Winners of AWG / Open Channel New Writers' Script Competition

19 December, 2016

After an exhaustive judging process, the winners of the Australian Writers’ Guild and Open Channel’s New Writers’ Script Competition have been decided. From an impressive 215 entries from Victorian writers, our panel of expert judges had the difficult task of selecting four finalists, then two winners from the shortlist.

The finalists

Elizabeth Dias and Russell Bywater have created an excellent children’s web series, Mish Mash, about two students who solve local mysteries and put them to air on their school news channel. Not only is Mish Mash a fun web series, it also has the potential to tell a story across a variety of different media, such as Facebook, Twitter and YA novels.

Lauren Anderson’s television series Webocracy is smack bang on the zeitgeist. It’s about a self-absorbed YouTube star who finds herself leader of ‘New Tasmania’ after an online petition goes viral and the state secedes from the mainland. There’s a lot of projects in the marketplace that are funny, but it’s rare to find one that is not only funny, but as intelligent as this as well.

It’s hard to stand out from the pack with a zombie feature film, considering how inundated the industry is with them, but that’s exactly what Alli Parker’s Strain does. Set in Victoria, Strain blends a survival film with some killer action.

The Princess and the Bear by Gina Lambropoulos is the story of what happens when a gay nightclub owner becomes the primary carer for his seven-year-old niece. Gina’s screenplay has a lot of laughs, a lot of heart, and has the potential to reach a broad audience both here in Australia and abroad.

All of our finalists receive a one-year Associate Membership with the Australian Writers’ Guild and are invited to join the Guild’s prestigious Pathways Program, which includes attending an exclusive ‘Big Day In’ workshop early in 2017 and having their projects showcased on the Pathways website, which can be found here. Finalists also receive $200 in cash and the two winners receive $300 cash, as well as script development with an experienced AWG assessor valued at $1000.

And the winners are . . .

TV/Web series category: Lauren Anderson for Webocracy

Feature Film category: Gina Lambropoulos for The Princess and the Bear.