Oscar's Academy announces annual screenwriter winners
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced today (Tuesday, September 29, 2015) in a press release, that five winners have been selected for the 2015 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition. This is the 30th anniversary of this competition, in which the Academy searches for new talented screenwriters from across the globe.
Each winner of the contest is given a $35,000 prize and the first portion of the prize will be given to the winners at an awards presentation at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater on Wednesday, November 4, 2015, in Beverly Hills, California. The awards evening will include a live reading of a few scenes from the fellows' winning scripts. The list of winners, are as follows:
· Andrew Friedhof, “Great Falls”
· Anthony Grieco, “Best Sellers”
· Amy Tofte, “Addis Abeka”
· Sam Regnier, “Free Agent”
· Elizabeth Chomko, “What They Had”
During this competition a whopping 7,442 scripts were submitted for consideration. Two writing teams and ten individuals were selected as finalists. The submitted scripts were judged by the Academy Nicholl Fellowship Committee, who chose the winners. The remaining finalists are:
· Jennifer Bailey and Max Lance, ”Best Funeral Ever”
· Ghazi Albuliwi, “Arafat”
· Lynn Esta Goldman, “Angel on the Wall”
· Ryan Covington, “The Secrets We Keep”
· Suzanne Kelman and Susannah Rose Woods, “Held”
· Murat Izmirli, “Grimwood”
· Augustus Rose, “Far from Cool”
Each fellowship winner is expected to complete a feature-length screenplay during their fellowship year. The winners maintain their own copyrights and the Academy does not intervene with any commercial use of the screenplays.
The Academy Nicholl Fellowship competition committee is chaired by Oscar-nominated writer Robin Swicord ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") and serving as vice chair is marketing executive Buffy Shutt. Other committee members are Tina Gordon Chism, Eric Roth, Naomi Foner, Kirsten Smith, Tyger Williams, Dana Stevens, Academy Award winning actress Eva Marie Saint ("On the Waterfront"), executive Marcus Hu, cinematographer John Bailey ("Groundhog Day"), Albert Berger, Julie Lynn, Julia Chasman, Peter Samuelson and agent Ron Mardigian.
Tickets for the 2015 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Awards Presentation & Live Read are now available and can be purchased at Oscars.org/Events.