection of the Warsaw Ghetto, a Polish youth establishes the Jewish Fighting Organization with his brother and their friends to resist the Nazi rule. 

WILDING

Denise Papas Meechan 

Three toddlers are found slaughtered at the same time wolves are rewilded into the Scottish Highlands, leaving the three moms to deal with their grief differently– one declares war on the wolves; one’s convinced it’s the curse of the supernatural Wulver; and one must overcome her discontent with life in order to unearth the unbelievable, harrowing truth. 

WITCH HUNT

Valerie Burnham

In the 1980s, a decorated Naval officer is falsely accused of a "sexually deviant act" faces a relentless investigator, a homophobic captain, and a prejudiced culture, as she fights to prove her innocence and avoid imprisonment in a society where homosexuality is criminalized.

WRIGHTSBOROUGH

Mahonri Stewart

A Quaker family is divided during the Revolutionary War in Georgia as their ideals of pacifism and abolitionism bring them in direct conflict with their slaveholding neighbors.