Live Script Read - MOONSHOT

Friday 9 February

10am AEST

Enjoy a live read of 'Moonshot', runner up of the AACTA Pitch: Regional Landscapes development program featuring the voice performances of some familiar names. Attempting to avoid a court sentence, Joy, a curmudgeonly reprobate, takes in her space-obsessed nephew Daryl, who quickly blackmails her into helping to build an impossibly complicated, extremely dangerous, and probably illegal science fair project. Featuring creators Nicholas Clifford and Jules Duncan, with cast to be announced.

The AACTA Pitch Regional Landscapes program runs in partnership with Screenworks to give Australian creatives the chance to develop a feature film that celebrates the idiosyncratically Australian stories inspired by our stunning regional areas.

Moonshot was written by Nicholas Clifford and Jules Duncan and will be produced by Jim Wright and Elise Trenorden of Truce Films.

The script has been developed with the assistance of VicScreen.

Featuring

Nicholas Clifford

Nicholas Clifford is an award-winning writer and director from Australia. Recently, he was the setup director and one of the writers of the Screen Australia funded Monologue, a comedy web series that has begun its festival run and has recently won best series, best comedy, and best actress at Syd Web Fest. In 2018, he won the AWG Best Short Form script Monte Miller Award for The Handyman, which he subsequently directed. The Handyman went on to screen at over 50 festivals winning best film and best director awards and was acquired by Canal+ for distribution. In 2017, He was the Grand Prize winner in the StoryPros Screenplay contest for feature screenplay Bella and the Bear. In 2013, he wrote and directed the short film We’ve All Been There which took out Best Film at Tropfest and has since gone on to be viewed over 2.5 million times online. A graduate of Australian Film Television and Radio School, Nick also directs commercials with his production company Truce Films for global clients such as Procter & Gamble, Ryobi, Isuzu, Tradie and Moose among others. Currently Nick is casting his debut feature film One More Shot which is slated to shoot in 2024.

Jules Duncan

Jules Duncan writes films with humour and heart. He tells stories about characters who are recognisable yet idiosyncratic, much like the backwaters and ‘burbs that they hail from. His first feature film credit Rams, starring Sam Neill and Michael Caton. A reimagining of the Icelandic film Hrutar, Jules brought a uniquely Australian tone to the universal story about feuding brothers. Jules’ action comedy The Big Yarn won the 2019 AWG Monte Miller award for Best Unproduced Australian screenplay, as well as ScreenWest’s Bill Warnock Award. The companion proof of concept short film Partners won Best Comedy at the 2018 St Kilda Film Festival. His first screenplay Bogan Wedding was financed by Screen Australia. Prior to screenwriting, Jules worked as a journalist, TV reporter, and producer.

Jeanette Cronin

A graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Jeanette has worked extensively in theatre, film and television. Recent theatre appearances include Return to the Dirt (QLD Theatre) and a National tour of Letters to Lindy (Merrigong Theatre) in which she portrayed Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton. Jeanette has also performed in several sell-out seasons of Queen Bette (G.bod Theatre), a one-woman show she co-created with director, Peter Mountford about the life of screen legend, Bette Davis.

Film credits include Christmas on the Farm, The Bystander Story and seminal Australian films, The Boys and Blackrock. Jeanette has also appeared in numerous television series, notably, The Tourist, Doctor Doctor, Rake, Secret City and Janet King and web-seriesPatricia Moore, Gut Feeling and The Wrong Kind of Black.

Jeanette is also a playwright and screenwriter with three produced plays, I Love You Now(Darlinghurst Theatre), I Hate You My Mother (Redline Productions) and Tell Me Again (Old 505), which also received a workshop and rehearsed reading at the Arcola Theatre in London in 2019. Two recent plays were both shortlisted for major awards in 2020. Rest, which deals with domestic violence in regional Australia was in the final ten nominees for the prestigious Alpine International Playwriting Award and Victim, which explores sexual harassment in the entertainment industry was among the five nominees for The Silver Gull Playwriting Award.​

Recent screenplays include Poo Boy, an episode of It's Fine, I'm Fine, a funny-sad web-series about therapy which had its international premiere in competition at Cannes Short Series 2002 and its Australian premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival, also in 2022 and Shattered, the Australian component of the multi award-winning film, LockEdown Locked In, an international project reflecting the spike in domestic violence during the COVID 19 pandemic which garnered Jeanette, along with her international colleagues, Best Original Screenplay at the Athens International Art Film Festival, 08, 2021.

In 1996, Jeanette was the recipient of the inaugural Mike Walsh Fellowship.

Nathalie Morris

Nathalie Morris stars in the popular Stan series BUMP in the lead role of Oly opposite Claudia Karvan and Angus Sampson. She was last seen in acclaimed filmmaker Alena Lodkina’s feature film PETROL which premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival followed by the Melbourne International Film Festival, and she will next be seen in Josephine Stewart Te-Whiu’s New Zealand feature WE WERE DANGEROUS, executive produced by Taika Waititi, which will have its World Premiere at South by Southwest in 2024.

Nathalie graduated from New Zealand’s leading Drama School, Toi Whakaari, with a Bachelor of Performing Arts Degree in 2018. Since graduating, she has appeared in the US feature film BLACK CHRISTMAS for Blumhouse Productions, US TV series ALMOST PARADISE, and season 1 and 2 of Great Southern Television’s ONE LANE BRIDGE.

Nathalie also played the role of Nina in Auckland Theatre Company’s production of Chekhov’s THE SEAGULL, which screened online during COVID and was met with worldwide acclaim.

Nathalie was named one of the Casting Guild of Australia’s Rising Stars of 2023.