Private Project

THE MOON'S PRAYER

Chained in her brother’s shadow for centuries, a silver-haired giantess risks everything on a prayer to the moon. To survive the flight through a god-like forest, she must rely on a cosmic stranger who has broken his vows to see her free.

  • Joshua Raley
    Writer
    BLOOD BOX
  • Project Type:
    Student, Screenplay, Short Script
  • Genres:
    Dark Fantasy, Drama, Sci-fi
  • Number of Pages:
    6
  • Language:
    English
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
  • New York Film & Cinematography Awards
    New York, New York
    December 8, 2025
    Official Selection
  • Best Script Awards - London
    London
    January 5, 2026
    Semi-Finalist
  • Filmzen International Film Competition

    January 17, 2026
    Award Winner
  • Hollywood Stage Script Film Competition
    Hollywood, California
    December 15, 2025
    Official Selection
Writer Biography - Joshua Raley

Joshua Raley is a U.S. Navy veteran and multidisciplinary filmmaker based near Austin, Texas. His work explores the intersection of trauma, mythology, and transcendence. He blends cinematic realism with poetic symbolism trough his production company, New Retrograde, that crafts films, music, and art that confront the human condition. His short films, including the haunting psychological piece BLOOD BOX and the mythic fantasy THE MOON'S PRAYER, seek to transform personal darkness into narrative light. Raley’s storytelling is shaped by lived experience, spiritual questioning, and a lifelong pursuit of beauty within brokenness.

Add Writer Biography
Writer Statement

The Moon’s Prayer was born from silence. That quiet ache that follows struggle and survival. It’s a story about liberation: a woman confronting the shadow that bound her, finding strength not in vengeance, but in release. The fractured moon symbolizes the mind after trauma. Still whole in form, yet permanently changed.

This film, like much of my work, walks the line between the spiritual and the psychological. I write through the lens of someone who has seen war and grief and still believes in redemption through art. The prayer at its heart isn’t for rescue, but awakening.

NEW RETROGRADE's intent is to create cinema that feels sacred — not in a religious sense, but in how it reveres humanity’s endurance.