‘Opportunity at just the right moment’: Adelaide Film Festival and AWG announce 2017 winner of prestigious INSITE Award
Monday 9 October 2017
The winner of the 2017 Adelaide Film Festival and Australian Writers’ Guild’s INSITE Award has been announced today as screenwriter Bec Peniston-Bird, with the opportunity coming at ‘just the right moment’ for her Cold War-era feature film script, Petrova.
'I am so grateful to the AWG and Adelaide Film Festival for this unexpected honour,’ Peniston-Bird said. ‘Petrova is inspired by a thrilling chapter in Cold War history and is a project very close to my heart. This opportunity comes at just the right moment and I feel it will help me to take my project to the next stage.'
A Melbourne-based filmmaker, Peniston-Bird had her last two short films screen at Adelaide Film Festival and recently completed a four-month attachment with writer/directors Peter and Michael Spierig on their period thriller Winchester.
INSITE’s proven formula will see her attend the Adelaide Film Festival this week to meet industry directors and producers with a view to getting her project onto the screen.
In a tough field, the judges felt that Petrova, a script about an infamous event in Australia’s Cold War history – one that finds itself newly relevant again in the current international climate – has the potential to become a thought-provoking thriller that is both geopolitically resonant and viscerally gripping.
Artistic Director of the ADL Film Fest Amanda Duthie said, ‘Bec Peniston-Bird is a very talented writer and director. It was delightful to discover that, unbeknownst to the selection committee who read all the scripts without any identification, her previous work has already been curated at the Adelaide Film Festival. We look forward to welcoming her to Adelaide for the 2017 Festival, and watching the development of this impressive feature script.’
AWG Group CEO Jacqueline Elaine said, ‘Every two years INSITE celebrates the best of Australia’s screenwriting talent, uncovering unproduced gems of scripts and creating real opportunity for screenwriters to put their work into production, and this year is no exception. We are excited to see where this oppourtunity takes Peniston-Bird and Petrova.’
Download this press release here.