Outfest Los Angeles

SCREENWRITING LAB 2020
SCREENWRITING LAB 2021
SATURDAY & SUNDAY | JULY 16 & 17 | 11:15 | DGA 2
SATURDAY & SUNDAY | JULY 23 & 24 | 11:15 | DGA 2
CARLTON DANIEL JR. HE/HIM
HOMEGOING (Feature)
Haunted by nightmares, musical prodigy, Junior
Carmichael, returns home to his family’s funeral
parlor in Cleveland, Ohio in order to salvage
his grip on reality. While finding his place in the
world, he must come to terms with his family,
community, and the man he loves.
Join us for an exclusive opportunity to see the 2020 and 2021 Outfest
Screenwriting Lab projects come to life before your eyes. Scenes
have been selected from each of the nineteen scripts to be directed
by Outfest alumni, and performed by an allstar cast. The Outfest
Screenwriting Lab has shepherded over 100 scripts, a dozen of
which have gone on to be produced feature films. There will be light
breakfast before each of the readings, so join us for these readings!
CODY STICKLES HE/THEY
KEA TREVETT SHE/HER
THE WEDDING DATE (Feature)
In this family-driven film, trans guy Caleb drags his
BFF Roxy as his fake date to his sister’s Southern
wedding, where they struggle to keep the lie
under wraps amidst surprising new feelings for
each other.
AMANDA MOHR SHE/HER
TEXTS FROM YOUR EX (Episodic)
Maeve, a self-sabotaging alcoholic with
dangerous coping mechanisms, is desperate
to move past a bad breakup—but her plans of
recovery are ruined when she learns that her
ex-girlfriend has mysteriously gone missing, and
she’s forced to risk everything to figure out what
happened. (Dead to Me meets Search Party.)
EMMA MCIVOR THEY/THEM
I LOVE YOU LIKE A BROTHER (Episodic)
In a working-class Catholic neighborhood where
it’s a mortal sin for men to talk about their feelings,
16-year-old closeted trans woman Kassandra
and her pretentious bipolar brother Jack must
learn to open up to each other if they’re going to
escape Northeast Philadelphia…
CHRIS RENFRO THEY/THEM
ONE BIG HAPA FAMILY (Animated Episodic)
When a gay, biracial high school band geek
decides to make the most popular boy in school
fall in love with him, he lets his witch-in-training
younger sister perform a love spell. When her
magic accidentally enchants his gym sock, he has
to do what he can to cover the damage and still
maybe get the boy of his dreams
JABARI MCDONALD HE/HIM
BLACK MUD (Episodic)
In the wake of his grandfather’s death, history
Ph.D. student KHALIL goes down south to search
for a legendary Confederate treasure buried
on the land where his enslaved ancestors once
worked. Little does he know that the slave master’s
descendants are also looking for it and it’s a race
to see who can find it first.
COURTNEY ANDUJAR SHE/HER
HILLARY ANDUJAR SHE/HER
DAMON ROYSTER HE/HIM
KRISTIN SLANEY SHE/HER
LINDSAY CALLERAN SHE/THEY
CAITY (Feature)
LOVESPELL (Feature)
A teenager casts a spell to bring her fantasy
crush to life and inadvertently awakens an evil
entity that begins feeding on the girls at her
reform school.
GARY JAFFE HE/HIM
OUR LAST SUMMER (Feature)
In summer 1991, a closeted teenager travels
the bumpy road to self-acceptance when his
estranged gay uncle returns home, dying of
complications from HIV/AIDS.
LEANDRO TADASHI HE/HIM
BEFORE THE NIGHT ENDS (Feature)
BEFORE THE NIGHT ENDS is a gay teen road
movie that unfolds on a single Saturday night
when two boys from the low-income outskirts of
São Paulo, Brazil, go on a journey to try to get into
an expensive gay club downtown.
APPQUEEN (Episodic)
Damon, a pompous, pretentious, and newly out
gay man attempts to make himself romantically
ready for Mr. Right by using his Grindr app and
meeting up with Mr. Right-Now.
JOHNNY ALVAREZ HE/HIM
SOMEWHERE ELSE (Episodic)
A group of senior citizens stuck in a suburban
desert purgatory finds their bizarre, banal lifestyle
upended by the arrival of a newcomer hellbent on
getting into heaven.
RAUL MARTIN ROMERO HE/HIM
BEARS (Episodic)
BEARS is a half-hour dramedy that follows a queer,
multicultural couple in search of their own definition
of marriage and the in and outs of gay Bear culture
in the South.
AGORA BOREALIS (Feature)
After a 13-year-old who finds a suicide note
discovers the person who wrote the note is still
very much alive, she embarks on a mission to
convince him that life is worth living (without
letting him know she’s found his note).
NATALIE JASMINE HARRIS
SHE/THEY
PURE (Feature)
For 17-year-old Celeste, senior year in her affluent
Black community means following family tradition
and becoming a debutante… but she longs for a
different kind of coming out.
OATES WU HE/HIM
WATER HAS ANOTHER DREAM (Feature)
After suffering an injury, Liuming, a young Chinese
competitive diver, sees his dream of being a
world-class athlete shattered. As an escape,
he takes part in a training program in America,
unlocking a world of sex, kink, love. He matures
rapidly with unavoidable growing pains.
While managing her family’s local haunted
house with her alcoholic father, Paul, 16-year-old
Caity navigates the evaporating space between
childhood and adulthood.
NOVA CYPRESS BLACK
THEY/THEM
THE OTHER SIDE (Episodic)
When death separates a queer couple, they both
indulge in addictive magic to find their way back
to each other.
SAV RODGERS HE/HIM
TAYLOR GATES SHE/HER
I LOVE YOU, MARGOT ROBBIE (Feature)
Transgender teenage boy Felix McNeil’s high
school start was nearly ordinary — breaking an
arm, crushing hard on a girl, and juggling the
inevitable woes of adolescence — but when a
larger-than-life, boundlessly supportive imaginary
friend in the form of Margot Robbie falls into his
world from a billboard, things take a turn for the
extraordinary.