Winner

Photo by Cashmere

Sarah Lancaster (Manager, Mercury) with
winners Sebastian and Zachary Benn

Nominees

Jury

Ruth Estelle

Ruth Estelle’s most recent work ‘Behind The Seams’ (released in 2023 on FaceBook, Instagram, and TikTok) won the LA Script Awards, and Best Series Pilot at the Sydney Indie Short Festival, in 2022. As well as an extensive slate of projects with Word Ninjas, Ruth has written shortlisted plays and a memoir. Her screen projects range widely across genres and formats – including a TV musical 'Sharehouse', co-created and written with Pete Monaghan. Ruth’s clients have reaped rewards from her writing and script editing: TV movie Suka (on Go! 20/12/23), feature films My Eyes and Vigilantes, and most recently Wishes - a co-written preschool animation with Karu-Karu selected for Annecy-MIFA Pitches 2024.

Jonathan Champ

Jonathan is an early-career screenwriter developing projects across film, television, online and narrative audio. He explores themes of change, loss, identity and place.

An AFTRS graduate (Postgraduate Certificate Screen – Screenwriting, 2017), he has been a script consultant for the US-based Finish Line Script Competition in 2019 and 2020. He was a finalist in the 2020 NYC Midnight Short Screenplay Challenge and the 2023 Screenwriters Network Short Screenplay Competition for his work Writer’s Voice. The micro-doc Actual Size (2017) that he conceived and co-wrote at AFTRS was a finalist in the Made In The West Film Festival and has been screened at The Other Art Fair, and at Blacktown Arts One Night At The Museum.