Meet the 2024 Film Independent Episodic Lab Fellows Writing Your Streaming Future
We’ve gone through Covid, we’ve weathered the strikes, we continue to have the pleasure of surviving the consolidation and financialization of our industry. No one said working in TV was easy.
But like a lighthouse on a dark stormy night, there is a beacon of stability and guidance. The Film Independent Episodic Lab is once again here with a two week in-person program with personalized feedback from experienced showrunners, workshops and pitch events, to help push these writer’s projects over the line.
Past Episodic Lab Fellows include April Shih, who has written on FX’s Fargo, Dave and struck an overall deal at FX Productions; Kimi Lee, who wrote on Amazon’s Expats, Apple’s The Morning Show, and sold her show $ugar in a four-way bidding war to Hulu; Henry “Hank” Jones, who has written on ABC’s Will Trent and Apple’s Truth Be Told.
Supported by Founding Sponsor Netflix, each Fellow will be paired with a Netflix executive, to act as a personal Industry Advisor providing opportunity and advice for the duration of the Lab and beyond.
“We’re proud to welcome these exciting new voices into the Episodic Lab whose work explores varied themes including grief, identity, sexuality and societal expectations in bold and inventive ways” said Dea Vazquez, Associate Director of Fiction Programs. “We’re thrilled to be able to support these writers both in the program and throughout their careers.”
This year’s Film Independent Episodic Lab projects are:
Title: A-Town Boyz
Writers: Honey Ahmad, Eunice Lau
Logline: When two Asian-American teens in Atlanta turn to petty crime to fund their rap star dreams, they unwittingly get caught up in a turf war between local rival gangs, all while trying to keep up appearances that they are still on board with their parent’s expectations.
Title: Margarita
Writer: Christian Moldes
Logline: Margarita, a cursed spirit conjured up by her grieving mother, is tasked with collecting as many souls as possible in order to become human once again.
Title: Motherland
Writer: Pallavi Yetur
Logline: An Indian-American doctor who dreams of being a Hollywood actor is in over her head when she finally lands a part in a movie…in Bollywood. Now she must juggle dodging her disapproving mother and figuring out this unfamiliar (and musical!) world.
Title: sadboi
Writer: Kyle Lau
Logline: Perpetually in his feelings, sadboi navigates love and life while trying to get over his ex, who cheated on him with his mom’s hot murderer.
Title: Shame
Writers: V.T. Nayani, Paige Wood
Logline: Shame is a comedy-drama series that follows ANJU, a 30-something South Asian-Caribbean woman, who suddenly develops vaginismus after a pap test gone wrong. Through an obstacle course of comically painful turns, she must navigate the intricacies of sex, shame, and societal expectations, after being diagnosed with a rarely-discussed, quietly-kept medical condition.
Title: The Feather Detective
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship Awardee
Writer: Mayanka Goel
Logline: A young woman struggles with 1960s societal expectations till she meets Roxie Laybourne and together they solve the mystery of America’s deadliest aviation disaster.
But wait, there’s more! Through the Lab, this year’s Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant is going to Mayanka Goel, who will receive a $20,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support the development of their pilot, The Feather Detective. The grant is given to outstanding writers whose screenplays integrate science or technology themes and characters into dramatic stories—part of the Sloan Foundation’s nationwide film program to advance public understanding of science and technology.
Now let’s meet the filmmakers:
Honey Ahmad
Honey Ahmad is a Malaysian screenwriter, podcaster, and food journalist. She was on the writing team for Emmy-nominated Saladin, Malaysia’s first fully animated series. She has written and produced over 8,000 hours of food content, including a food drama series called I Eat KL, which the Asian Wall Street Journal called “a mouth-watering soap opera.” Her first film that she co-wrote, Motif featured a female cop on the trail of a small-town murder. Her animation short Walinong Sari has won awards in LA, New York, Mexico, Chile and Japan. She also hosts the “Two Book Nerds Talking” podcast.
Eunice Lau
A former journalist, Eunice Lau’s works have screened at acclaimed film festivals, and televised on Discovery Channel, PBS, and Canal Plus, while her documentary A-Town Boyz is currently streaming on Prime Video. Her latest feature Troll Storm premiered at the 2024 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival where it was nominated for “Best Documentary”. She is currently in production for Son of the Soil, a documentary about the climate crisis, while developing a TV series inspired by A-Town Boyz. Born in Singapore, she lives in New York City and holds an MFA in Film Directing from New York University.
Christian Moldes
Christian Moldes is a 2024 Sundance Development Labs Fellow and a 2020 NALIP Media Market Fellow. An LA-based screenwriter from El Paso, Texas, he has developed feature-length and TV projects for Mark Williams Ozark, Evan Shapiro Portlandia, Couper Samuelson Get Out, and Skip Williamson Underworld, among others. As a producer and editor, he has executed content for Fox Searchlight, Fox Sports, MTV Tr3s, Red Bull, Remezcla Media, and Mitú Networks. His screenplays focus on the Latin American experience, immigrant identity, and social justice issues through unexpected genres ranging from comedy to western, horror to science fiction.
Pallavi Yetur
Pallavi Yetur is a licensed psychotherapist who has worked in mental health for fifteen years. She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction & Screenwriting from UC Riverside, undergraduate degrees in Communication and Literature/Writing from UC San Diego, and an MA in Counseling from NYU. Her pilot Motherland was a 2023 Finalist at Austin Film Festival. Her feature Stone Age was a 2021 Semifinalist for The Writers Room 5050 BIPOC Writers Fellowship. Pallavi’s essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Salon, NBC News THINK, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She lives in Los Angeles.
Kyle Lau
Kyle Lau is a WGA Award-nominated writer/director, originally from San Francisco, CA. He is a writer/producer for the upcoming Onyx/20th series, Deli Boys, and served as writer/co-producer for Max’s Clone High and Comedy Central’s Awkwafina is Nora from Queens. Previously, this proud UCLA alum worked as a staff writer on ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat, and as a writers’ assistant on Dead to Me (Netflix) and Family Guy (FOX). On the directing front, Kyle’s latest short film, White Now Please, was selected for over 20 festivals, winning 9 awards. Currently, he is developing an animated project with Sony Television/88rising.
V.T Nayani
V.T. Nayani is a multidisciplinary artist and storyteller for the screen. Her work intimately and thoughtfully explores how we continuously come of age. She has been championed by The Gotham, Telefilm Canada, BIPOC TV & Film, the Canadian Film Centre, the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, and UN Women. Her work has been supported by TIFF, Outfest, Frameline, NewFest, BlackStar, Inside Out, and IFFI Goa. V.T.’s award-winning feature directorial debut, This Place, premiered at the 47th Toronto International Film Festival and has since toured globally. She is currently developing her sophomore feature and two original series.
Paige Wood
Paige Wood is an award-winning independent filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer working across narrative and documentary film, animation, and video games. Her work such as Dot’s, Home, Mine, The Giverny Document, and The Femme Queen Chronicles championed by the likes of BlackStar Film Festival, Tribeca Festival, Apple, and the Museum of Modern Art. Based in Detroit and working worldwide, Paige is a 2024 Finalist for the Fox Entertainment Writers Incubator, 2023 winner of Constellations’ Artist Disruptor Award, 2022 Gotham TV Lab Fellow, 2021- 2022 Annenberg Civic Media Fellow, and a 2019 Sundance | Knight Fellow.
Mayanka Goel
Mayanka Goel is a writer and artist from Mumbai, India. She studied journalism at SCMSophia, Mumbai, where she wrote features for the daily newspaper The Hindu. She graduated from NYU Tisch with an MFA in Dramatic Writing where she received the Tisch Future Screenwriters’ Fellowship Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Writing Award. She has written commercials for brands like Baskin Robbins and was a writer for a series of short films about women in sports and comedy for Humans of Bombay. Her works often feature women who defy convention, along with millennial and Gen Z humour.
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