Six finalists have been chosen for this year’s AACTA Pitch: Regional Landscapes initiative, with the winner to be announced at the upcoming Screenworks Regional to Global Screen Forum.
Caitlin Richardson and Michael Hili’s Bridge; Vicki O’Neill and Joanne Watson’s Here If Ya Need; Ella Qaisi, Sebastian Chan and Joshua Koske’s Lovin’ The Outback, Nicholas Clifford, Emma Roberts, and Jules Duncan’s Moonshot; Samuel Keene’s Our Golden Hour; and Brooke Collard and Gary Hamaguchi’s Reclamation will compete for development support and a $5,000 prize.
The successful team will also benefit from industry connection opportunities through the Australian Writers’ Guild Pathways program, as well as professional script development sessions, ongoing feedback and guidance from the judging panel, and AACTA, Screenworks, and Australian Writers’ Guild annual memberships.
Evaluating this year’s finalists are Madman co-founder and CEO Paul Wiegard, SBS scripted commissioning editor Loani Arman, and Every Cloud Productions co-founder Deb Cox, who returns after judging the inaugural competition in 2020.
The six teams will now receive training and mentorship from industry experts as they prepare additional real-world deliverables and refine their final pitch.
Included as part of the initiative is an exclusive training session with film producer and educator Abigail Tabone, of the Compton School, which will feature a lecture on tips, tricks, and story preparation for pitching, and guidance on the creation and refinement of their second round deliverables.
The finalists will also be given one-on-one training and mentorship from the judging panel, who will help them prepare an industry standard pitch, after which there will be another individual session with Tabone where they will have the opportunity to synthesize feedback from all of the judges and rehearse their pitch.
AACTA awards and industry development manager Ivan Vukusic said he was “genuinely excited” by the “adventurous creativity and bold audience-friendly ideas” of this year’s finalists.
“I’m very proud of how our Regional Landscapes initiative with Screenworks has grown over the last four years, and importantly how positively it’s being received by regional creatives looking for opportunities to profile their fantastic ideas,” he said.
“We’ve had great results so far and the support from the broader industry has been encouraging. This year we’ve added even more pitch training and mentorship that’ll benefit this year’s excellent shortlist beyond this initiative and I look forward to learning more about each of their unique film projects in the weeks and months ahead.”
Screenworks industry development and programs manager Louise Hodgson said the organisation would be watching closely to see how the 2023 finalists progress through this year’s process.
“Working with AACTA to produce the annual Regional Landscapes initiative means we can consistently expect to discover exciting new regional talent and ways of telling regional Australian stories,” she said.
“I think it will provide an excellent opportunity for the participants to learn more about pitching competitively, as well as to further the development of their creative.”
The finalists and their projects are as follows:
Bridge – Caitlin Richardson and Michael Hili
In the sticky darkness of a Hobart midsummer night in 1975, a bridge breaks in half. The stories of ten characters whose personal lives hover on the edge of disaster, endings, and transformation become interwoven when their cars are brought to a stop on the mysteriously fractured bridge
Here If Ya Need – Vicki O’Neill and Joanne Watson
Ronnie, 53, takes her sisters and nieces on a ribald road trip to compete in a masters netball tournament and haul her most wayward sibling, Vivian, out of a post-divorce slump.
Lovin’ The Outback – Ella Qaisi, Sebastian Chan and Joshua Koske
When falling for her sister’s cowboy suitor, an imaginative mortician must team up with the larrikin to find and train a suitable replacement in the ways of outback droving before her sister arrives in the country.
Moonshot – Nicholas Clifford, Emma Roberts and Jules Duncan
In an attempt to avoid a court sentence, Joy, a curmudgeonly reprobate, takes in her space-obsessed nephew Daryl, who quickly blackmails her into helping to build an impossibly complicated, extremely dangerous, and probably illegal science fair project.
Our Golden Hour – Samuel Keene
Our Golden Hour is a coming-of-age comedy adventure that follows an aspiring filmmaker who sets out to make one final magnum opus with her best friend before she moves away from her small mining town at the end of the Summer. When their ode to treasure-hunting classics leads them towards a real and possibly cursed treasure, the friendship begins to fray as their ambitions pull them in opposite directions.
Reclamation – Brooke Collard and Gary Hamaguchi
It’s the 1970’s and a series of sinister accidents have pushed farmers out of their land. Their last resort is Terry, Noongar ranger, who discovers there is more to the accidents than the farmers have shared.