Previous Year's Winners:
2023 marks the Blue List’s tenth year of connecting the Film Program’s most talented alumni with leading professionals in the world of film and television. The Blue List competition, sponsored by MUBI, represents the most esteemed, unproduced feature scripts and television pilots written by Film & Playwriting graduates of Columbia University’s School of the Arts.
Inspired by Hollywood's prestigious annual list of the best un-produced screenplays, Columbia University is proud to once again partner with the Black List to host the winning scripts.
The 2023 Blue List
At Your Service, Fiona Gorry-Hines ’22
Deaf, Joshua Harris ’20
Desert Retreat, Daniel Slotttje ’20
The Lost City, Chantel Clark ’18
Project: Sabina, Christopher Dominguez Abeel ’18
Promised Land, Esteban Garcia Vernaza ’20
The 2023 Industry Panel
Caitlin de Lisser-Ellen (Director of Development for Assemble Media)
Christine Walters (Creative Director for the Just For Laugh Comedy Festival)
Dylan Polacek (Marketing Manager for MUBI)
Eitan Kleinman (Manager for Gotham Group)
Jenette Kahn (Partner/Producer for Double Nickel Entertainment)
Robin Galloway (Manager for Gramercy Park Entertainment)
James Janowsky (independent producer)
At Your Service (TV Pilot)
by Fiona Gorry-Hines ’22
A low-income family working in every pocket of the service industry of a wealthy suburb taps into their collective social collateral to blackmail their elitist neighbors into supporting a local affordable housing project.
Fiona Gorry-Hines (they/she) is a playwright, screenwriter, and teacher of writing born and raised in Massachusetts. Their produced theatrical work includes It Will Rise Soon Enough (Columbia University), You Can't Touch My Sister I Ate in The Womb! (Columbia University), Of the Sea (Access Theatre/Dixon Place), and Our House (NYU Gallatin). They have collaborated with Paper Kraine Productions, The 24 Hour Plays, and are a contributor to the satirical news website "The Broadway Beat."
Deaf (Feature Screenplay)
by Joshua Harris ’20
An eventually silent comedy about Beethoven.
Josh writes comedies with heart and dramas with a sense of humor. His feature, Deaf, was a Nicholl Semifinalist in 2022. His other feature scripts include: Die Famous, The Mission, Real Scary Shit, and Mad Summer. Josh directed, wrote, and composed the musical boyband slasher Take 5, a short which premiered in Halloween of 2022 at Screamfest and Nightmares Film Festival. Josh lives in Venice Beach with his girlfriend Allie and their menagerie of stuffed animals.
Desert Retreat (Feature Screenplay)
by Daniel Slottje ’20
After being ghosted by her partner, Jordana Klinger escapes to a desert Airbnb to mend her broken heart and to study for her upcoming MCAT exams in peace. Her weekend of self-care soon takes a scary turn for the worse, as she begins to suspect she may not be alone after all.
Daniel Slottje is a Los Angeles based writer/director specializing in horror. His feature screenplay, The Rotting of Casey Culpepper, was one of only five projects selected from around the world for the 2022 Sundance Producers Lab. Slottje’s proof-of-concept short film of the same name was the first student horror film in history to be admitted to the Telluride Film Festival, and was awarded the top prize at three different leading genre festivals.
The Lost City (Teleplay)
by Chantel Clark ’18
In the crater of a long-extinct volcano, where the legacy of apartheid South Africa and the possibility of a new and brighter future clash over blackjack tables, topless revue bars and sold-out stadia, aspiring singer Franki Nzo sets her sights on superstardom.
Chantel Clark is a South African screenwriter and director based between Cape Town and New York. She holds an MFA in Directing from Columbia University. Her debut feature film, Wit Gesigte (Pale Faces) is currently in development, and was selected for the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Lab, IFP’s 41st IFP Week (now The Gotham), and was a SFFILM Rainin Grant Finalist. Most recently, Chantel was invited to the Jacob Burns Film Center as the 2022 Sundance International Narrative Filmmaker-in-Residence and was a fellow in the inaugural AuthenticA Series Lab presented by Realness Institute, The StoryBoard Collective, and Series Mania.
Project: Sabina (Feature Screenplay)
by Christopher Dominguez Abeel ’18
A super powered being attacks the American Embassy in Moscow after a CIA agent uncovers the Soviet version of MK-Ultra -- a clandestine government program designed to unlock a human's latent telepathic abilities.
Christopher Dominguez Abeel began his screenwriting career after losing his home to Hurricane Sandy. He enrolled in Columbia University’s MFA Film Program, where his writing won several awards, including two Sloan Science in Film Grants. After graduation, he was selected to attend Film Independent’s Episodic Storytelling Lab, and wrote for several mini-rooms for HBOMax and Amazon Prime. Christopher now calls Los Angeles home where he writes thrillers, sci-fi, and horror that draw from his multicultural point of view.
Promised Land (Feature Screenplay)
by Esteban Garcia Vernaza ’20
During the summer of 1915, as representatives of American companies arrive in Colombia. An Afro-Colombian teenager must decide whether he protects his village’s traditions or follows his dreams and contributes to the obliteration of his people.
Esteban Garcia Vernaza is a Colombian filmmaker with a strong interest in depicting the southwestern Colombian identity and its social issues through his films. Esteban’s Short Film Silento was an official selection at the 2020 Telluride Film Festival and was nominated to the “Macondo Awards" which are the Colombian Academy Awards. Silento also received the Grand Prize Student Film Award from the Directors Guild of America, as well as the Student Production Grant from The National Board of Review. Esteban directed the Colombian-Unit of the Chinese science fiction blockbuster film The Wandering Earth II, and he is currently developing his first feature-length film Promised Land.