Below is a list of all the screenplays that made it into the quarter finals of SYS’s Six Figure Screenplay Contest.
A big congratulations to all the writers who had screenplays make it into the next round. Congratulations.
We will be announcing the semi finalists on Wednesday Oct 15th, 2025.
With each round it becomes increasingly difficult to judge the scripts and the decisions become more and more subjective. We’ve taken this responsibility very seriously and tried hard to look at each script as thoroughly as possible, hopefully finding a few that our industry judges would like to option and potentially produce. So without further ado here are the screenplays that have progressed to the quarter finals of SYS’s Six-Figure Screenplay Contest (listed alphabetically by screenplay title):
Feature Film Screenplays:
Blasphemous (horror) by Warren Lane and Jon Tenzing Neralich
Log Line: Five pearl-clutching tales of religious horror.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Short Film Screenplays:
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.
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.
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.