AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES 2024 SCREENPLAY AND FILM COMPETITION AWARD WINNERS

Austin Film Festival is thrilled to announce its 2024 Script and Film Competition Awardees.  We are honored that these superb writers and filmmakers chose to share their work with us. Their stories demonstrated the voice, vision, and heart that propels this industry forward. It has been a privilege to be part of these artists’ journeys, and we cannot wait to see where the work goes next. Their commitment to this craft is what Austin Film Festival has celebrated and supported for over 30 years.

Winners were announced during AFF’s Awards Luncheon that took place during the 31st Annual Festival and Writers Conference in Austin, TX. Both Screenplay and Film winners took the stage along with some of best in the industry, including Robin Swicord (recipient of the 2024 Bill Wittliff Award for Screenwriting), Kathleen Kennedy (2024 Polly Platt Award for Producing recipient), Ronald D. Moore (2024 Outstanding Television Writer Award), Justin Marks (2024 Writer’s Writer Award), and Rachel Kondo (2024 New Voice Award.)

The 2024 Austin Film Festival featured 150+ films screened, including all the winning films. The Writers Conference featured over 100 individual events, including panels, roundtables, and networking events focused on the craft and business of script writing. The 2025 Austin Film Festival Screenplay and Film Competitions will open in December of this year. 

2024 Film Competition Award & Fellowship Winners 

The 2024 Austin Film Festival Film Jury Competition featured eleven categories of competition. Film Jury winners were selected by jurors including Roy Lee (Barbarian, It, The Ring), Tazbah Rose Chavez (Reservation Dogs, Resident Aline, Sex Lives of College Girls), and So Young Shelly Yo (Smoking Tigers, Soft Sounds of Peeling Fruit, Moonwalk With Me) amongst many others. 

Following his wife’s recent passing, single father Lucky finds himself navigating the challenges of raising his son Mason, who has Down syndrome. Seeking solace, Lucky and Mason embark on a journey across Metro Atlanta to attend their first baseball game together.

An aging trailblazer of migrant search and rescue risks everything to find a mother’s missing son before the border wastelands claim the young man forever.

Lady Parts is a dramedy feature film where a young woman’s sex life becomes a family affair when she has to undergo a vulvar vestibulectomy. Her loving, but overbearing parents help her through recovery (despite her cringing) and learn that saying “vagina” loud and proud is the first step to advocating for herself in all aspects of her life.

On a remote cattle farm some years in the future, a woman discovers the unsettling consequences of her husband’s animal breeding methods.

Young Brett must navigate the underbelly of the Johannesburg gambling world as a seemingly harmless horse racing bet jeopardizes the surprise he’s prepared for his Father’s birthday.

Directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Smriti Mundhra for MTV Documentary Films. In the days leading up to his execution, Texas death row prisoner John Henry Ramirez seeks redemption from his victim’s son.

Yuck! Couples kissing on the mouth are gross. And the worst is, you can’t miss them: when people are about to kiss, their lips become all pink and shiny. Little Léo laughs at them, just like all the kids at the summer camp. But he has a secret he won’t tell his friends: his own mouth has actually begun glistening. And, in reality, Léo desperately wants to give kissing a try.

12-year-old Roshni forges a bond with the class outcast, Chakor, to keep her lice infestation a secret. The malicious lie looms large over Roshni as a real friendship blossoms between them.

A foley artist for pornography falls in love with a porn star during an ADR session.

After a young Black man miraculously survives an attempted lynching by a wannabe Klansman, he is presented with the biggest decision of his life: get revenge or show mercy.

Teenagers, boxer Sasha from Moscow and Kazakh rapper Mamazhan, involuntarily become step siblings and do everything to get rid of each other.

All 2024 Competition winning films are being screened at the Austin Film Festival. Each film will have at least one other screening over the last four days of the Festival through October 31. Check out the complete Film Schedule in order to catch all of these, and many other, amazing films.

2024 Screenplay Competition Award & Fellowship Winners 

The 2024 Austin Film Festival Screenplay competition featured eighteen categories. Screenplay Award winners were selected by a distinguished panel of industry judges including, Jameel Saleem (co-executive producer/writer Bob’s Burgers; writer South Park, Disenchantment), Peter Craig (The Town, The Batman, Bad Boys for Life, parts 1 and 2 of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay), Wendy Calhoun (Empire, Prodigal Son, Nashville).

Drama Feature Screenplay Award presented by The Writers Guild of America, East

Hung Over

by Michail Eggelhoefer 

Five years after getting attacked by racists, a mixed-race alcoholic is forced to attend Alcoholics Anonymous, where he ends up being sponsored by one of his attackers, who remains unaware of their connection.

Comedy Feature Screenplay Award

Love That for You

by Forrest Brown

Lifelong serial-dater Megan helps her shy best friend Hunter navigate the chaotic Brooklyn dating scene as she struggles to commit to her first serious relationship with a woman, and both are forced to wrestle with how their friendship fits into their evolving lives.

Drama Teleplay Pilot Award 

The Mitfords

by Vivian Kerr 

​Based on a true story, the six aristocratic Mitford sisters struggle to find love and meaning in their lives as their family is torn between fascism and communism in turbulent pre-World War II Britain.

Comedy Teleplay Pilot Award 

Florence Unfiltered 

by Heather Osterman-Davis and Sarah Ball

STEM-obsessed Florence Nightingale is heaven-bent on shattering the stained-glass ceiling even if it means flipping the bird at her suffocating family who insist she leave medicine to men, cinch up her corset and behave like a gentlewoman already. Victorian Herstory that passes the Bechdel test.

Drama Teleplay Spec Award 

The Great: A Hole In Horizon

by Rosy Lum 

After Archie’s death leaves a power vacuum at court, Catherine struggles to find her power and be taken seriously as a leader, fighting off personal betrayals, murder plots, and the taunting ghost of the dead archbishop.

Comedy Teleplay Spec Award 

 Abbott Elementary: Has Been 

by Forrest Hanson

Ava meets her match in a rising TikTok star who gives the rude principal a taste of her own medicine after Ava tries to claim credit for the girl’s success. Jacob convinces Gregory and Mr. Johnson to start a chess club.

Horror Screenplay Award presented by Vertigo Entertainment

Pound for Pound

by Benjamin R. Moody 

A wannabe MMA fighter is promised a shot in the professional ring if he wins a mysterious tournament held for the super rich, but discovers that this cult-like secret society will make him question what he’s willing to sacrifice for success.

Sci-Fi Screenplay Award

Audrey 

by Imogen Grace 

During a transitional period in her career, a veteran Hollywood actress builds a dark and destructive bond with her AI body double, in this twisted doppelganger Sci-Fi about the pursuit of perfection at all costs. 

Short Screenplay Award 

The Dyson-Nüwa Project 

by Joey Yu 

In a future where super technologies enable humanity to harvest our sun’s energy like never before, space architect Roslin finds herself isolated in a dire situation while trying to save her kids — who are millions of miles away — from a system anomaly.

Playwriting Award

Insertion 

by Sarah Groustra 

Scripted Digital Series Award

UR Killing Me

by Michael Iannconi and Sarah Moen 

Three Gen Z friends band together to kill the most annoying member of their friend group.

Fiction Podcast Award presented by Realm 

Saint Cassandra

by Zaity Salman 

Cassandra – a living vampire ‘cured’ of her bloodthirst – desperately searches for her missing scientist father, fighting increasing suspicion from an anti-vampire Federal agent and signs that she is beginning to crave human blood.

YMH Studios Comedy Fellowship 

Chasing Shadows

Tony Ferrendelli and Kim Turner

A different kind of romantic comedy about a couple who separate just shy of their 25th anniversary so they can figure out if being alone is actually less lonely than feeling alone in a relationship. Marriage is not for the faint of heart.

Big Indie Screenwriting Fellowship

X Marks the Spot 

written by: Mason Greer 

Three siblings, tasked with settling their grandfather’s affairs after his passing, discover shocking evidence suggesting he might be the real killer of Malcolm X. Now, they must decide together how to handle this revelation before the rest of the family arrives for the wake.

TV Comedy Fellowship sponsored by the Nickelodeon Writing Program

by Joshua Logan 

An over-eager high school freshman trying to do his best to enjoy the experience gets embroiled in a scandal that ruins his reputation, forcing him to find out what really happened and clear his name.

Enderby Entertainment Award 

Megaball 

by Aaron Kozak

After playing the Megaball lottery for over a decade, a financially struggling couple’s numbers finally come up on the one day they didn’t buy a ticket. As the traumatic disappointment begins to destroy their marriage, they must find a way to repair the damage done, or risk losing it all.

Josephson Entertainment TV Fellowship 

The G.Y.M.

by Dani Hanks

When a neurotic woman spends her life savings to rescue her hometown’s infamous gym, she and her eclectic employees must battle clients, love, dietary supplements, and the fancy fitness chain across the street to keep their beloved underdog gym afloat. ABBOTT ELEMENTARY in a Planet Fitness.

Josephson Entertainment Feature Fellowship 

Separated 

by Jessica Sieff 

When a Marine struggling with PTSD befriends a child whose parents have been detained by ICE, she promises to keep the child safe, but a deadly confrontation turns her into the target of a nationwide manhunt.

2024 Young Filmmaker Competition Winner