The Genesius Screenwriting Competition is the only screenwriting competition in the world run by Catholics for Catholics.
Beauty, like Truth and Goodness, is a transcendental, a property of being common to all created things. For a story to be beautiful, it by no means must contain explicitly religious content, rather, a beautiful story is one that touches the human heart. Stories are universal – a part of human nature, and so to craft a beautiful story one must simply be willing to conform their work to the age-old storytelling tradition that has been widely known since Aristotle wrote Poetics. At the Genesius Screenwriting Competition, we are looking for beautiful stories that follow this ever ancient, ever new storytelling tradition.
Catholics have created the most beautiful artwork the world has ever known. We want to carry on the tradition by creating the most beautiful films the world has ever known, and it all starts with a beautiful screenplay.
Screenplays will be judged and scored by Catholic professionals working in the film industry who have a deep understanding of beauty in the Catholic tradition.

Awards & Prizes

All submissions will receive substantial written feedback by working professional screenwriters.
Awards will be given for best short screenplay and best feature screenplay.

Rules & Terms

Written material must be in compliance with the Hays production code if it were to be produced. Material that is not in compliance with the Hays code will not be considered: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Motion_Picture_Production_Code%2C_December_1956.pdf
By submitting, writers agree that they have rights to the submitted work, and they maintain exclusive rights to their work.
Submissions written by generative AI will not be accepted.
Writers must be 18 years or older to submit.
Must be in English.
There is no limit to the number of entries you may submit.
You may submit a script once. You may not submit the same script more than once.
All script entries must be uploaded in PDF format.
Under absolutely no circumstances will substitutions of either corrected pages or new drafts of the entry script(s) be made. Scripts will not be returned.
Writers of all backgrounds may submit, and no preference will be given to Catholic writers and/or explicitly religious material, the above standards notwithstanding.
Submissions are non-refundable.
If applicable, Quarterfinalists, Semifinalists, and Finalists will be announced in the weeks leading up to the event date.