A big congratulations to all the writers who submitted their screenplays to the contest this year. I want to thank everyone who submitted. Thank you for trusting us to read and analyze your material. Every year I struggle with how best to help the writers who aren’t selected. Trying to grade something as subjective as screenwriting is not an easy task. I acknowledge that no contest’s processes, including our own, are perfect. If you didn’t place as highly as you had hoped in our contest, please get another opinion from someone else whom you trust. It’s always possible we’ve overlooked a great screenplay.
Below is a list of all the screenplays that made it into the second round of SYS’s Six Figure Screenplay Contest 2025.
We will be announcing the quarter finalists on October 8th, 2025.
So without further ado here are the screenplays that have progressed to the second round of SYS’s Six-Figure Screenplay Contest 2025 (listed alphabetically by screenplay title):
Feature Film Screenplays:
A Patient on Atalaya (sci-fi) by Diego Costa Melgar
Log Line: Elena, a 90-year-old former teacher and psychologist, arrives at the TV show Atalaya in 1998 with the promise of traveling through time live on air. When the journey fails, Inti, the show’s host, questions her mental health and her true objective. Elena must confront traumas, doubts, reflections, and her own reality to find what is preventing her from traveling and completing her mission.
After School (horror) by David Tenenbaum
Log Line: When a cyber-bullied student is pushed over the edge, his classmates pay for their cruelty in blood.
Blois 1171 (drama) by Ilia Debolskii
Log Line: In 12th-century France, a fragile yet headstrong Jewish girl — the sole survivor of a blood libel massacre — convinces a wandering Templar knight to help her seek revenge, unaware of his connection to her family’s murder. Based on the real events of the Blois incident.
Blasphemous (horror) by Warren Lane and Jon Tenzing Neralich
Log Line: Five pearl-clutching tales of religious horror.
Broken (thriller) by Phillip Roquemore
Log Line: A fitness influencer is rescued by a reclusive veteran who refuses to return her to civilization after he finds her out in the woods with two broken legs.
Demons (thriller) by Shiva Ramanathan
Log Line: A desperate father who resorts to crime to fund his fertility treatment must confront his past when the seven-year-old girl he killed is reborn as his daughter. Comps: Fargo, Prisoners and The Omen.
Echo (sci-fi) by Daniel Elkayam
Log Line: An impoverished young inventor finds himself the target of a mysterious conspiracy after he inadvertently creates a machine with the ability to send information back in time.
Haunted (horror) by James Michael Farley
Log Line: A jaded ghost-hunting crew fakes scares for their online show—until a real demon challenges the crew and their egotistical leader, turning their latest shoot into a hellish fight for survival.
Lawyers Gone Bad (crime) by Vincent Scarsella
Log Line: Enter the world of the Lawyers Discipline Office, the state agency that polices lawyers gone bad – that is, lawyers who commit egregious criminal and ethical wrongs – and follow disciplinary counsel, Dean Alessi, and his investigator, Stu Foley, as they investigate a local District Attorney for committing the ultimate ethical wrong – MURDER!
No Going Back (thriller) by Donald Goldmacher
Log Line: When a NASA scientist exposes Big Oil’s responsibility for climate change, corporate America and the US government collude to silence her.
Old Scratch (horror) by Mark Kauffman and Andy Silverman
Log Line: A garage band strikes gold with a new hit song using lyrics from a deceased fan’s suicide note, but the vengeful spirit of the girl they “borrowed” their lyrics from returns to get even.
One Little Push (drama) by Paul Clarke
Log Line: To help his gravely ill daughter, a desperate father robs a suburban home, but finds the homeowner with a gun in his mouth. The man cannot pull the trigger and offers everything he owns in exchange for finishing the job.
Play Like a Girl (comedy) by DeAndra Stone
Log Line: It’s the spring of 1994 and all Robbie Darrah wants to do is play softball. When she moves to a small farm town it’s up to her to make things happen. Little does she know all the obstacles that stand in her way.
Poems of Yore (comedy) by Quanah Jay Hicks
Log Line: An aspiring painter’s works unexpectedly go viral as a result of poetry he receives through dreams.
Reverie (sci-fi) by Giada Curiale
Log Line: After receiving an experimental chip that lets him rewrite his memories, a grieving nurse alters his past — but each change pulls him further from reality.
Rock Me (Like a Hurricane) (comedy) by Stanley Pomianowski
Log Line: A couple on fertility treatments with one final shot at getting pregnant have to fight for privacy to conceive their first child when a hurricane traps them in their house with ALL of their extended family.
Sanctuary (thriller) by Brian McQuery
Log Line: A terrified woman in witness protection mourns her murdered husband and grapples with paranoia that she is in danger while she desperately tries to connect with the new people in her life in order to retain some semblance of herself, but her paranoia soon proves to be true.
The Chained Man (drama) by Vincent Scarsella
Log Line: After being abducted and chained to a basement wall, a self-absorbed lawyer is forced into a mind-altering psychological battle with his enigmatic captor claiming to offer him the key to truth and salvation. But as the days pass, the lawyer must determine whether he’s the victim of a subversive cult or merely dreamed his capture to escape an unhappy life.
The Decision (drama) by Carlos Perez
Log Line: A senator’s wife finds out the hard way just how bad the laws he helped create actually effect innocent pregnant women.
The Gray House (horror) by Brandon Rhiness
Log Line: A nurse on the run from the law takes a job at an isolated house, caring for an elderly woman who turns out to be possessed by the spirit of her murderous late husband.
The Orangutan Guy (comedy) by Tony Philips
Log Line: When a broke Boston baggage handler impulsively steals an unlabeled crate, he discovers a lost Picasso — and becomes the center of a media circus, dodging feds, blackmailers, and scammers as he scrambles to unload a painting he doesn’t even like.
The Rainy Night Stalker (thriller) by Debbie Shannon
Log Line: Psychic forensic photographer communicates with the dead to solve their murders.
The Tomb (drama) by Darren Nash
Log Line: A boy and his sister are trapped in a mysterious chamber and must contend with an alien invasion.
Underneath the Daffodils (drama) by Isaiah Mouw
Log Line: A quiet, reserved man in his 70s, who spends his days gardening, has his life turned upside down when a true crime podcast reignites the painful rumor that he was responsible for the unsolved disappearance of his teenage daughter 20 years ago.
Wisdom (crime) by Brian O’Connor
Log Line: After killing her abusive boyfriend and posting a video about it that goes viral, a volatile young woman becomes a fugitive folk hero as she goes on the run, chased by the law and her estranged step-sister, a lead detective.
Wishing Well (thriller) by Jose Manuel
Log Line: A young man finds himself stuck at the bottom of a 100-foot water well after his childhood friends tossed him into it in an attempted murder.
Short Film Screenplays:
Almost Human (sci-fi) by Bernhard Riedhammer
Log Line: A man runs to the aid of an injured woman without realizing she might be part of something much bigger – and not quite who she claims she is.
Blood Knot (horror) by Tapan Sharma
Log Line: Boy scouts on retreat begin to suspect their leader is a vampire.
Lluvia De Peces (horror) by Andrés Mejia and Jonah Ocuto
Log Line: In a surreal dystopia where asylum seekers compete on a game show for the chance to win citizenship, a Honduran mother is forced to relive the traumas that brought her to the U.S.—and make an impossible choice between her daughter and her sister.
Nothing So Cruel (drama) by James Hurley
Log Line: On a rainy night, a man stumbles across a familar place and learns there’s nothing as cruel as a memory.
Paris (drama) by H R Webb
Log Line: In memory of lost love and lost time an OLD MAN returns to Paris for one last time.
Project N-Terro (horror) by Traycee King
Log Line: In a dystopian future ravaged by corruption and genetic mutation, a tormented double-agent uses a forbidden psychic drug to interrogate a brutal trafficker, uncovering a conspiracy that forces her to confront her own dark past and the sinister systems controlling her world.
Skirt That Bleeds (drama) by Abhishek Mishrra
Log Line: A gynecologist previously convicted of rape and murder must deliver the baby of a woman with a connection to his former victims.
Sleeptalkers (comedy) by Richard Anderson
Log Line: When the sleeping owners of a funeral parlor are awakened by noises coming from the bedroom floor heat register connected to their basement mortuary prep room, they assume it’s only a burglar.
The Inheritance of Purpose (family) by Alex Mehta
Log Line: An elderly professor obsessively searching for traces of his long-dead brother on a beach encounters a mysterious boy building elaborate sandcastles, who challenges him to stop searching for what he’s lost and start rebuilding what truly matters before the tide comes in.
The Old Man And The Paintbrush (animation) by Christopher Loveland
Log Line: An old artist discovers what he was missing.
Tough Love (thriller) by Warren Lane
Log Line: In this dark coming-of-age tale a suicidal tween finds a reason to live after her maniacal new therapist shows her how to quiet the voices inside her head.
Ulis (drama) by Fabiana De Bellis
Log Line: On a remote island, Gaia, a hard-of-hearing girl, shocks her classmates by auditioning as Ulysses in the school play. As laughter ripples through the class, Gaia sets out to prove she can face her demons and pass the rocks without falling under the spell.