CONGRATUATIONS TO OUR 2024 FEATURE CONTEST SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS

CineStory is pleased to award seven scholarships for the 2024 Feature Retreat & Fellowship Contest. These scholarships are made possible by generous donations from members of the CineStory community

Many thanks to our donors, and congratulations to our scholarship winners!

(Pictured above, from left to right: Ran Jing; Kenya Collins; Arianna Ortiz; Alex Chew; Julia Morizawa; James Tison; Heather Davis)

Ran Jing / 2024 CineStory Asian & South Asian Writers Scholarship

The 2024 CineStory Asian & South Asian Writers Scholarship is awarded to an outstanding Asian or South Asian writer whose screenplay reached the quarterfinalist level or higher in this year’s Feature Retreat & Fellowship Contest. The winner is awarded a $750 tuition reduction for this year’s feature retreat.

The winner of the 2024 CineStory Asian & South Asian Writers Scholarship is Ran Jing for her script A PROFILED LIFE. In it, a closed-off Chinese immigrant mother must unravel the mysteries surrounding her 16-year-old daughter’s disappearance and enigmatic identity using the clues embedded in her digital remains.

Ran Jing is an award-winning writer and director who has crafted stories across various languages and mediums. Her debut feature, MODEL, was featured in Variety China edition. The film won the Emerging Director award at the Edmonton International Film Festival, the 43rd Asian American International Film Festival, and the New Talent award at the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival, and it secured a theatrical release in China in 2021.

Before making live-action films, Ran was a staffed story artist for various major animation studios, including Blue Sky Studios, Netflix, and Reel Fx. She worked on features, such as SPIES IN DISGUISE, THE PEANUTS MOVIE, the ICE AGE franchise, and WISH DRAGON, alongside Academy award-winning directors and producers like Steve Martino and Aron Warner. Leveraging her dual experience in Hollywood and China, the NYU alumna artfully weaves global themes into her storytelling, with a focus on identity, immigration, and justice. She has written mini-series for Viu TV in Hong Kong and features for Ruyi Films, and is currently developing her second feature film, A PROFILED LIFE.

Kenya Collins – CineStory Black Voices Scholarship Winner

The 2024 CineStory Black Voices Scholarship is awarded to an outstanding Black writer whose screenplay reached the quarterfinalist level or higher in this year’s Feature Retreat & Fellowship Contest. The winner receives a $750 tuition reduction for this year’s feature retreat.

The winner of this year’s CineStory Black Voices Scholarship is Kenya Collins for her script MARILYN, LUCINDA, JACKIE, & JO. In it, a sex worker with Multiple Personality Disorder’s carefully constructed subsistence life comes crashing down when her daughter is lured by her pimp as a way out.

Kenya Collins is a speculative fiction novelist and dramatic screenwriter based in Colorado. Born and raised in Texas, her work explores southern Black culture, religion, spirituality, trauma, and fear. She is a graduate of the Thurgood Marshall School of Law and completed the UCLA screenwriting and advanced screenwriting professional programs in 2022 and 2023. She also attended the Yale Writer’s Workshop in June 2023. Her screenwriting has been recognized by The Black List, Women In Film, Austin Film Festival, and many others. In addition to screenwriting, Kenya is currently working on her first speculative fiction novel, IF EVER WE MEET, set in the Louisiana Bayou, and the adaptation of her horror screenplay, FIRST BLOODED, into her first graphic novel.

Arianna Ortiz – CineStory Semifinalist & Finalist Scholarship Winner

The 2024 CineStory Semifinalist & Finalist Scholarship is awarded to an outstanding writer whose screenplay reached the semifinalist or finalist level in this year’s Feature Retreat & Fellowship Contest. The winner is awarded a $750 tuition reduction for this year’s feature retreat.

The winner of the 2024 CineStory Semifinalist & Finalist Scholarship is Arianna Ortiz for her script THE BASTARD CHILDREN OF JAVIER ORTIZ. In it, a happily married Mexican-American family man is overjoyed to find the long-lost siblings he’s always wanted. Desperate to bond with them, he soon discovers he comes from a band of ruthless Texas bandits and that he might not make it home for dinner… or make it out alive.

Arianna Ortiz is a Peruvian-American actor, writer, and filmmaker. Born in San Antonio, Texas, she studied theater at CALARTS. Her extensive work in television includes recurring roles on OWN’s ALL RISE, NBC’s THIS IS US, and more. She was one of the stars of Edson Oda’s acclaimed sci-fi drama NINE DAYS (2020 Sundance Film Festival) and LAST DAYS OF THE LAB, which premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and screened at TIFF 2023. She produced and starred in THE WOUND, a hit short film at festivals that boasts an engaged international audience online. Her dark thriller, MAMA, DON’T, was selected for the 2022-23 cohort of NYWIFT’s The Writer’s Lab, funded by Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman. She is a 2024 Stowe Launch Advanced Development Fellow with THE BASTARD CHILDREN OF JAVIER ORTIZ, a comedic crime thriller. The screenplay is second in her Texas trilogy centering women and people of color in stories that range from the harrowing to the darkly comic.

Alex Chew – Hagan-Hicks General Scholarship Winner

The 2024 Hagan-Hicks General Scholarship is awarded to an outstanding writer whose screenplay reached the semifinalist or finalist level in this year’s Feature Retreat & Fellowship Contest. The winner is awarded a $1,000 tuition reduction for this year’s feature retreat.

The winner of the 2024 Hagan-Hicks General Scholarship is Alex Chew for her script TRASH. In it, on the eve of Thanksgiving, a battered but resilient mother struggling with homelessness goes on the run from a serial killer targeting the unhoused.

At heart, Alex Chew is a small town Kentucky girl who fell in love with cinema watching Hitchcock and Wilder on Turner Classic Movies. She loves making genre films about misfits and antiheroes, films that take big swings. Her scripts have been shortlisted at CineStory, Nicholl, Austin Film Festival, Sundance Labs, CBS Mentoring Program, Launchpad, Screencraft, WeScreenplay, Stage32, and more. In 2023, she co-founded the writers first production company SEQUENCE 8. You can learn more about SEQUENCE 8’s work at sequence8films.com. Alex is represented by literary manager Anastaysia Kukhtareva at Wildflower.

Julia Morizawa – Hagan-Hicks Underrepresented Women’s Voices Scholarship Winner

The 2024 Hagan Hicks Underrepresented Women’s Voices Scholarship is awarded to an outstanding woman writer from underrepresented groups including Black and African Americans, Latinx and Hispanics, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans whose screenplay reached the quarterfinalist level or higher in this year’s Feature Retreat & Fellowship Contest. The winner is awarded a $1,000 tuition reduction for this year’s feature retreat.

The winner of the 2024 Hagan-Hicks Underrepresented Women’s Voices Scholarship is Julia Morizawa for her screenplay SOMETHING ABOUT THE TIDE. In it, when a misanthropic recovering addict finds out her dying mother gave up a previous child for adoption, she must prove her self-worth by fulfilling her mother’s final wish – track down the other child and bring him home before it’s too late.

Julia Morizawa (she/her) is a writer/producer with over 20 years of experience in film, television, new media, theater, and fiction podcasting. Produced projects include JESUSCAT (OR HOW I ACCIDENTALLY JOINED A CULT) (feature film), SIN & LYLE (short film), TWENTY-TWO (play), and AMERICAN COMEDY HORROR STORY: ORPHANAGE (fiction podcast). Her most recent project, DRAGONFLY (animated short film), premiered at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival in May 2023. It was awarded Best Animation at the Maryland Int’l Film Festival, Best AAPI-Directed Film at the Phoenix Film Festival, and the Audience Award for Best Animation at DisOrient in 2024. Julia is currently in development on a feature, SOMETHING ABOUT THE TIDE, which was one of five finalists invited to pitch at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival as part of AT&T’s Untold Stories. Julia is also a freelance script analyst, the Short Film Fund Manager at Shore Scripts, and the proud mom of two tiny superheroes.

James Tison – Sadeghy Underrepresented Voices Scholarship Winner

The 202 Sadeghy Underrepresented Voices Scholarship is awarded to an outstanding writer who belongs to a community that has been historically underrepresented in Hollywood – particularly BIPOC writers, AAPI writers, LGBTQIA+ writers, women writers who are 45 or older, and writers with disabilities – and whose screenplay reached the quarterfinalist level or higher in this year’s Feature Retreat & Fellowship Contest. The winner of the Sadeghy Underrepresented Voices Scholarship receives a $750 tuition reduction for this year’s feature retreat.

The winner of the 2024 Sadeghy Underrepresented Voices Scholarship is James Tison for his script BACKSPLASH! In it, a cynical behind-the-scenes videographer on the set of an HGTV style competition show must figure out whodunit when someone starts killing TV home designers.

James Tison is an actor, stand up comedian, writer and director who studied theater at NYU thanks to a buttload of predatory student loans. He was raised in a family of truck drivers and addicts in Bakersfield, CA. He’s also gay, nonbinary, and HIV Undetectable (or as he likes to call it: a REAL triple threat).

As a writer, James somehow managed to churn out two features this year (one of which just moved to the semi-finals in the Academy Nicholls Fellowship). As an actor, he’s appeared off-Broadway, in several shorts, and had a critically praised supporting role in 2023 festival darling CHRISSY/JUDY. As a comedian, he performs all over NYC and LA, and he’s been featured in the NY Times, Out Magazine, and Broadway World. Broadway World called him “Blisteringly Funny,” and his mom thinks he’s great.

James spent several years working as a freelance production coordinator on narrative documentary podcasts, including NARAL’s The Lie that Binds. He has also co-hosted several small-audience comedy podcasts, and guested on several more prominent talk-comedy podcasts in the past year. He worked with Rebellion PAC producing political ads for the 2020 presidential and senate elections, and directed his own short – WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER – in 2016.

Heather Davis – Sartor Women’s Voices Scholarship Winner

The 2024 Sartor Women’s Voices Scholarship is awarded to a top woman writer who is 45 or older and whose screenplay reached the quarterfinalist level or higher in this year’s Feature Retreat & Fellowship Contest. The winner receives a $1,500 tuition reduction to attend this year’s feature retreat.

The winner of the 2024 Sartor Women’s Voices Scholarship is Heather Davis for her script DEADBEAT DICK. In it, a holier-than-thou parenting guru teams up with a no-nonsense private eye to track down her deadbeat dad before her fake origin story tanks her public image and her company’s upcoming IPO.

Heather Davis is a screenwriter emerging from the publishing world. She’s the author of three Young Adult novels published by HarperCollins and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the PNW Booksellers award and named a finalist for the RITA award for best YA Romance. But…her true love has always been Film, which she studied as an undergrad at The Evergreen State College.

In recent years, Heather’s scripts have been recognized by the Austin Film Festival, Page International Screenwriting Awards and the CineStory TV retreat competition. Her story focus is female-driven narratives with heart. She seeks to broaden and deepen the representation of women on screen, with witty, emotional comedies that show it’s never too late to be your authentic (and sometimes weirdo) self.

She lives in Seattle where she finds joy in growing things, road-tripping to concerts, and taking nauseatingly-cute photos of her pets, who don’t actually tolerate wearing Darth Vader or Yoda costumes very well.