Stowe Launch
Advanced project development program for screenwriters
2026 Fellows
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"Halfcast"
ELLIUS GRACE (Stowe Launch Fellow)
Body Horror Feature
Biracial man Liam, desperate to assimilate in Ireland, undergoes a ritual burial to become white. He thinks it’ll help him fix whatever’s wrong with him, but maybe his Asian heritage wasn’t the real issue after all.
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"Don's Life Goes On"
ZOË GIBNEY (Stowe Story Labs/Galway Film Fleadh Fellow)
An Unusual Love Story Feature
Don’s safe, predictable, lonely life is turned upside down when a young mother and her child arrive uninvited at his rural farmhouse. Is this the shake up Don's island life needs?
INCUBATION FOR FEATURE FILM AND TELEVISION PROJECTS
Stowe Launch is Stowe Story Labs' advanced development program. Launch is made possible in part through support from the National Endowment of the Arts. The program incubates and develops feature film and television projects to prepare the projects (and the artists) to enter the market.
Stowe Launch News
The announcement of 2024 Launch Fellows and our National Endowment for the Arts award was picked up by Deadline, gaining valuable industry exposure for our artists and their projects.
“Projects like Stowe Launch exemplify the creativity and care with which communities are telling their stories, creating connection, and responding to challenges and opportunities in their communities - all through the arts,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD.
HOW LAUNCH WORKS
The program was first piloted in 2021.
In 2022 and in 2023, we added two projects each year to the program. In 2024, we will add two more projects by June, and hope to add four more by August.
Participants and projects in the program are guided through the development process. We design a tailored program of up to one year of curated support for the projects. Typically, program participants will attend a Stowe Lab and Retreat, and engage in a structured ongoing mentoring program with one or more Stowe mentor. We will work with the artists on the script, ancillary materials (such as lookbooks, schedules, budgets), their pitch, and market research to find the right outreach. Ultimately, Stowe introduces the participants and their projects to potential partners in the wider industry, thereby helping get the projects made.
Projects receive a set of benchmarks created individually for their specific needs.
There is no fee charged if selected to be part of the Stowe Launch program.
Photo: 2023 Stowe Launch Fellow Ahmed Qaid in a one-on-one script note session.
HOW PROJECTS ARE CHOSEN
We select participants based on the quality of their work, an assessment of both the participant’s ability to work collaboratively to advance the project and our ability to help advance the work, and a dedication to raising underrepresented voices. Projects selected may be in need of script development, pitch training, packaging of cast and creative time, visual materials, grant-writing, and connections to producers, production companies, and equity investors. Projects generally have minimal or no financing secured.
Questions about Launch?
Stowe Launch Alumni
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"Before I Disappear"
KENDRA ARIMOTO &
JUSTIN MICHAEL JEFFERSDrama, Romance Feature
An African American PhD student and a Japanese American college dropout forge an intimate connection during a single night of soul-baring in Bronzeville/Little Tokyo, Los Angeles -
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"The Squad"
ISABELLE BLANCHE
Sports, Coming-of-Age Drama Feature
Headstrong Liv Kennedy is determined to achieve sporting glory on the rugby pitch, there is just one problem: nobody believes she can do it, not even her team. Can she turn the team around to achieve success or is there more to life than winning? -
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"Unqualified"
AARON CORLESS
Galway Film Fleadh Marketplace Fellow
Comedy Feature
To prove his love a hapless young teenager longs to step in as a father to his crush’s unborn child but being a Dad means a lot more than he thinks. -
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"When Ani Met Joe Met Cris"
ELIZABETH DWYER
Romantic Comedy Feature
A recurring meet-cute over the course of a decade, but make it gay. Two queer women cross paths until the universe makes it stick, as their acquaintance turns to friendship turns to love.
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"Iona's House"
CAROLINE FARRELL
Horror Feature
In a quiet backstreet in Dublin City, KATE, 40, rents IONA’S HOUSE from landlord and shopkeeper, MISTER JORDAN, 90. Both haunted by the terrible secrets they keep, their worlds collide to transform KATE’s future with a chilling sense of purpose.
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"Púca"
KATHRYN KENNEDY FENTON
Screen Ireland Fellow
Horror Feature
On a remote Island, in 1820s Ireland, Peggy fends off the sinister shapeshifting PÚCA intent on taking her unborn child.
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"Hearts and Minds"
ALEXANDRA HENSLEY
Drama Feature
While on deployment in Afghanistan an independent female Marine’s dreams of combat are thwarted when she is ordered to help build a school for local children.
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"The Seed"
GOLDIE JONES
Action Crime Thriller Feature
Fresh out of prison, Charlotte “Charlie” Smith is forced to pay off an old debt by intercepting a package only to learn the package is a person - an organ donor caught at the center of a war between a dying mobster and his estranged son.
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"Couples"
AHMED QAID
Drama Feature
Posing as brother and sister, a pair of young Yemeni newlyweds travel to San Francisco in the early 1990s in search of a better life. Upon arriving, they soon find their marriage tested by poverty, homesickness, and an American dream that seems to forever elude them.
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"Guadalupe Mountain"
EMILY RAY REESE
Coming of Age, Magical Realism Feature
Forgotten in the midst of her parents’ crumbling marriage, Lola, a ten-year-old barrel racer, attempts to escape a sexual predator by harnessing a secret source of power within her. -
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"Night Guards"
LEA ROBINSON
Horror, Comedy Feature
When a hazardous chemical incident occurs at the Berkeley Bio-Tech Lab, overnight QTPOC security guards D and Leo discover that the survival of their friendship may be their only hope to save the world from a full-on zombie apocalypse. -
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"HIGH"
TISHA ROBINSON-DALY
& JONATHAN MASONDrama Feature
Scaling life defying telecom towers fuled on cigarettes and little sleep is how Butch Robbins and his nomadic crew make a living. But the aftermath of a freak accident sends Butch on a downward spiral, away from the connections he needs most —his wife Maya and their 9-year-old daughter Olive. -
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"The Bastard Children of Javier Ortiz"
ARIANNA ORTIZ
Dark Comedy, Action Feature
A happily married Mexican-American family man is overjoyed to find the long-lost siblings he’s always wanted. Desperate to bond with them, he soon discovers he comes from a band of ruthless Texas bandits and that he might not make it home for dinner… or make it out alive.
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"Daughters Lost in the Desert"
APRIL M. SÁNCHEZ
Western, Thriller Feature
After the young Dolores disappears while walking home alone in the desert, a group of women heighten their fight against systematic corruption in Juarez. Dolores’s protective mother searches for justice while her strong-willed sister demands vengance. -
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"Bodies of Water"
SEBASTIEN TOBLER
Social Commentary, Drama Feature
Set in the fictional Mediterranean island of San Vicari, once a tuna fishing center of Europe, Joaquin Zamorra, an aging fisherman, discovers a new catch reviving the local economy and entangles him in the dark inner workings of capitalism, testing the depths of human compassion.
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"Miracle Man"
BRANDON VEDDER
Drama TV Mini-Series
The true story behind the making of 1972’s oscar winning documentary Marjoe, wherein former child evangelist “Marjoe the Miracle Child, mysteriously returns grown to the bombastic revival movement he helped create, secretly intent on destroying it.
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"Greenwood"
KEITH WALKER
Drama TV 1 hr
After coming home from war, a Black man reopens his pool hall in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1918, only to be challenged by a rival developer who is hell-bent on forcing him out.
