Manchester Film Festival Screenplay Competition

After a successful 2024 edition, Manchester Film Festival is excited to join forces once again with ScriptUp for its 2025 Screenplay Competition.

Now in its eleventh year, the Manchester Film Festival is proud to champion independent work and provide screenwriters with a chance to see their scripts read and appraised by industry experts.

ScriptUp is a script consultancy that works to bring out the best in your screenplay. Their script services give you industry-informed insights and unbiased feedback on your work, helping you take it to the next level.

SELECTION PROCESS:

At Manchester Film Festival 2025, all Screenplay Competition submissions will be read by a team of industry readers with a strong background in screenwriting appraisal.

The top third of these screenplays will progress into the Quarter Finals and will receive Manchester Film Festival laurels. From these, ten will be selected for the Semi Finals and will receive the matching Manchester Film Festival laurels.

Our top ten writers (semifinals and above) will be invited to the Manchester Film Festival in March 2025 and provided with a free full festival pass allowing them to network with film professionals, take in all of the festival's screenings and attend all after-parties.

From the ten Semifinalists, five screenplays will be selected as Finalists and will be read in full by a jury of industry professionals. This selection will include at least one short script, one TV script and one feature script.

Each of the jury members will then give scores and written feedback on the screenplays, which will be compiled into an overall Finalist's Report.

The script with the highest aggregate score will be crowned the overall winner at the final awards event on the evening of Sunday 16th March, 2025 at the Odeon Great Northern. The top-scoring short, TV and feature scripts will be individual format winners, earning the opportunity to have their screenplay introduced to independent producers and filmmakers.

IN-DEPTH SCRIPT REPORT ADD-ON:
In response to writer feedback from previous editions, we're once again offering writers the chance to receive a detailed script report from their first-round reader. The report will assess the strengths and weaknesses of a submission, making recommendations for improvement in future drafts. It should also provide valuable context as to why a script has/hasn't been selected for the next round - a feedback system lacking from other competitions.

Our script reports include:

- 1,200-1,500 words of concise commentary.
- A short bio of your industry reader (accountability matters to us).
- Written analysis of: Premise, Story Structure, Characters, Setting, Final Thoughts.
- Prompting Questions to help guide a re-write of your next draft.
- A comprehensive scoring grid.
- All neatly formatted in a PDF.

A link to a sample report is here: https://scriptupstudio.com/s/MANIFF-In-Depth-Screenwriting-Report-SAMPLE.pdf

Reports will be returned on the date of the Quarterfinal announcement.

Feel free to contact the ScriptUp team to ask any further questions: https://www.scriptupstudio.com/contact

INDUSTRY JURY

The jury for this year's competition will be made up of executives, writers and agents from leading companies within the industry. Juries from the past three years have included the following:

• Charlotte LeMaire, Film Advisory, Endeavor Content
• Henry Holmes, Script Development, Gaumont & PBJ
• Lare Oyefusi, Commercial Planning, Disney+
• Shanika Hyslop, Editor, Bloomsbury Publishing
• Rupert Stonehill, Literary Department, Independent Talent
• Camila Legaspi, Chief Content Officer, Latina Media Ventures
• Beatriz Menéndez, Literary Department, Curtis Brown
• Archie Thomson, screenwriter, winner C21 Drama
• Ella Troup, Producer, iGeneration Studios