Script File

Guadalupe Mountain

In this poetic magical realism story set in the mountains of New Mexico, a ten-year-old girl tries to gain her parents’ affection and save their crumbling marriage by training to become a barrel racer but then must summon the powers of nature to escape the sexual advances of her coach.

  • Emily Ray Reese
    Writer
  • Project Type:
    Screenplay
  • Number of Pages:
    102
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Stowe Story Labs Launch

    2020 Selected Project
  • Tribeca Writing in Unreal
    New York, NY
    November 15, 2021
    Tribeca Writing in Unreal 2021 Selected Project
  • FS2P Lab
    New York, NY
    January 7, 2023
  • Athena Writing Lab Finalist
Writer Biography - Emily Ray Reese

Emily Ray Reese is a queer filmmaker from the mountains of New Mexico. Her filmmaking focuses on telling the often unseen stories of rural America, not depicted as the other but rather from an insider perspective. Visually she works to create the whimsical magic she found as a child playing alone in the vast wilderness while also addressing the dark realities of poverty, addiction, abuse, betrayal, and death. Reese attended NYU’s graduate film program. Her script ‘Baby Lu’ participated in the 2012 IFP Emerging Narrative Lab and earned Reese the 2013 NYFA Geri Asher Screenwriting Fellowship. Reese was a grant recipient of the 2020 Stowe Story Lab for her feature screenplay ‘Guadalupe Mountain’ and was chosen to participate in Stowe Story Labs Launch advanced development program as well as Tribeca’s 2021 Writing in Unreal Program. ‘Guadalupe Mountain’ was most recently selected to participate in the 2023 cohort of the From Script to PreProduction lab, and was a finalist for the Athena Writing Lab, as well as the Lynn Sheldon of a Certain Age Grant.

emilyrayreese.com
emilyrayreese@gmail.com

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Writer Statement

Guadalupe Mountain is a drama with elements of magical realism about ten-year-old Lola, who lives in a ghost town, is being raised by hunters, and must harness her powers to be her own hero.

Between the ages of five and seven, I was molested by a family friend. I never told my parents. I knew my father, I knew his love for me, and I knew his lawlessness. I knew that telling anyone would risk my father taking the law into his own hands.

This is not an exaggeration. My father is a bear hunter named Zeus. He owns more guns than silverware and there is nothing he is afraid of. My fear of losing my father kept me quiet.

I was stuck in an impossible situation, and I often dreamt of having some kind of special magical powers that could stop it all. This is where the concept for Guadalupe Mountain was born. Because children naturally use their imaginations to process their experiences and feelings, Guadalupe Mountain explores a child’s inner world through fantasy and magic. Using magical realism to illustrate the loss of innocence that sexual grooming causes, Guadalupe Mountain takes its audience into Lola’s psychological journey from whimsy and play to darkness and danger.