A fish out of water is the classic trope of placing a character in an unusual environment or situation to begin and/or advance the story, heighten tension, and/or to add comedic effect. Choose a historical figure or well-known cinematic character as your protagonist and place this person in a unique fish out of water moment.
A fish out of water is the classic trope of placing a character in an unusual environment or situation to begin and/or advance the story, heighten tension, and/or to add comedic effect. Choose a historical figure or well-known cinematic character as your protagonist and place this person in a unique fish out of water moment. What surroundings do they find themselves in? Is there an activity or circumstance that further complicates their journey? Be sure to identify their objective in the scene and how the element of conflict comes into play. Your final written submission can be in any genre and should be no more than 10 pages in script format.
SUBMISSION LIMITS
Your written work must be no longer than 10 pages.
Deadline to submit: August 31, 2021 at 2PM PT.
CHALLENGE RULES
Our monthly challenges are open to everyone in the Sundance Collab community. One entry per person, per challenge. All submissions will be viewable to the community. All submissions will be given equal consideration and the final winner will be determined by the consensus of the designated Sundance judges.
Only those submissions that meet the criteria outlined in the submission guidelines can be selected as the winner.
The challenge closes on August 31, 2021 at 2PM PT.
If you have questions regarding the challenge, please email collabsupport@sundance.org. Please do not contact members of the jury directly.
PRIZES
Winner will receive:
- Their work featured on Sundance Collab
- A one-on-one mentorship session with a Sundance Advisor
- Sundance Collab Annual Creator Membership (12 months) which includes:
- Invitation to monthly member-only Advisor Q&A Live events
- Valuable feedback on your work-in-progress from a Sundance Advisor and the Sundance Collab community via Share Your Work
- Opportunity to register for a one-on-one session with our Advisor-in-Residence
Two runners-up will receive a Sundance Collab Annual Creator Membership.
Jurors
Simone Ling
Juror
SIMONE LING is a producer and educator whose feature credits include Spirit Award nominee Mosquita Y Mari and They, an Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival nominated for a Queer Palm and the Camera d’Or. Award-winning short projects include documentaries My Lunch With Suki and To Dance Again, narratives Moving Out and Bloomed in the Water, and VR piece Emerging Radiance.
Moving between London and Los Angeles, Simone is a member of the Producer’s Guild of America, MPEG/IATSE, and BAFTA and is Deputy Chair of BAFTA’s North America Learning, Inclusion and Talent Committee. A Film Independent, SFFilm Rainin, Tribeca, WIF/Sundance, and TransAtlantic Partners fellow, she consults and curates for festivals, filmmakers and labs worldwide.
With masters degrees from the University of Oxford and Stanford University, Simone is Senior Faculty at the AFI Conservatory and shepherds her own slate with a focus on being in the margins.
Alicia Ortega
Juror
Alicia D. Ortega holds a BA from Stanford and an MFA in fiction from Louisiana State, where her novel THE GHOST YOU DESERVE won the Robert Penn Warren Award for best MFA thesis in prose. A participant in both the Sundance Screenwriters Lab and the Sundance Screenwriters Intensive, she was awarded a 2019 SFFILM Westridge Grant to work on her debut feature film script, RIGHTEOUS ACTS.
Adrienne Rush
Juror
Adrienne Rush is a screenwriter hailing from Virginia and now living in Los Angeles. She writes both feature films and television. Among her more recent work is an episode of the Amazon original show THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.
Meedo Taha
Juror
Meedo Taha is a Lebanese filmmaker based in Los Angeles and Beirut. His stories explore identity and belonging through propulsive subversions of genre, such as a Rashomonesque short film entitled The Incident, an existential murder mystery inspired by his novel A Road to Damascus, and a horror musical melodrama inspired by binge-watching bootleg Hollywood and classical Egyptian cinema. His work has received support from the Doha Film Institute and Sundance Institute, and recognition from the Directors Guild of America and Francis Coppola’s American Zoetrope Screenplay Competition.
Meedo has mentored screenwriters, directors, and visual storytellers around the world, including Chapman Univeristy, the American University in Dubai, and Cine Qua Non Lab in Mexico. He earned a PhD in Architecture from the University of Tokyo and an MFA in Directing and Cinematography from UCLA.