As we know it takes time, tenacity and talent to develop a career as a screenwriter.
Since the MA Screenwriting programme launched in 2005, many graduates are now working professionally across the industry in development, production and on their own projects with companies such as eg Matador, Scottfree, Lionsgate, Power to the Pixel, Apple TV+ Focus Features.
2023
- Kefi Chadwick has recently been working on the Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper's much loved Rivals and collaborating with Pippa Bennett-Warner on another adaptation for Noho/ITV.
- Ameir Brown graduated in 2018 and has since worked on the forthcoming Disney+ drama, A Thousand Blows with Steven Knight and starring Stephen Graham, as well as BBC1 thriller The Capture and Apple TV+’s Criminal Record. Most recently, Ameir has written two episodes of upcoming BBC/Netflix drama, Champion, created by Candice Carty-Williams.
- Kaamil Shah who graduated in 2018 recently finished Count Abdulla, available to watch on ITVX now. Kaamil wrote and created the series which he initially developed while at LFS.
2022
- Graduate Taiyo Yoshida won the ‘Best Film Script 19 and Over’ at the Film The House competition
- Graduate Lyndon Henley Hanrahan was selected for the Series Mania scriptwriting workshop
- Previously both Lyndon and Taiyo were named as winners of the 2021 Watersprite Film Festival Screenwriting Competition
- Graduate, Angela Franklyn was selected for the Writers Lab UK & Ireland, and her feature script Mozart’s Don Jane, has since been picked up by Misfits Entertainment
- MAS alumna Elaine Gracie is co-writing a Sky Original comedy, Romantic Getaway with Romesh Ranganathan. Elaine previously saw her project Wedding Season selected for the inaugural UK Online Pitchbox
- MAS alumna Jaclyn Bethany has developed several features with Tell The To The Winter Sea and Before The World Set on Fire, currently in post-production
2021
- Benjamin Cleary, writer/director for his first feature debut, Swan Song, premiered on Apple TV+ December 2021. Previously Ben won the Oscar for this short Stutterer in 2016
- MAS alumna Tamara Vogl took part in the 2021 Canneseries, the international series scriptwriting residency program. Previously, Tamara Vogl was named the Best Feature Film Screenplay Winner at the Evolution Film Festival Mallorca for her script Tau Emerald
2020
- Screenwriting graduate and PhD student Gonzalo Maza (MAS 12) has been featured in Variety's list of "10 Latinx to Watch" for 2020. Gonzalo is a writer and producer, known for A Fantastic Woman (2017, Golden Globe Best Motion Picture nomination, Oscar winner of Best Foreign Film
- Kefi Chadwick (MAS 7), longlisted in the 2020 British Independent Film Awards Best Debut Screenwriter category
- Jessica Romagnoli (MAS 10) and Patrick William Ireland (MAF 183) reached the semi-finals of the 2021 ScreenCraft TV Pilot Competition with their script Lady Charon.
- MAS alumnus Rajat Agrawal produced Chippa, a feature film released on Netflix India
- MAS alumna Eva Trobisch (MAS 10) was a member of the jury for the Encounters competition at the 2020 Berlinale
- The BFI Flare programme in 2020 featured the work of 4 alumni including Theo Krekis (MAS 10)
2019
- MAS graduate Hilary Burgoon’s screenplay, Duck, advanced to the quarterfinals of the Atlanta Film Festival Screenplay Competition
- Underwire Festival screened work by Jaclyn Bethany (MAS 11) Sunday Tide
- Antonio Sequeira's (MAF 192) film A Son Like Others, written by MA Screenwriting graduate Rodrigo Garcia (MAS 13), took home the Young Jury Award from the ONE Country ONE Film Festival
- Murat Çetinkaya's (MAS 8) short Ad Infinitum screened at this year's Sci-Fi London Film Festival
Charlotte Colbert had an outstanding few years since graduating. Represented by Casarotto Ramsay she has written an array of feature scripts, including a commission by Pippa Cross focusing on the issue of underage asylum seekers in the UK, which was directed by BAFTA-winning director Bruce Goodison and stars Toby Jones. It played in this year’s BFI London Film Festival. Her grad screenplay meanwhile, mentored by Laurence Coriat, a fictionalised biopic around the character of Lou Andreas Salome has now been picked up by Dorje Films and Les Films du Poisson to be made as a French/German co-production next year. Other work includes Project Eve a collaborative feature script with eight female writers led by actress Ruth Wilson, as well as a teen-adventure adaptation with Tony Grisoni. She was also part of Skillset’s SOS scheme for which she wrote an original feature script Cab Ride Home, a mumblecore film set in 1960s LA, currently optioned by The Bureau. In the course of last year, she teamed up with Parkville Pictures and Charlie Fink (frontman of band Noah & The Whale) to write a 30-minute futuristic fiction, which was financed by Universal and is currently touring with the band. Recently she has been commissioned by Vito Films in Paris to write an original feature script for director Olivier Dahan (La Vie En Rose; Grace of Monaco) and is also working on a comedy with award-winning director Harry Wootliff, which is being produced by the BFI and Fly Films.
Robyn Pete’s collaboration with MAF graduate Jamie Chambers on his first feature Blackbird, premiered at EIFF and where it was also nominated for the MICHAEL POWELL AWARD and won BEST OF THE FEST, it was also nominated for the AUDIENCE AWARD at the Scottish BAFTA's. Chris Andrews has also benefitted from support from EIFF with his feature project Scuttler – mentored by Kate Leys and Ivan Mackinnon through the EIFF network currently seeking development finance.
Luke Foster’s first feature credit Betsy and Leonard was also a collaboration with a MAF directing graduate Bernhard Pucher and won Best Original Screenplay at the Madrid International Festival and Best Film at the Tenerife International Film Festival. Icelandic graduate Hrafnkell Stefánsson is in post on his third feature City State with an earlier screenplay picked up by James Mangold (Walk the Line, Girl Interrupted). Adam Dewar’s short thriller Hardwire was selected as part of the Collabor8te scheme run by the Bureau, Dazed and Rankin Film Productions. Directed by Rankin himself and starring Marc Warren, Toby Jones and Laura Haddock, it will be premiered on Sky Arts in the New Year. Adam is now developing a three-part political drama for Rankin Productions and an American Football set crime drama for the Bureau.
Kefi Chadwick, who is already a successful playwright, has just finished filming her short Girl Power - a collaboration with MAF graduate Benjamin Bee, starring Jason Flemying, Alice Lowe and Dakota Blue Richards. She also has commissions from New York-based production company Melenchuck Williams and a TV drama project in development with Noho Film and TV. Other collaborations with MA filmmaking graduates include James Rzicka’s work with Anu Menon on a feature screenplay Romesh and Jugal, a gay Indian Romeo and Juliet comedy, which they sold to Bhalaji Motion Pictures, while MAS graduate and writer/director Priyamvada Narayanan recently won Best Foreign Short at the Californian International Film Festival with her film The Breadfruit Tree and Rachel Smith took first place in the Rhode Island Screenplay competition with her grad script - a romantic comedy titled Fix You Up. Vidur Nauriyal from the same cohort has been collaborating with the young Indian filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia, whose last film Miss Lovely was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes last year.
Screenwriting labs and workshops are increasingly a way for a writer to get their work read and developed as well as to meet with producers but they are often fiercely competitive. Kaveh Mohebbi was selected on the basis of his LFS grad script for a scholarship place at the Canadian Film Centre – a six-month workshop with five places out of three thousand applicants. Participants are guaranteed writing jobs in the industry at the end of the programme. From the same year, Despina Ladi was one of twelve writers selected for AdaptLab, Torino FilmLab's advanced training course on adaptation, consisting of three residential workshops and two online sessions. In the final workshop during the TorinoFilmLab Meeting Event in November in Turin, she presented her project to international producers, sales agents and other industry professionals from all over the world.
On the production side, Ines Braga is a key member of the development team at multi-platform company Power To the Pixel while MAS grad Lucia Lopez was appointed as Head of Development at Matador.
Projects include Vahid Hakimsadeh’s first feature as a writer-director Greater Things, shot on Super 16mm in the UK, Japan and Switzerland. The cinematographer was Camera d’Or nominated Ghasem Ebrahimian and the cast includes cult Japanese jazz musician Toshinori Kondo and actress-turned-director Kaori Momoi, a 5-time Japanese academy award winner, and veteran of Kurosawa and Imamura.