2023 AACTA Pitch: Regional Landscapes in partnership with SCREENWORKS

AACTA Pitch: Regional Landscapes in partnership with Screenworks returns for its fourth year, giving aspiring Australian creatives the chance to develop a feature film that celebrates the idiosyncratically Australian stories inspired by our stunning regional areas - where the regional setting lends itself as a central character to the narrative.

Regional Landscapes launches AACTA’s 2023 development program. Giving aspiring filmmakers the opportunity to develop their pitch with professional industry guidance and support, this initiative calls for a story featuring landscapes that exist outside of the metropolis, exploring the tales that lie within Australia’s diverse and varied regional areas. Teams can consist of up to three creatives, with at least one based in regional Australia.

This year, finalists were pitching for the chance to receive:

• Support to develop their concept into a production
• $5,000 in prize money, consisting of a $1,000 cash prize and $4,000 towards development, industry introductions and networking
• Industry connection opportunities through the Australian Writers’ Guild Pathways program
• Professional script development sessions
• Invaluable feedback and ongoing guidance from the esteemed judging panel
• Three-day pass to all sessions at the Screenworks 2023 Regional to Global Screen Forum to be held in March
• AACTA, Screenworks and Australian Writers’ Guild annual memberships
• Two tickets to the 2023 AACTA Awards Ceremony

$40 AACTA, AWG, or Screenworks members 

$60 non AACTA, AWG, or Screenworks members

November 28 - Call for Entries Opens (Round 1)

Entrants are asked to submit a title, logline (1 – 2 sentence description of the film), up to 250 word description of the regional area where the film is set, up to 500 word treatment/synopsis/outline, a 3 minute video pitch; and résumé/CVs of each of the creative team.

January 9 - Entries Close

Entries are due by 5:00pm AEDT, Monday January 9, 2023. 

February 6 - Top 5 finalists advised 

February 9 - Top 5 finalists and judges announced

February 17 - Final Pitch Training

March 17 - Final Pitch

April 1 - Screenworks 2023 Regional to Global Screen Forum and Recipient Announced

Brooke Collard

Gary Hamaguchi

Reclamation | Brooke Collard & Gary Hamaguchi

It's the 1970's and a series of sinister accidents have pushed farmers out of their land. Their last resort is Terry, Noongar ranger, who discovers there is more to the accidents than the farmers have shared.

Bridge | Caitlin Richardson & Michael Hili

Hobart, 1975: In the sticky darkness of a midsummer night, a bridge breaks in half. The stories of ten characters whose personal lives hover on the edge of disaster, endings and transformation become interwoven when their cars are brought to a stop on the mysteriously fractured bridge.

Here If Ya Need | Vicki ONeill & Joanne Watson

53 year old Ronnie takes her sisters and nieces on a ribald road trip to compete in a Masters netball tournament and haul her most wayward sibling, Vivian out of a post-divorce slump.

Lovin’ The Outback | Ella Qaisi, Sebastian Chan & Joshua Koske

When falling for her sister’s cowboy suitor, an imaginative mortician must team up with the larrikin to find and train a suitable replacement in the ways of outback droving before her sister arrives in the country.

Moonshot | Nicholas Clifford, Emma Roberts & Jules Duncan

In an attempt to avoid a court sentence, Joy, a curmudgeonly reprobate, takes in her space-obsessed nephew Daryl, who quickly blackmails her into helping to build an impossibly complicated, extremely dangerous, and probably illegal science fair project.

Our Golden Hour | Samuel Keene

Our Golden Hour is a coming-of-age comedy adventure that follows an aspiring filmmaker who sets out to make one final magnum opus with her best friend before she moves away from her small mining town at the end of the Summer, but when their ode to treasure hunting classics leads them towards a real and possibly cursed treasure, the friendship begins to fray as their ambitions pull them in opposite directions.

Reclamation | Brooke Collard & Gary Hamaguchi

It's the 1970's and a series of sinister accidents have pushed farmers out of their land. Their last resort is Terry, Noongar ranger, who discovers there is more to the accidents than the farmers have shared.

		LOANI ARMAN Loani Arman joined SBS in 2022 as Scripted Commissioning Editor. In the role, Loani works across the development and production of scripted content and oversees SBS’ short form drama slate and other talent development initiatives.  Prior to SBS, Loani was a Content Director at Screen Queensland where she led their development programs and initiatives. Earlier in her career, she was the Drama Associate for Showtime Australia, working across original drama commissions including Cloudstreet and Tangle.   As a screen creative, Loani has had a drama series developed through the Stan/Screen Queensland Premium Drama Fund. In 2020, her documentary series, My Body Says (ABC iView), won the inaugural AIDC Best Short Form Award, and in 2019, Loani was the winner of the AACTA Pitch Competition with her short film, Our Greatest Escape.  Loani celebrates her Indonesian-Australian heritage and champions equity and inclusion in the screen industry.
		DEB COX After establishing herself as a script editor and screenwriter at Crawford Productions and freelancing for a number of years, Deb became Head of Drama for Artist Services where she created, wrote and co-produced her first original series, Simone de Beauvoir’s Babies in 1997 for the ABC. As part of CoxKnight Productions with Andrew Knight, Deb co-created and co-wrote three series of the much-loved ABC series SeaChange, the drama series CrashBurn and developed the children’s series, Worst Best Friends. In 2009, after moving to Byron Bay in Australia, Deb Co-Created East of Everything - the first prime time drama series shot in the region. She then formed Every Cloud Productions with Fiona Eagger – Co-Creating, Co-Producing and heading the writing team on three series of the international hit period drama Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. She has also worked as Executive Producer and Story Producer on Indigenous drama The Gods of Wheat Street, the youth short-form series, Deadlock and drama series Eden and two Christmas movies for Stan - Sunburnt Christmas and A Christmas Ransom. Deb has been a mentor under the Natalie Miller Fellowship Brilliant Careers program, has been a speaker and teacher on various programs for Northern Rivers Screenworks, the Byron Writer’s Festival and Victorian College of the Arts. After Deb and Fiona handed the reins of Every Cloud Productions to others in 2022, Deb returned to freelance screenwriting, story-producing and mentoring for the wider Australian and International Screen Industry.
		PAUL WIEGARD Founder & CEO, Madman Entertainment a leading independent distributor in ANZ. Distributed more than 25 Oscar nominated / winning films in ANZ. Executive Produced 20+ feature films & documentaries. Established streaming platform DocPlay. Current President of Australian Independent Distributors Association (AIDA), Co-Chair Australian Documentary Conference (AIDC), Board Member of Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI).