CLASS 24-25

Screenwriters

Feature Films

Denise Deegan

PROJECT TITLE

THOUGHT I KNEW YOU

A guilt-ridden crime novelist follows clues left behind by her dead twin which implicate her therapist in manipulating her to take her own life.

Denisee is an Irish novelist and PAGE Award-winning screenwriter who tackles issues of loss and injustice through a prism of light and humour.

Her comedy short about homelessness, THE INNKEEPER, is picking up awards/ honourable mentions on the festival circuit including the Canberra Short Film Festival, This is England Film Festival, SCHLiNGEL, Aesthetica, Foyle and Woods Hole.

Denise writes on Ireland’s longest-running continuing drama, FAIR CITY, and has two TV series and two features in development with a range of Irish, UK and Finnish companies. Her latest script, a psychological thriller, is a Academy Nicholl Fellowship Quarterfinalist and Final Draft Big Break Semi-finalist. She is a grateful recipient of Screen Ireland Development Funding for three projects.

Denise is an active participant in the European Writers Desk run by Creative Europe Desk, Hamburg. She was selected as one of nine European writers for the groundbreaking Words Across Europe, programme and is now developing an exciting TV project with two writers from that programme.

Denise is a member of the Writers Guild of Ireland and Women in Film and Television and is represented by MacFarlane Chard, London.

Grant Rosenmeyer

PROJECT TITLE

LOVE TAP

A struggling thirty-something’s life spirals out of control after a late-night parking mishap with a person living in their car outside his apartment building.

GRANT ROSENMEYER got his start at eight years old on Broadway in Macbeth opposite Kelsey Grammer and Ty Burrell, and in the long-running musical phenomenon Les Miserables before making his film debut in Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums opposite Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, and Gene Hackman. He also led the cast of FOX’s comedy series Oliver Beene from producer Steve Levitan, which co-starred David Cross, Maggie Grace, Andy Lawrence, and AJ Michalka. Grant was a fan-favorite as “Jason” in The CW’s hit series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend opposite Rachel Bloom, and has appeared in various other hit series including Monk, Blue Bloods, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Grant appeared alongside George Clooney and Julia Roberts in Jodie Foster’s thriller Money Monster, and led the hilarious comedy Temps opposite Lindsey Shaw, and 2018 heist comedy Chasing the Blues opposite Jon Lovitz. Rosenmeyer produces via his banner Florida Hill Entertainment. In 2019, he produced and starred alongside Oscar-winning actress Gabourey Sidibe, Hayden Szeto, Ravi Patel, and Janeane Garofalo in The Black List’s first feature Come As You Are, a road trip dramedy based on the real-life experience of Asta Philpot that world premiered at SXSW Film Festival. The Secret Art of Human Flight is Florida Hill’s second feature, and made its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival. The dark comedy stars Rosenmeyer alongside Oscar-nominated actor Paul Raci, Lucy DeVito, Maggie Grace, and Sendhil Ramamurthy, and released theatrically in North America in July 2024. It will continue a global roll-out throughout the fall, and into 2025. Rosenmeyer is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he earned a BFA in Film and TV Production.

Jonathan Socrates

PROJECT TITLE

ON THE TRAIL

An unemployed arts journalist from Britain tries to revive his career by investigating a Greek neo-Nazi party, only to discover that nobody is willing to speak out.

Jonathan Socrates is a Jersey-born writer based in London.
His feature film, TRESPASSERS, will be shot next year. It stars Vanessa Paradis and Laetitia Casta, and it is directed by Vanessa Filho. It is a British-French co-production.
TRESPASSERS is inspired by the true story of the French surrealist artists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore – stepsisters and lovers with one another – who carry out a daring campaign of artistic resistance during the Nazi occupation of Jersey.
Jonathan worked as a journalist for over ten years, specializing in arts and culture, and his work has appeared in the Sunday Times and New Statesman amongst many other publications.
He was the only foreign journalist to secure an interview with the Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn after its leader banned party members from speaking to foreign reporters. He achieved this through a farcical process of trial and error, eventually resorting to going undercover.
As a screenwriter, his interest lies in the convergence of art and politics.
In 2021 he was selected to be a member of the BFI NETWORK x BAFTA Crew.

Lara Celenza

PROJECT TITLE

MALANOCTEM

A girl with no memories, afflicted by a rare blood disorder, visits a medieval castle with her friends to create a Halloween vlog. The centuries-old horror lurking in Malanoctem awakens the darkest secrets of her mind and the monsters hidden among the people she loves.

Italian-born director-writer now residing in Berlin, Lara Celenza holds a BA in Modern Languages from the University of Bologna and an MPhil in Russian Studies from the University of Cambridge. After completing professional training in directing at the Raindance Film School, she founded Kalifilm Productions in 2010 to create award-winning, thought-provoking audiovisual art, including her debut feature “Lost in the City” (2022). Currently, Lara is working on a startup concept to help people change their lives through the power of storytelling, while honing her screenwriting skills and managing multiple projects in various stages of development.

Madeleine Parry

PROJECT TITLE

ELEFTHERIA

A widowed, immigrant grandmother, Roula, spends her time cooking, cleaning and worrying. When a 6-year-old from the neighbouring primary-school drops into her back garden from a tree, Roula’s attempts to help the girl awaken her own inner-child. Re-evaluating her life, Roula is confronted by deep, conflicting emotion over sacrificing her needs for others, and this new-found honesty reshapes her relationship with her daughter Maria, her son George, and herself.

Madeleine Parry began writing and directing with a short documentary, Murder Mouth (2011), which followed her exploring killing her own food for the first time. She has since written, directed and/or produced across twelve commissioned projects including as director of the Emmy and Peabody-award winning Hannah Gadsby: Nanette (2018) for Netflix, the feature music documentary about The Angels (2022) which opened in over 90 cinemas across Australia and the award-winning and the critically acclaimed Maddie Parry documentary series which out-rated the competition on free-to-air national TV. Her work has focussed on balancing heavy themes with humour and insight. In 2018 Madeleine began writing fiction and in 2020 she was awarded the Lottie Lyell Award for her first narrative feature and in 2021 was selected for the inaugural Film Lab: New Voices feature screenwriting lab. Recently, Madeleine was selected as a participant of Screen Australia’s 2023 Enterprise People cohort to undertake a placement with the company of an Oscar-winning writer/director in Los Angeles and received Screen Australia Premium funding to develop and write the first episode of a sci-fi series. She is also writing a feature film inspired by her Greek grandmother, entitled Ελευθερία.

CLASS 24-25

Screenwriters

TV Pilot Drama

Ali Vingiano

PROJECT TITLE

LIQUID GOLD

An American woman teams up with her Italian cousin to launch an international, mafia-adjacent olive oil scam.

Ali Vingiano is a WGA Award-nominated TV writer, filmmaker, and actor based in Los Angeles. She’s written for Apple TV+’s THE MORNING SHOW, produced for Comedy Central, and stars in THE END OF US, an indie feature that premiered at SXSW. Her online film & video work has over 1 billion views, has received widespread press, and has played in festivals worldwide.

Aspa Kalliani

PROJECT TITLE

THE NET

During a very troubled era, where war and hunger are leaving their marks upon Europe, five women will try to use their psychic abilities four counter espionage and a pan-European resistance.

Aspa Kalliani is a writer, theater director, and psychotherapist. She studied sociology, theater, screenwriting, psychotherapy, and holds a Master’s degree in Communication from Boston University. She has written and directed a number of award winning plays in Greek theatres. She is also known as a writer for TV Series and a commercial film. Currently she works as a psychotherapist, a script consultant and a screenwriter.  Her latest script with working title “The Net”, combines  all the different fields she has explored and derives from her faith that “All of us are born with psychic abilities. Some neurodivergent people, though, are born with such psychic abilities that can open up a whole new future.»

Daniel Brierley

PROJECT TITLE

THE GIRL IN THE PICTURE

A British con artist convinces a wealthy Greek family she is their long-lost daughter – but grows suspicious about why the family accepted her and sets out to find out the truth about the lost girl.

Writer for Television and Film

Daniel graduated with an MA in screenwriting from the National Film and Television School and has since written plays including Turning Barley, The Hobo Code (Soho Theatre), Daytrippers (Theatre Royal East) and Farmyard Rules (Bush Theatre).
Previous projects include writing/directing a BBC short starring Olivia Williams (Rushmore) as a giant panda and My Face in Space, nominated for Best British Short at Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2012.
He won the BAFTA Rocliffe New Comedy award in 2014 and was one of 15 writers, producers and directors selected for the BFI NET.WORK talent scheme run at the LFF.
Along with director Tom Jobbins, he was selected for the Aardman and BFI feature film development scheme.

In 2019, his script ‘Trigger Point’ was commissioned by ITV as a six-part series, with Vicky McClure attached to play the lead.

Trigger Point was TX in Jan 2022 and was the second most watched drama of 2022 with an average viewing figure of 9m per episode. It won the National Television Award for Best New Drama and has been aired worldwide on BBC/HBO/PEACOCK/Canal+ amongst others.
He’s currently writing an adaptation of ‘the Second Stranger’ for Studio Lambert/BBC as well as original projects for Expanded Media, Company Pictures and Hattrick Mercurio.

Farah Chaya

PROJECT TITLE

REPLICA

Samy, a dominant old Lebanese leader, is on the verge of losing his power when he meets Karim, a 10-year-old boy who claims to be the reincarnation of his father, the famous politician Mansour Nader.

Farah Chaya is a Lebanese director and screenwriter with a BA in Directing (USJ – IESAV, Beirut, 2011). She works as a director, creative director, scriptwriter and editor with several production houses in Lebanon and the Arab world.
Her short films have been selected for international festivals (Lebanese Film Festival Canada, Interfilm Berlin, Festival du Film Libanais in France, Kino-Cabaret de Trouville, Rencontres sous la tente in Morocco, Lebanese Film Festival in Sydney, Docudays in Beirut, Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival, Lebanus in Montreal, La Corrida in Toulouse). Her professional career began with directing and editing documentaries. In 2017, she worked at the BBC as an editor. From 2018 to 2020, she was a consultant and script-writer at Cedars Art, Lebanon. She co-wrote the series “The Path”, in 2018 and was a consultant on a number of series produced by Cedars Art. Her project REPLICA was developed at the Groupe-Ouest writing residency in France in 2021/22 and received a writing grant (FAIA-COCO-i) from the CNC in October 2023.

Rachel Flowerday

PROJECT TITLE

COMING HOME

When Sally’s sister Meg dies suddenly, childless couple Sally and Stuart get the family they’ve been desperately hoping for – in the toughest way possible.

Rachel is co-creator and lead writer on the hit CBBC adaptation of Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers, now commissioned for its seventh series, and Emmy-, Rockie- and Canadian Screen Award-nominated in 2023. Rachel is also the co-creator of, and longstanding writer on, the global hit BBC1 mystery series Father Brown, now shooting its eleventh series and 135thepisode, and sold to 230+ territories worldwide. With a background in writing for BBC1’s flagship continuing dramas, including as a core writer on EastEnders and Casualty, Rachel’s solo original work includes development for UK broadcasters ITV and UKTV.

Themis Gyrtis

PROJECT TITLE

VIRAL

A successful 30-year-old influencer wakes up to a sunny day in a dreamlike Athens, full of picturesque landscapes, delicious-looking dishes ready to be photographed and… absolutely no humans. Or so he thinks…

Born and raised in Athens and currently based in Lisbon, Themis Gyrtis began his career in the Greek film industry in 2007 as an assistant director, working primarily on feature films until 2015. In 2017, he landed his first job as a screenwriter on Greece’s longest-running sitcom “Min Arhizeis Ti Mourmoura” for the Alpha TV network. After 230 episodes and an imminent writer’s block, he decided to move on to his next project. He created and wrote “On All Fours”, a provocative modern dramedy about disability. The series was produced and distributed by the ANT1 TV network. In April 2023, “On All Fours” was presented at MipTV in Cannes and it was the only non-English-language series selected to be showcased at “The Wit’s Fresh TV Fiction” presentation.