September 2022 in Arezzo
Jules Nurrish
Jules is a British filmmaker based in Los Angeles, CA. She is the co-writer of feature drama Anchor and Hope (2017), a UK-Spanish co-production directed by Carlos Marques Marcet starring Oona Chaplin, Natalia Tena and Geraldine Chaplin. In 2017, Anchor and Hope premiered at the BFI London Film Festival and opened the Seville European Film Festival, where it won the Association of Cinematic Writers of Andalusia award for Best Film. Of the film’s eleven nominations for the 2018 Gaudí Awards (Catalan Film Academy), Jules was nominated in two categories: Best Screenplay and Best Non-Catalan Language Film, winning the latter. Other wins include Best Screenplay at the 2018 Valletta Film Festival in Malta. In 2018, Anchor and Hope premiered in the US at the South by Southwest Film Festival and had a theatrical release in the US, Spain, and UK, as well as a digital release on Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. Jules participated in the Film Independent Directing Lab (2016) and the Berlinale Talent Campus (2015) with her feature boxing drama script Clinch. Her eight short films have screened at film festivals and cultural institutions worldwide to critical acclaim. Kiss Me (2012) starring Raúl Castillo (We the Animals, Looking) won the Best Emerging Filmmaker award at the Palm Springs International ShortFest and screened at over twenty international film festivals, garnering Best Short Film awards at the Bend and Atlanta Film Festivals. Bend It (2008) was an official selection at the Sundance Film Festival and her first narrative short film No Ordinary Joe (2005) toured the international festival circuit and aired on the BBC Film Network in the UK and on PBS television in the US. She is a graduate of the MFA program in Directing and Production at UCLA.
Susan Klos
Susan Klos came from New York to Los Angeles in 1975 to attend the American Film Institute as a fellow in cinematography, but put her budding career behind the camera on hold when to raise a family.
In 1978 she started Big Time Picture Company, Inc., her post production business which grew into LA’s first independent post production facility for studio, independent and documentary feature films.
In 2010, Susan executive produced “Lost Angels: Skid Row is my Home” www.skidrowismyhome.com, a feature documentary that explores the issues of mental illness and addiction in this portrait of life on the streets of Los Angelesʼ Skid Row.
Susan’s feature script, “Voices,” is about a single mother who struggles to balance a business and a new romance with family life when her young adult daughterʼs increasingly bizarre behavior is diagnosed as schizophrenia. She must choose between the love of her life and the life of her child.
In 2010, Susan graduated from the UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting having completed a feature comedy screenplay, “Cesar and Max” and started on her second comedy screenplay, “I Hate You...a Love Story.”
“Cesar and Max” is about 17 year old best friends; one the son of an illegal Mexican immigrant and the other a spoiled middle-class attorney’s son, who escape problems at school and at home and run away to Mexico in search of Cesar’s long lost father.
Susan stays involved in her community as an advocate for mental health and homeless issues.
Terron Jones
Terron Jones is a storyteller from Hartford, Connecticut, residing in the Boogie Down Bronx. He’s an award-winning actor/writer/director/producer. As an actor he's been in projects alongside Robert DeNino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Riz Ahmad and John Turturro. His work has also aired on NBC, CBS, Netflix, and HBO.
Terron operates his production company, NORMA x ROSYLN PRODUCTIONS. A company he aptly named after his grandmother and mother. Under NORMA x ROSLYN, his first film When it All Falls Down... was a finalist at the HBO Short Film Competition at the American Black Film Festival. He’s written, directed, and produced several short films.
Terron is currently working to bring his first screenplay, ibrahim, to life.
Parish Rahbar
Parish June Vafaei-Rahbar is an award-winning filmmaker who has been involved in the film and television industry since 2004. Most notably, working with Peter Bogdanovich on projects such as Directed by John Ford and the Grammy Award winning documentary, Runnin’ Down a Dream: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Over the course of five years she co-wrote three feature screenplays with Bogdanovich, and was instrumental in crafting a reconciled draft of Tennessee Williams’ final un-produced play, In Masks Outrageous and Austere, working closely with Gore Vidal and Bogdanovich. She worked with Iranian theater director and actor, Parsa Pirouzfar, in translating from Persian to English his one-man play, Matryoshka, based on several short stories by Anton Chekhov. In 2010, she co-founded Renōvatiō Movies, an LAbased production company where she fulfills the roles of writer, director, and editor on most projects. In collaboration with co-founder and producing partner, Tara Moini, their short films have garnered international attention winning awards and premiering at Academy Award qualifying festivals worldwide. They have several features in development. Parish currently resides in California, splitting her time between San Diego and Los Angeles where she continues to cultivate her enduring interest in art and music, playing her piano and writing songs whenever it strikes her fancy.
Keaton Burns
I’m Keaton from Nanaimo BC and if I had to explain why I wanna be a writer it would probably start with my family, no one else is a writer but my Dad and Grandpa introduced to Marvel young and since then I loved movies. My first job was at a movie theater and nothing will beat that theater experience for me, something about the smell, the sound, the energy just hits different no matter how old I get; furthermore, it’s that energy and passion I wanna share with my own kids someday, to bring something to the screens that’ll make others feel the same happiness I did growing up.
Mary Waireri
Mary is a Nairobi-born, London-bred screenwriter. After a career in advertising in London, she began experimenting with short film and turned her hand to screenwriting, completing the Screenwriting certificate at the UK’s National Film and Television School (NFTS) where she wrote her first feature script ‘Exiles’ – winner of the FilmarketHub 2020 Screenwriting competition and shortlisted for the 2020 BBC Scriptworks & Thousand Films Screenwriting competition. Mary was selected to participate in the Realness institute and Netflix Africa’s inaugural Episodic Lab, developing a Swahili folk horror concept. She recently worked on treatment commissions for Studio Canal UK bringing to life secret untold histories and extraordinary true stories. As a lover of thriller, horror, and sci-fi, her writing explores the many dimensions of the African Diaspora and Diaspora identities through a socially aware genre lens. She is currently working on a London-based sci-fi thriller concept exploring the racialisation of artificial intelligence.
Helen Marsh
Helen Marsh is a festival-showcased and produced screenwriter with a love for thrilling, twisted and fantastical films. Attending Vancouver Film School in 2018, she wrote her first feature screenplay, Alice Through the Microscope, which placed as a finalist at the Vancouver International Women in Film Festival in 2019. She then went on to get her Masters of English at the University of Northern British Columbia where she graduated with honors. Since graduating, Helen has been writing thrillers and romcoms, with six produced movies, a reality TV series and more in pre-production and development. Her romcoms Blue Moon Ball, Flowers and Honey and Be Mine have all aired on Hallmark Movies Now, and her thriller The Student is premiering in the US as a Lifetime Original. She is currently head of development for Enlighten Content, MyTime Writers’ Room show runner, and an Executive Producer on reality TV show @Home with Tori.
Laki Karavias
Laki Karavias is a Greek-American filmmaker, currently dividing his time between Europe and the Pacific Northwest.
Because much of his childhood and post-graduate work has been abroad, he is drawn to characters, settings, and experiences that take viewers beyond American boundaries and into
the lives of some of the extraordinary people he has met during his travels.
After studying screenwriting and directing at the National Film and Television School (UK) and the Prague Film School, Laki began crafting on paper the narratives he’d hope to see one day on
the big screen— stories mixing gravitas and whimsy, while maintaining a human core.
When not making films, Laki looks for opportunities to pursue his passion for adolescent film education, particularly for youth living in underserved communities and economically fragile contexts both locally and abroad.