Join us for this wonderful event which gives remarkable insight into what makes a great script for a short film.

The first part of the evening is a conversation with our award-winning judges, about their careers. This year we are thrilled to welcome:

Amma Asante is a BAFTA award-winning screenwriter and director, known for Belle (2013), and A Way of Life (2004). She is a former child actress, who began her writing career at the age of 23 with a script deals from both Channel 4 in the UK and BBC. Her first movie, A Way of Life, which she wrote and directed won her numerous awards, both in the UK and internationally, including FIPRESCI prizes and the Carl Foreman BAFTA Film Award. In 2017 Amma was awarded an MBE on the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List, for her services to film as a writer and director.

Col Needham is the CEO of IMDb and is literally living his best life: he is the human version of the IMDb which started life as a spreadsheet and is now the top film website in the world with over 250 million unique visitors every month.

Andrea Gibb - is a  film and television writer. Her feature film Dear Frankie, starring Emily Mortimer and Gerard Butler won the Women in Film and Television Script Award and she was nominated for the Carl Foreman Award at the BAFTAs for her feature film Afterlife the following year. 

She has worked on a huge range of projects, including adaptations of Vikram Seth's bestselling novel An Equal Music and Rose Tremain’s Road Home for BBC 2. Her adaptation of Arthur Ransome's children's classic Swallows and Amazons previewed at FilmBath Festival and won prizes in Seattle and New York. 

Among many other projects, Andrea has written for Call The Midwife and the BBC feature-length adaptation of Emma Healey's award-winning novel Elizabeth is Missing.

You may also recognise her from her acting days when, most famously, she played Deirdre, Calum Buchanan's girlfriend in All Creatures Great and Small

We will then watch a rehearsed table read of the five shortlisted scripts – and then the judges will reveal who will win £5,000 cash, £1,000-worth of hire kit from Visual Impact AND an enamel IMDb badge (usually only given to IMDb employees!).

Our finalists are:

A Bed for the Boy by Simon Sylvester

Lambing by Katie McNeice

How to Hire an Escort by Werner Vivier

The Influencer by Rachel S. Thomas-Medwid

Out of Sight by Jesse D Lawrence