The Slamdance Group has announced the winners of the 2025 Slamdance Screenplay Competition, with Brennan Cusack’s The Badlands Woman’s Clinic taking home the Grand Prize. Awards were presented during a live ceremony at AGBO, the independent studio founded by Anthony and Joe Russo, in Downtown Los Angeles.
This year’s competition recognized writers across five categories—feature film, horror/thriller, TV pilot, short film, and screenplay mentorship—with more than $18,000 in prizes and industry services awarded.
AGBO’s Chief Creative Officer Angela Russo-Otstot opened the ceremony, which featured presenters including Slamdance alumni Emily Carmichael (Pacific Rim Uprising), Daniel Casey (Fast & Furious 9), Neil Ferron (Fishmonger), Jamie King (Jessica Jones), Beverly Neufeld (Action! Action!), Elle Jae Stewart (The Invention of Ella Jae), and Aditya Ezhuthachan of Pessah Law Group.
Cusack’s winning script, The Badlands Woman’s Clinic, follows a young OBGYN who returns to her rural hometown to work at a local women’s clinic in order to regain custody of her daughter. The story explores themes of motherhood, autonomy, and the realities of medical care in underserved areas.
Slamdance Festival Director Taylor Miller described the work as “the kind of writing that changes how you think about what television can hold,” highlighting Cusack’s ability to defy formulaic storytelling while maintaining deep emotional resonance.
The Screenplay Mentorship Award was presented to Erick Torres for Cucuy, a story of a fighting dog’s journey from brutality to redemption. Slamdance Festival Manager Anna Lee Lawson praised the work for its “emotional depth, creativity, and powerful storytelling without reliance on dialogue.”
Now in its 28th year, the Slamdance Screenplay Competition received 4,218 submissions from around the world and has awarded more than $450,000 in prizes to emerging filmmakers. This year’s prize package included a $10,000 Grand Prize, $2,000 category awards, a Roadmap Writers membership, complimentary legal services from Pessah Law Group, and script coverage from Sony Pictures Classics.
The Slamdance Screenplay Awards reaffirm the festival’s mission to champion independent voices and innovative storytelling. Its ongoing partnership with AGBO continues through the AGBO Fellowship, launched in 2018, supporting bold and original creators.
Slamdance congratulates the top three 2025 screenplays in each prize category, as follows:
Grand Prize Winner
Brennan Cusack, The Badlands Woman’s Clinic
Mentorship Winner
- Erick Torres, Cucuy
Feature
- 1st place: Renn Tan, The Gift of Rain
- 2nd place: Amir Zargara & Gabe Berry, Vital
- 3rd place: Edith Storm, Burn Her Slowly
Horror/Thriller
- 1st place: Pam Covington, MESA
- 2nd place: Deborah Richards, Scissor Mouth
- 3rd place: Eric R. Lotter, Frozen Lies
Pilot
- 1st place: Brennan Cusack, The Badlands Woman’s Clinic
- 2nd place: Christina Keach, Entre Nous
- 3rd place: Jas Kandola, Broker
Short
- 1st place: Kyung-Ja Lee, The Comfort Woman Statue
- 2nd place: James Newman, Inbetweening
- 3rd place: Gádor Camacho Cervantes, Sourdough (Masa Madre)
