Inspired by the Great Fire of Chicago 1871 following the investigation of Mrs O’Leary, a woman the newspapers blamed for starting the fire that spread all the way to Lincoln Park.
Get to know the writer:
1. What is your screenplay about?
My screenplay is about Catherine O’Leary, the Irish milkmaid unjustly accused of starting Chicago’s “Great Fire” of 1871. As she fights to clear her name, she discovers the true culprit of the fire and faces an agonizing choice.
2. What genres does your screenplay fall under?
Historical fiction; thriller.
3. Why should this screenplay be made into a movie?
“Mrs. O’Leary” should be made into a movie because it’s about a 19th-century “cancel culture” that 21st-century audiences would recognize. The story transcends region and period. “Mrs. O’Leary” is set 155 years ago, and yet the Chicago world of 1871 isn’t so diffrent from our own — a world where vulnerable people are “othered” due to their homeland or accent and where they can wither under stronger forces that are determined to cast blame for a social problem.
4. How would you describe this script in two words?
Hot Time.
5. What movie have you seen the most times in your life?
“It’s A Wonderful Life”
6. How long have you been working on this screenplay?
Shy of a year.
7. How many stories have you written?
About 20; features, pilots, and shorts.
8. What motivated you to write this screenplay?
Over the phone in early 2025, my mother read a brief selection about Catherine O’Leary in a book about “bad days in history” (Oct. 8, 1871, real bad day in Chicago). Without sounding too dramatic, my imagination ignited immediately, and I saw Mrs. O’Leary as a cinematic protagonist. I saw drama: a woman who suffers through no fault of her own. As I researched and then reimagined her story, I added a thriller element: Mrs. O’Leary didn’t start the fire… but somebody did! In my screenplay, I give Catherine O’Leary voice that she never had in life.
9. What obstacles did you face to finish this screenplay?
I faced the challenge of sifting through volumes of contemporary and modern texts about Mrs. O’Leary, and the fire, to locate gems that I would use for a 100-page script.
10. Apart from writing, what else are you passionate about?
Animal welfare. My cat.
11. What influenced you to enter the festival? What were your feelings on the initial feedback you received?
I was influenced to enter because the festival offered feedback and then a promotional best-scene video. The feedback I received for “Mrs. O’Leary” was excellent: specific and actionable. The promotional best-scene video is terrific, a compelling read by talented voiceover actors against a backdrop of visually engaging graphics.
A single mother and her teenage daughter living on the south shore of Long Island. Fighting each other to be seen. Living in the conflict of oppression and dominance. Both fighting to win, both will end up losing.
This 30 minute dramatic television pilot explores the dysfunctionality between families and the unhealthy cycle of narcissistic abuse which can cause psychopathy. It follows Danielle, portrayed by April Audia, a single mother raising her teenage daughter Melody, portrayed by Chelsea Mart, on the south shore of Long Island, New York.
Writers and directors, Cat Torres and April Audia give us an inside look into several interpersonally unhealthy relationships and the difficulty it is to navigate them. The concept for this pilot is a strong one but it is also a slippery slope when dealing with these issues not to take things too far. You want to be able to empathize with these characters and I really wish there was a “save the cat” moment to be able to do that. I have to admit, April Audia not only did a wonderful job acting but she also has a great singing voice. She was the lead vocalist on the opening song with music written by Michael Haddad. Michelle Debellis who portrays Hailey also had a very organic, believable presence on camera.
Cinematographer Danilo Hernandez gave us a gorgeous TV pilot, with several creative camera angles and stellar lighting. Sound wise, I really wish the filmmakers recorded the priest’s voice over in the same room as the actors to have everything consistent. The original music for this was chosen exceedingly well, Daniel Barrera and Michael Haddad did a wonderful job on that.
Of all people exotic dancers understand money can’t buy happiness. So where does it come from? This question sets Robin on a personal journey that takes her deep inside her desires and across the country; encountering hurricanes and personal loss of people she thought were just clients and coworkers. These events cause her to accept some hard truths not only about herself, but also about her industry.
Get to know the filmmaker:
What motivated you to make this film?
This story needed to be told to help remove the stigma from exotic dancing. Not everyone who dances is doing it as a side hustle to prostitution or to scam men out of thousands of dollars. We are performers in every sense of the word; we are here to entertain people in our magical world where problems and inhibitions are left at the door. Strippers are perfectly capable sales professionals who capitalize on gender roles while exploiting society’s natural appetite for the female body and attention. Because of our job we are comfortable with nakedness and naturally shy away from honesty for the safety of ourselves and our families. This is out of the norm and incredibly intriguing to the outsiders, therefore my goal was to bring in outsiders and help them understand exotic dancers because I feel that if we all just took the time to listen to one another we would be able to grow closer and stronger.
From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this film?
I started pre-production in May of 2020 and finished post-production June of 2025; 5 years and 1 month.
How would you describe your film in two words!?
Unhinged….Raw
What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?
I might be my biggest obstacle. Being a post production crew of 1 there was no one to be accountable to, no one was waiting on me to finish my part so they could do theirs. No investors asking for an update or pressuring me to provide a return on their investment. There was just me and the commitment I made to myself that everyday I’d do something to progress my film forward, one step everyday toward my goal.
Former wrestler, turned writer/director Marcus Nel-Jamal Hamm, talks about this journey from working on the Independent festival circuit in the early 2000s with John Cena and Randy Orton, when Rocky Johnson (Dwayne’s dad) was their coach. He remembers Rocky taking him aside and saying that he’s only be a B player wrestler because he’s only 6’1 and is too small.
He then talks about how the WWE will NEVER unionize.
Triggered 2.0, 22min,. USA
Directed by Mario Ricardo Rodriguez, Marcus Nel-Jamal Hamm
A diabolical madman known as The Director 2.0, with a vendetta against Wolverine, plots a way to take his powers and use him as a distraction as he enacts his ultimate means of destroying all superpowered beings, by pitting him against his one ally, Blade, in a fight to the death. Lucas Bishop must find a way to break free of his control so he can save his friends and the rest of humanity.
An old man crosses the boundless Kazakh steppe, driving alone. Haunted by memories of a lost love, he stops by Bartogay Lake, flowers in hand. But as he tries to step out, his car door refuses to open, trapping him between past and present.
1. What motivated you to make this film? It was made from opportunity, I was in Kazakhstan for another project and seeing the country I couldn’t miss this chance.
2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this film? Scattered 5 weeks 2 weeks for the script 1 day of filming 1 week of editing 1 week of music 2 days of color grading 2 days of VFX 1 day of master and finalisation
3. How would you describe your film in two words!? Melancholic hope
4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film? Actually none, for once everything was smooth and all stars were aligned.
5. There are 5 stages of the filmmaking process: Development. Pre-Production. Production. Post-Production. Distribution. I hate Prepro 100% I feel happy when filming and in post-production.
What is your favorite stage of the filmmaking process? Color Grading
6. When did you realize that you wanted to make films? Since I was a kid and my father had this big VHS camera. Loved to use it and edit with two VCR players
7. What film have you seen the most times in your life? So many I love martial arts movie so sorry for the not indie list 😀 Yes, Madam Bloodsport Armour of God II ( Jackie Chan ) The intouchable Home Alone Gremlins
8. In a perfect world: Who would you like to work with/collaborate with on a film? As a dop – Roger Deakins as an actress – Keke Palmer, Angela Bassett as an actor – Jackie Chan, Alex Lawther as a production company – A24
9. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway. How has your experiences been working on the festival platform site? It’s easy but there’s so many fake festival than it takes hardwork to submit to the right one
10. What is your favorite meal? Plain pasta with butter and cheese Entrecôte with french fries and a massive bowl of ramen from Tsujita
11. What is next for you? A new film? 2 years ago I answered that I had a documentary about dance and a tv series Well the documentary is almost over I have another one filming and writing the tv series as we speak !
1. What motivated you to make this film? My American Friend Eric, lived in Seoul for 10 years as ‘Mr. Wayne’. A stranger in the crowd, a ghost in the neon lights. I wanted to capture the feeling of belonging nowhere —not in the East, not in the West. Just floating in the city of Seoul.
2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this film? It took a lifetime to feel it, but about 1.5 months to manifest it into this visual format.
3. How would you describe your film in two words!? Neon Estrangement
4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film? Translating the silence of isolation into sound.
5. What is your favorite stage of the filmmaking process? Post-Production. That’s when the scattered fragments of memory finally become a tangible reality. Like assembling a broken mirror.
6. When did you realize that you wanted to make films? When I realized that words alone were not enough to carry the weight of the “NOSTALGIA” I felt as an Expat.
7. What film have you seen the most times in your life? Blade Runner. It feels like a documentary of my hollow soul.
8. In a perfect world: Who would you like to work with/collaborate with on a film? Anyone who understands that silence is also a language.
9. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway. How has your experience been working on the festival platform site? It has been a seamless bridge connecting my small studio to the world.
10. What is your favorite meal? Chicken breast and a protein shake. It is my survival fuel. Please be aware that K-garoo is a Magenta colored skin Gymrat Kangaroo.
11. What is next for you? A new film? A project called ‘Selfigenic’. It explores the paradox of the “Selfie” generation —we are in every frame, smiling perfectly, but remaining in no one’s memory. Flash, smile, upload, and the emptiness that follows.
After a concert flyer turned paper airplane lands into the laps of two kid sisters, they infiltrate the venue to find a mindless mosh crowding a supernatural bathroom. Music video for ‘Buddha Was A Rich Boy’ by That Handsome Devil
1. What motivated you to make this film?
We all have friends that have ideas for films they want to direct. My friends not acting on their ideas after years of me cheerleading them led me to saying, “fuck it”, and maxing out two credit cards to make two music videos with That Handsome Devil in one weekend. There’s no lead-up to our death. It’s just going to happen one day to all of us. Anyone wasting the time we aren’t guaranteed drives me crazy.
2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this film?
To keep up with the release of their album, Exploitopia, there were maybe 5 months tops on the calendar. In that 5 months, maybe two weeks of it was spent putting this baby together.
3. How would you describe your film in two words!?
Toilet Rock
4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?
Being beholden to the baby. There’s a lot of elements in this thing we were able to control. The baby’s performance was not one of them, but we were fortunate to get a pretty wide spectrum of emotion on-camera which served the edit fairly well.
5. There are 5 stages of the filmmaking process: Development.
Distribution for sure. Good artists are never satisfied with what they’re doing and therefore must have the discipline to decide when is a good time to put the pencil down. Everything leading up to putting the pencil down is kind of an internal nightmare.
What is your favorite stage of the filmmaking process?
Getting the artists I collaborated with (DP, producer, talent, etc.) to live in my head of references is pretty good. I get to dump a bunch of references and other art I like on them all at once and see how they process it. When I bring up “Son of the Mask”, “Butthole Surfers”, “Hazbin Hotel”, “Murder Drones”, etc. in the same sentence, it’s almost a language only I can understand.
6. When did you realize that you wanted to make films?
I always liked it as a kid and made home movies like everyone else. I’d make edits of war footage to avoid going up in front of the class for social studies assignments. It’s always been there but it’d take me 31 years of life to really pursue what was always in me.
7. What film have you seen the most times in your life?
I watched Cats & Dogs the other day and recently realized I knew it line for line despite me forgetting things constantly.
8. In a perfect world: Who would you like to work with/collaborate with on a film?
If I had unlimited money and influence, I’d make a live-action F-Zero movie. Typically star-studded cast. Tommie Earl Jenkins as Captain Falcon. KMFDM doing the score alongside Carla Patullo. A combination of 1:1-scaled racing machine replicas on hydraulic rigs. Motion capturing drones racing. Long story short, half of what I want is what the average person wants, and the other half is what I want because my taste is perfect. I’m just putting this out there in case I’m never asked again.
9. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway. How has your experiences been working on the festival platform site?
It’s not that different from gambling in Vegas honestly. Nothing wrong with it, but you lose more than you win. When you win, it feels great and it takes great discipline to know when to stop.
10. What is your favorite meal?
I’m kind of a possum on this end. Not that I don’t like the finer things in life, but I’m just as happy eating a Michelin star meal as I am getting the buffalo chicken from 7 Eleven.
11. What is next for you? A new film?
I just completed a 3-minute proof of concept for a feature documentary/animation-hybrid called Island of Garbage (Narrated by Homer Flynn of The Residents). I got a horror script I’m writing. I have intentions for my first short film to be a biopic on Buckethead but that could change. I wanna start making music when I move into my first house in Utah this year. I feel like I’m an astronaut whose job is to explore as much of the cosmos as I can before my oxygen tank runs out.
The exploration of power residing in a worthy person with a worthy purpose in an era where humanity is able to value such things.
2. What motivated you to write this poem?
I am working on a novel with a “star-captain” as the lead character, and she doesn’t necessarily wear jewels or a crown, but I wanted a metaphor to symbolize her excellence and the specific forms of the quality of that excellence, and gemstones are often willing to oblige such imagery.
3. How long have you been writing poetry?
I have been writing poems since I was a child. I remember in second grade (back around 1990) we had an opportunity to write cinquains and get our poems published in a physical book that we could take home. In truth I am a prose writer, and feel much more comfortable working with prose. But poetry fascinates me, because its powers are a little bit mysterious to me, and I deeply admire the writers who are really good at it.
4. If you could have dinner with one person (dead or alive), who would that be?
I’ve thought about this before. Frances Perkins (FDR’s Secretary of Labor and the key force behind such things as the minimum wage and the 40-hour workweek) would be a definite finalist. So would Joan of Arc, whom Mark Twain wrote about admiring above all other geniuses on account of the fact that she had no shoulders to stand upon and came to her genius entirely by herself. I would want to hear her actual thoughts about God, because she is said to have been driven by religious visions, but she was also the product of an era when you basically had to be a Christian on threat of persecution or worse. I would love to learn what it was that really motivated her, made her tick. The final finalist on my list would be Carl Sagan, probably the greatest spokesperson for science and humanism who ever lived. I always feel better about the world when I hear him speak, and in these dark times I could certainly use a dose of his cosmic optimism. Don’t make me choose between these three; I’d have to roll a die!
5. What influenced you to submit to have your poetry performed by a professional actor?
There is of course the element of simply trying to get my work out there in the world in any form I can. But as far as seeking to specifically have someone recite it, I think I am not uncommon among artists in feeling like my work as created by me is only half-alive, and the other half comes from the human being interpreting it on the other end, and adding their own perspective and meaning to it. It is this two-part process that makes the artistic process feel less lonely and the artist itself feel more independently alive. I listened to your actor’s reading of my poem and had a good conversation with a friend of mine about what she added to it.
6. Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?
Yes! I am principally a novelist. I published my first novel in 2015, a fantasy epic about a group of people who try to take over the world to change it for the better. I am currently working on another fantasy novel, and the aforementioned sci-fi novel about my star-captain. I also published a book of essays in 2024 reflecting on 21 years of entries in my personal journal. And, currently, I am on something of a short story kick as well.
7. What is your passion in life?
I am endlessly fascinated by themes of power, wonder, and beauty of living and dying. Little things, like clouds floating across the sky or ships passing on the water, or even just a really cute flower, also give me a lot of joy and wonder.
I Hear America Singing, 78min., USA Directed by Daron Hagen The conventions of documentary, musical theater, and magical realism are combined and subverted to address issues of personal, national, and artistic identity through the eyes of a composer desperate to pull off one final backer’s audition whilst hounded by a disdainful documentarian named Charon.
I began integrating cinematic methods into my staged operas about fifteen years ago because of film’s ability to combine the hyper-reality of lyric theater with the hyper-unreality of film (or is it the other way around?) in a new way. By rigorously adhering to the principle of creating correlatives between every note of music, every visual image, every sound (diegetic or not), and word and deepening them with visual and musical counterpoint (foreground, middleground, and background activity) I shift the authorial vision from screenwriter / librettist to composer-auteur director. “I Hear America Singing” is the third installment of a trilogy called “The Bardo Trilogy” (the first part is called “Orson Rehearsed;” the second “9/10: Love Before the Fall”) which explores different ways that the correlatives I referred to can be combined to tell stories – in the case of these three films, the story is about how people deal with the liminal zone between life and what comes after.
2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this film?
I am usually working on three shows at once. It gets a little crazy, and they begin cross-pollenating. One will be in script/score, one will be in production, and the third will be in post. I wrote the original stage script and most of the songs for “Singing” in winter 2012, between rehearsals at the Sarasota Opera for the debut of my opera “Little Nemo in Slumberland.” “Singing” was commissioned as a commercial run show by the Skylight Music Theater in Milwaukee and was to be a “revue” whose numbers would be a sort of musical survey of American popular song between the mid 1800s and mid 1970’s. I’d attend a staging rehearsal of “Nemo” in the theater and then work on “Singing” in my hotel room, alternating writing with preparation for a “three-camera-style” staging of another of my operas, “A Woman in Morocco,” for which I was serving as director for Kentucky Opera in Louisville in a few months. It was surreal. I ultimately directed “Singing” in 2014, and then “Morocco” in 2015.
While staging “Morocco” at the Players Theater in Louisville, the idea of making “operafilms” started really coalescing, with the overarching idea of the “Bardo Trilogy,” beginning with an exploration of Orson Welles’ dying moments, moving on to a story about the Twin Towers disaster, and ending with a quasi-documentary reconsideration of “Singing” coming together. I began sketching the screenplay to “Orson Rehearsed,” the first part of the trilogy, during the final rehearsals for “Morocco” and staged / filmed it in 2018 at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago. During those rehearsals I began the storyboards for “9/10,” which took about a year to compose, and which I simultaneously staged in 2022 in an Italian restaurant (for the film shoot) and with graduate students at the Chicago College of Performing Arts. Robert Frankenberry, the extraordinary actor, singer, and composer, had starred in the original 2014 staged production of “Singing” in Milwaukee, as well as the first two Bardo operafilms. He stepped up to star in “Singing” and serve as its musical director. I wrote the screenplay for “Singing” and wrote some new musical numbers in 2023, staged and filmed it (with the amazing Talal Jabari as cinematographer) in theater and on location in Pittsburgh in 2024, and released it in 2025. So, when the character of Robbie talks about revising a show that he wrote a decade or so earlier, he’s not lying!
3. How would you describe your film in two words!?
Deceptively simple.
4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?
Health. My aortic valve was failing during the filming of all three operafilms (a “failing heart” serves as a sort of underlying theme, obviously), so I was dealing with having less and less energy. A few months after “Singing” hit the festival circuit, a fantastic surgeon and their team fixed my heart and now I’m back to fighting strength!
5. What were your initial reactions when watching the audience talking about your film in the feedback video?
I was happy that some of them thought Robbie was a real person. I expected that others thought it was just a musical film. I was impressed and grateful when several caught that there were multiple levels – particularly the magical-realist aspect and the meta-modernist nature of the idea of American music sort of “self-destructing” in its stylistic cacophony. Of course, America is going through some pretty serious stuff now, and the show reflects that as intensely in the 2024 operafilm as the original 2012 Milwaukee staged version.
6. When did you realize that you wanted to make films?
While composing the music for “Amelia,” an opera for Seattle Opera, in around 2010. During work sessions with the librettist Gardner McFall and the stage director Stephen Wadsworth, it kept hitting me that Gardner and I were really writing a film that could survive staging, forcing Stephen to repeatedly (and patiently) wrestle us back into the live opera theater and its conventions.
7. What film have you seen the most in your life?
Easy. “Citizen Kane.”
8. What other elements of the festival experience can we and other festivals implement to satisfy you and help you further your filmmaking career?
I don’t know enough about the filmmaking and festival worlds to offer any insight here, I’m afraid. I admit to not having any ideas about how things are, how they ought to be, or what I need to do, or have done for my work, in order to “get ahead” in my career. I think that the idea of “career” itself has grown sort of creaky and non-applicable to my way of thinking.
9. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway. How has your experiences been working on the festival platform site?
I have nothing to compare it to, so I don’t know! Our team has been blessed to receive some really positive, supportive, and empathetic feedback from folks who have seen the projects because of FilmFreeway.
10. What is your favorite meal?
A pasta dish served to me on a snowy winter night in Venice in 1990. I asked the waiter to surprise me at Ristoranti da Ivo and he set it down and walked away. I never learned what it was called or exactly what was in it. I’ve returned to Ivo’s now and then over the years but have never been able to identify exactly what I was given that night.
11. What is next for you? A new film?
I am sketching out the treatment for “Hide,” a story that intertwines footage of the great Barrymore silent classic from 1920 with a contemporary story, with my writing partner Barbara Grecki. I am also working on the treatment for “Virginie,” an operafilm set in Florence and Venice during summer 1960 about Maria Callas, Paola Mori, Orson Welles, and Federico Fellini.
During the pandemic, I decided to sharpen my skills by exploring newly available animation software and AI tools. I was able to produce a short animated film in a very short amount of time, which inspired me to experiment further using an existing feature-length screenplay of mine, Hotel Purgatorio. I reformatted the screenplay into a 17-episode web series. What began as an experiment—just a few episodes—quickly turned into a passion project. I never stopped. I eventually completed all 17 episodes and edited the series into a full-length feature film.
2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this film?
The story was first conceptualized back in 2005. In the mid-2000s, I collaborated with two writers—my friend and film director Noel F. Lim, and published horror author David Hontiveros. We approached the screenplay as if we had an unlimited budget. The script went on to win at the 2015 Fright Night Film Fest. Because the project was too expensive to produce as a live-action film, I initially planned to turn it into a graphic novel, with the hope of someday producing it as an animated film. In 2023, I discovered a combination of new AI tools and traditional workflows that finally made it possible to produce Hotel Purgatorio at a much lower cost and within a shorter timeframe.
3. How would you describe your film in two words?
Afterlife Odyssey
4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?
This is an animated film, and I worked on it almost entirely on my own. With the workflow I adopted, most obstacles were manageable. The biggest challenge I faced was malfunctioning hard drives—but thankfully, all data was fully recovered.
5. There are five stages of filmmaking: Development, Pre-Production, Production, Post-Production, and Distribution.
What is your favorite stage of the filmmaking process?**
My favorite stages are production and post-production—especially when collaborating with a team I enjoy working with, such as actors, production designers, editors, cinematographers, and others. This kind of collaboration is what I missed most during the production of Hotel Purgatorio.
6. When did you realize that you wanted to make films?
In high school, I came across an article explaining how Disney animated films were made. I bought two large books on animation and convinced my parents to buy me a Super 8 camera. My very first short film was a mix of live action, claymation, and cel animation.
7. What film have you seen the most times in your life?
Blade Runner
8. In a perfect world, who would you like to work with or collaborate with on a film?
Guillermo del Toro.
9. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway. How has your experience been using the platform?
For me, FilmFreeway is the best festival platform available. It makes it very easy to search for and submit to the most suitable festivals for a specific film project.
10. What is your favorite meal?
My mother’s roast beef.
11. What is next for you? A new film?
I have already begun working on Infierno, which is sort of a sequel to Hotel Purgatorio. The core idea is simple and provocative: Planet Earth is Hell.
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