Winners of the 20th annual Baltimore Screenwriters Competition were announced Saturday at the Maryland Film Festival’s “Maryland Film Day” weekend at the SNF Parkway Theatre.
Prizes were awarded to the top three scripts in the feature and shorts categories, selected from 32 entries. Winning screenplays are set, or able to be filmed, in Baltimore.
“The Baltimore Screenwriters Competition celebrates 20 years of nurturing screenwriters and encouraging Baltimore stories. The Baltimore Film Office is proud of our long relationship with Johns Hopkins and Morgan State Universities who, along with the Maryland Film Festival, give the writers the opportunity to have their stories read by industry professionals and receive valuable feedback,” said Debbie Donaldson Dorsey, director of the Baltimore Film Office, in a statement.
Students from Johns Hopkins University’s and Morgan State University’s writing and film programs read through the scripts during the first round of judging. The scripts then moved through a second round of readers.
In the final judging round, the winners were selected by industry professionals, including Nina K. Noble, an Emmy award winning executive producer and producing partner of David Simon’s Blown Deadline Productions; Ken LaZebnik, a film and television writer who is also Director of
Long Island University’s MFA in Writing and Producing for Television; Annette Porter, a producer at Nylon Films, Co-Director of the JHU MICA Film Centre, and the Director of the Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund at Johns Hopkins University; and Baltimore native Darryl Wharton-Rigby, a film and television writer, director, and Assistant Professor of Production at Temple University Japan.
The winners of the 2025 Baltimore Screenwriters Competition are:
FEATURE CATEGORY
First Place — Chaseedaw Giles, “Baltimore Barber” — “In a West Baltimore neighborhood shadowed by relentless gun violence, the spirits of the deceased linger, haunting those left behind. Anthony, the community barber, navigates the veil between life and death, battling PTSD and a simmering rage as he gives haircuts to the living—and the dead.”
Second Place — Evan Balkan, “I’m Possible” — “’I’m Possible’ charts Richard White’s journey from growing up homeless in West Baltimore to becoming the first African American to earn a doctorate in tuba instruction and enter the rarefied air of the symphony orchestra.”
Third Place — Jeff Gray, “End Zones and Equations” — “At Baltimore’s prestigious Polytechnic Institute, a benched high school freshman and a star quarterback forge an unlikely bond, facing against their toughest opponents-and their own fears- as they prepare for the game of their lives.”
SHORTS CATEGORY
First Place — Catherine Maslen, “Double T” — “Before the age of cellphones two estranged lovers decide to meet at a Double T diner in Baltimore. Unbeknownst to them, there are two Double Ts at opposite ends of the same road. Complicated emotions ensue as the ill-fated couple try to figure out what is happening.”
Second Place — Wordsmith, “The Purple Tape” — “A group of students go on the hunt for a rare copy of Raekwon’s ‘The Purple Tape.'”
Third Place — George Tittle, “Relations” — “A lonely, troubled female ventriloquist wants a relationship-but her dummy objects.”
