Screenwriters
Where the story begins
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2026 NCFF SCREENWRITING FINALISTS
A flicker between pages
Written by Hu Li huai
In an urban restaurant full of efficiency and indifference, an ordinary waiter and a deaf and mute cleaner transmit a glimmer through paper. This brief understanding illuminates the loneliness of the neglected person, but silently extinguished under the cold reality, leaving only a memory of “seeing” and “being seen”.
gwada
Written by kathy meng, Harry bacon
GWADA follows a Chinese American drifter spending Christmas with locals on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, as she wrestles with whether to reconnect with someone she’s been avoiding from home.
Kathy Meng is a Chinese-American filmmaker based in New York and Berlin. She graduated from New York University Tisch School of the Arts.
Her work has screened at major festivals including the Asian American International Film Festival, CAAMFest, RiverRun, Fort Lauderdale, and DC ShortsFest, where Elite Match (2022) won the Audience Award. Her first short Nanny (2016) was a Fusion Film Festival finalist and won Best Actress at First Run Film Festival; My Boyfriend’s Daughter (2019) was distributed by ShortsTV. Willow and Wu (2024) won Best Screenplay at Brooklyn Film Festival, Best Short Film at Katra Film Series, Audience Award at Leiden International Film Festival, Rising Star Award at Naples International Film Festival, and is a BlueCat Screenplay Competition finalist.
Meng’s work has screened educationally at Wake Forest University, New York University, City University of New York, Southern Methodist University, and the U.S. Naval Air Station in Sicily. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts Women’s Fund recipient. Beyond directing, Kathy has worked in programming for the Tribeca Film Festival and Hamptons International Film Festival, as well as in production on feature films directed Ira Sachs and Bing Liu, and in corporate administration.
if you go
Written by p.j. Palmer
After her young son collapses from a sudden neurological event, a mother remains at his bedside through days in the ICU, learning how to endure without answers while he drifts through a quiet, unseen world of his own.
P.J. Palmer, an award-winning filmmaker, was raised in the rural mountains of Northern California and has always loved telling stories with motion picture. P.J. started in the art department on the TV show “ER”. He went on to produce the LGBTQ+ drama series, “ANYONE BUT ME”. He has written an award-winning pilot script titled “ON CANNERY ROW”. P.J. wrote and directed the Oscar© Qualifying short “NORTH STAR”, starring Colman Domingo and Kevin Bacon. He is now preparing to direct his feature script, “SON OF A PREACHER MAN”. P.J. lives in New York City and Los Angeles.
love on the lift
Written by Lisa Marie Tedesco
When two acting nemeses book the same callback audition, things get real when they get stuck on the elevator with each other.
Lisa Marie Tedesco has been writing screenplays for over a decade now; with awards earned from around the globe. They have a knack for writing queer rom/coms and will be trying their pen with different genres soon!
reunited
Written by Jason Lor
A boy is visited by an old man who claims to be him from the future with an important message that may change his future forever.
Before graduating from San Francisco State University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Cinema, Jason Lor had already started writing when he was in the 3rd Grade in Elementary school. He wrote in his journals about his days and adventures whether with his friends or family. Soon enough he decided to get creative and make stories out of those everyday adventures but from a different point of view. A creative point of view. Thus started his goal of becoming a writer for novels. This soon changes when he came to realize how much he loved movies. The characters and worlds coming to life on the big screen fascinated him that that is what he truly wanted with his stories. Thus began a new chapter in his journey of writing, which is to become not only a writer but a Screenwriter. From there on out he continues to write and never stopped. He grew up in a time where Screenwriting software like Final Cut Pro or Screenwriting classes were not available around his hometown of Chico. That, however, did not stop him from pursuing his passion. He would go to the bookstore every weekend in search of Screenplay textbooks and study as much as he could on how a screenplay should be written. Eventually, he finally moved to San Francisco where he can finally attend San Francisco State University’s film program and learned what he needed to know about filmmaking along with his screenwriting. After three years of studying film, Jason graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Cinema. Afterward, Jason continued to pursue screenwriting as well as filmmaking.
