Spotlight: Feature Fellows
David Anderson
Coen Brothers’ deviance with Kermit The Frog genuineness, in a tidy Midwestern bow, David’s voice is magnetic. After garnering distribution for his first narrative feature, he channeled his unique stylings into BLACK APPLE: a neo-noir thriller about school standardized testing, being cultivated with Screenwriters Colony on the island. Wearing many hats, he was a staff writer on the CBS Saturday morning show, as well as THE INSPECTORS.
When favorite English teacher Edward Wilder is found dead in the school pool, his young teaching protégé, Lee Ann Sterling, goes in search of the truth only to discover the complicated under belly of the 21st century American education system.
Cyril Aris
After monumental success with his moving documentary entitled THE SWING, Cyril has returned to fiction with IT’S A SAD AND BEAUTIFUL WORLD, being workshopped with us. Our Beirut-born auteur’s last fiction short THE PRESIDENT’S VISIT (2017) premiered at TIFF, garnered the Oscar-qualifying grand jury prize at Nashville Film Festival, and played in over sixty film festivals worldwide.
Set against the backdrop of Lebanon’s defining moments over the past 40 years, It’s a Sad and Beautiful World explores the love story of the improbable romance between Nino, a warmhearted idealist, and Soraya, a wounded cynic, throughout their childhood, adulthood and married life.
Elizabeth Chatelain
A North Dakota native, Elizabeth Chatelain is a Student Academy Award Finalist, whose first feature screenplay, SUNDOGS, has garnered recognition from the Nantucket Film Festival and Showtime (Tony Cox Screenplay Competition Winner). We’re excited that she’s developing her deeply personal, second narrative effort at the Colony, entitled LØVSET’S MANOEUVRE.
When Sandy, a fifty-year-old home care nurse living in Grand Forks, North Dakota, receives word that her adult daughter, Jess, has relapsed and racked up thousands in debt to pay for her drug addiction, it sends Sandy spiraling back into an addiction just as dangerous: her addiction to saving her daughter.
Sabina Vajrača
Bosnian-born Sabina immigrated to the U.S. in 1994 as a war refugee. Her filmmaking runs the gamut from the acclaimed nonfiction BACK TO BOSNIA, commercials for IFP and ESPN, music videos, and an Alfred P. Sloan-winning screenplay entitled THE VARIABLES. She plans to stretch the boundaries of FOR BURAZ, her story of a Bosnian Muslim immigrant experience, even further in Nantucket.
When his younger brother dies under suspicious circumstances, and the police refuse to investigate, a successful Bosnian-American banker is forced into the dark underbelly of Florida’s Bosnian Muslim immigrant community in order to uncover what actually happened.