‘Opportunity at just the right moment’: Adelaide Film Festival and AWG announce 2017 winner of prestigious INSITE Award
08 October, 2017
The winner of the 2017 Adelaide Film Festival and Australian Writers’ Guild’s INSITE Award has been announced today as screenwriter Bec Peniston-Bird, with the opportunity coming at ‘just the right moment’ for her Cold War-era feature film script, Petrova.
'I am so grateful to the AWG and Adelaide Film Festival for this unexpected honour,’ Peniston-Bird said. ‘Petrova is inspired by a thrilling chapter in Cold War history and is a project very close to my heart. This opportunity comes at just the right moment and I feel it will help me to take my project to the next stage.'
A Melbourne-based filmmaker, Peniston-Bird had her last two short films screen at Adelaide Film Festival and recently completed a four-month attachment with writer/directors Peter and Michael Spierig on their period thriller Winchester.
INSITE’s proven formula will see her attend the Adelaide Film Festival this week to meet industry directors and producers with a view to getting her project onto the screen.
In a tough field, the judges felt that Petrova, a script about an infamous event in Australia’s Cold War history – one that finds itself newly relevant again in the current international climate – has the potential to become a thought-provoking thriller that is both geopolitically resonant and viscerally gripping.
Artistic Director of the ADL Film Fest Amanda Duthie said, ‘Bec Peniston-Bird is a very talented writer and director. It was delightful to discover that, unbeknownst to the selection committee who read all the scripts without any identification, her previous work has already been curated at the Adelaide Film Festival. We look forward to welcoming her to Adelaide for the 2017 Festival, and watching the development of this impressive feature script.’
AWG Group CEO Jacqueline Elaine said, ‘Every two years INSITE celebrates the best of Australia’s screenwriting talent, uncovering unproduced gems of scripts and creating real opportunity for screenwriters to put their work into production, and this year is no exception. We are excited to see where this oppourtunity takes Peniston-Bird and Petrova.’
Peniston-Bird now joins a growing list of past INSITE recipients who have gone on to find screenwriting success, including television screenwriter Blake Ayshford (Devil’s Playground, Barracuda, The Code), whose INSITE-winning project Cut Snake was released in 2014, and Priscilla Cameron, whose feature film The Butterfly Tree recently screened at Toronto International Film Festival.
Meanwhile, 2013 winner Jane Hampson and 2015 winner Harry Aletras have both received Scripted Ink. development funding for further drafts of their INSITE-winning projects after being inducted onto AWG’s Pathways Program.
As part of INSITE, Peniston-Bird and shortlisted writers will have the opportunity to have their scripts considered for entry onto AWG’s Pathways Showcase, a collection of peer-reviewed unproduced scripts from Australia’s most talented screenwriters.
Adelaide Film Festival and AWG would like to congratulate the following writers on making the shortlist and longlist for the 2017 INSITE Award:
INSITE Shortlist
Chris Corbett for The Witness
Chris Kunz for The Boy Who Cried Dinosaur
Dane Picken for Boogie
Ryan van Dijk and Alexei Mizin for Hive
Patrick Zeine and Charalabos Aletras for The Footballer
INSITE Longlist
Damon Angelo for Swansong
Michael Beckley for It’s Never About the Money
Phil Davey for Sailing Sarah
Mark Enders for Unhappy Hours
Stephen Godfrey for Still Waters Run Deep
Sunny Grace for The Bower Girl
Albert Jamae for Dead Fly Walking
Matthew James Kinmonth for iDo
Gabrielle Leago for In A Strange Land
Fiona Leally for Osama, My Llama
Matty Limpus for The Book of Lonely
Tim Maddren for One and Another
Karl Mather for The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco
Steven McCall and Maziar Lahooti for Die Well
Pat Radinoff for Diplomatic Games
Kate Rice for My Worst Ever Night at the Best School Ball Ever
Scott Smart for The Bondi Boys
Rebecca Sommi Fisher for It’s Not You, It’s Us
Rebekah Spark for The Chosen Vessel
Stephen Vagg for Baby Farm
Gretel Vella for Elsie Shrew
