We offer a discount for Georgia films and screenplays. Before submitting, please visit atlantafilmfestival.com/gafilm to see if your project qualifies.

Anna Vecellio

Anna Vecellio is a queer, southern screenwriter whose work explores our eternal search for connection and goodness through a genre lens. She is the hour-long winner of the 2025 Screencraft Pilot Competition and an alum of the Film Independent Episodic Lab - where she received an Alfred P. Sloan Development Grant. An alumnus of the AFI Screenwriting Conservatory, Anna was awarded the AFI Writers Room Ready Award upon graduation. She also recently made her directorial debut with the horror short Cold Feet, which is currently on the festival circuit. When not writing, you can find Anna refurbishing furniture she finds in the trash, begging her plant collection not to die on her, or working (in a completely rational and not at all obsessive way) on her earthquake preparedness kit. 

Brian Lonano

Brian Lonano is the director of the infamous short Gwilliam. He’s made several shorts, music videos and commissioned works that embrace a trashy outsider sentiment and utilize DIY practical and visual effects. Brian's been very fortunate to have his work screen at film festivals like SXSW, Fantastic Fest, Fantasia and Slamdance, where he was awarded a Special Jury Mention for Gwilliam. His recent film, CONTENT: The Lo-Fi Man screened at 36 film festivals and won several awards and nominations including the Audience Award for Best Midnight Short at the Florida Film Festival.

Io Leighton

Io Leighton (they/them) is an inspired filmmaker, actor and educator with 15+ years' experience in the industry. They are also an artistic development coordinator and screenplay programmer at Out On Film (a BAFTA & Academy Award qualifying LGBTQ+ festival in Atlanta). Io is passionate about uplifting diverse and marginalized storytellers (through education, grants and fellowship opportunities) and empowering them to share their authentic perspectives.

Jesus Hernandez Bach

Jesus Hernandez Bach is a Cuban-American agent of change, programmer, and curator based in NYC. He is the founder of Latin Reel, a year-round initiative at the intersection of film and social justice that fosters cross-cultural dialogue and community engagement. From producing and collaborating with acclaimed filmmakers to contributing to MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight, Tribeca, DOC NYC, NewFest, and POV on PBS, Jesus has built a career amplifying underrepresented voices and socially driven narratives.

Joey Rayburn

Joey Rayburn is a Cherokee screenwriter from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Since moving out west, he has written heartfelt comedies about people who struggle with expectations. After graduating from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in 2019, Joey’s scripts have received several honors. From 2022 to 2023, he participated in the Universal Writers Lab, a fellowship for emerging screenwriters at Universal Pictures.

Judd Taylor

Judd Taylor has curated films for Tribeca Festival, Cordillera International Film Festival, Chandler International Film Festival, DTLA Film Festival, Reading FilmFEST, and Cleveland International Film Festival (Screening Committee). He acquired award-winning and festival favorite films for film sales companies, Princ Films and Glass House Distribution, and marketed the Academy Award-nominated worldwide hit, Loving Vincent for Cinema Management Group. Judd is also a Reader/Script Analyst for Slamdance Film Festival’s Screenplay Competition, and the Program Copy Editor at Woodstock Film Festival.

JULIE POLL

Julie Poll has spent 20+ years as a writer for soap operas, most recently for The Bay, an Emmy award-winning series on Amazon Prime. She was a Script Writer for As The World Turns and wrote the anniversary books for As The World Turns, Guiding Light, and Another World which became collectors items when the shows went off the air. Other soap opera credits include General Hospital A Daily Dose Of Your Favorite Soap calendar. Julie was a Consultant for SOAPnet on their launch of Another World, Days of Our Lives, and The Young and The Restless, and Consulting Producer for the 35th Annual Daytime Emmys on ABC. Other writing credits include scripts for Katie Couric and Willard Scott for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and The Shape Of The World, a PBS special starring Patrick Stewart. She is a Script Reader for the Meryl Streep-funded New York Women In Film and Television Writers Lab and the Austin Film Festival as well as a Script Analyst for Coverfly, a platform that helps writers prepare their scripts for submission. Julie is on the Daytime Emmys Advisory Panel and a judge on the Emmy Blue Ribbon Panels judging Daytime Dramas.  

Keith Hannigan

Keith Hannigan's stepsons told him that if he were a superhero, his superpower would be boring his adversary to death with a long-winded story about the pitfalls of drug use and how it relates to late 90s' professional wrestling. He's dedicated more years of his life to consuming and constructing stories than anything else (besides being disappointed by the New York Giants and New York Mets). Stories inspire, teach, and create change, and Keith is always looking for the next story that will do one if not all three of those things! Oh, and he's been a writer in the entertainment industry for 18 years.

Krish Seenivasan

Krish Seenivasan is a travel-obsessed media producer, food lover, and Letterboxd fanatic.

Mariana Zavala

Born and raised in the Bay Area by a Peruvian immigrant father and an ex-hippie mother, Mariana Zavala channels their activist upbringing, queer identity, and chronic middle child syndrome into their writing. A passion for film, theater, and South American history brought them to study in New York, Paris, Buenos Aires, and finally, Los Angeles, where they earned an MFA in Screenwriting at the American Film Institute. At AFI, Mariana won the Writer’s Room Ready program for their pilot, Eastshore, which explores what it means to find justice and redemption in a broken world. Since graduating, they’ve worked as a screenwriter and producer in the US and Greece and developed pilots for Fifth Season and Sweden’s SF Studios. In addition to their work in the entertainment industry, Mariana works as a mentor for trans and queer youth and spends their weekends volunteering at an equine therapy program where they’re able to indulge their lifelong passion for horses.

Molly Coffee

Molly Coffee emerged as an award-winning filmmaker in the DIY stop-motion and puppet scene in Atlanta, which segued pretty naturally into a career working in the art department on studio pictures. She has production-designed TV shows such as Freeform’s Single Drunk Female and Netflix’s Bert Kreischer comedy Free Bert, as well as feature films like Nicolas Cage’s genre-horror Willy’s Wonderland. Molly also makes time to focus on her own films, moving into storytelling with a focus on diverse and queer stories. She is the owner of the puppet fabrication company Zombie Cat Builds while also co-founding the non-profit Film Impact Georgia with the hopes of breaking down the barriers of entry for Georgia local creators. Molly is a past Filmmaker In Residence for the Atlanta Film Society. Her lifelong dream is to hunt for Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest, and you should email her with any sightings.

Nathan Cabaniss

Nathan Cabaniss is a writer and filmmaker hailing from North Georgia. He's had short stories published in various anthologies and e-zines, in both English and in French. 2016 saw the publication of Nathan's first collection of short stories, Mares in the Night. His short novel, The Mummy's Hand At the Center of the Universe was released in 2018. Nathan has also written for websites such as Screen Rant, Birth.Movies.Death, and Sequart.

Neha Aziz

Neha Aziz (she/her) is a Pakistani-born writer, director, film programmer, and podcaster living in Austin, TX. From 2017 - 2020, she worked at SXSW as a member of the Communications team. Neha currently works as the Artistic Director for Austin Asian American Film Festival, and as a Film Programmer for Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. She is also the Communications Manager for the Asian American Documentary Network (A-Doc). In 2021, Neha was named an iHeartRadio NextUP fellow for their inaugural podcast program, her show, Partition (limited series) debuted in August 2022 and has been featured on Apple Podcasts, NPR, The Austin Chronicle, The 19th News, The Austin American - Statesman, The RepresentASIAN Project, Asian Founded, and more. In 2023, she was one of five recipients of the WAVE Grant from Wavelength Productions, a grant and one year mentorship given to first time female/non-binary directors of color. Neha's short, So, That Happened marked her directorial debut and is currently on the festival circuit. She wrote for the PBS Digital Series Roots of Resistance, and is currently writing for the second season of In the Margins. Neha was named a 2025 Unlock Her Potential Film/TV Mentee and was also a finalist for Sundance’s inaugural Cultural Impact Residency. She is in development on a number of projects.

Rebecca Leo

After trying and failing to find herself in college, Rebecca Leo has worked in a variety of diverse fields from public health research to community organizing to education. However, she never got over her first love—storytelling. So, Rebecca got an MFA in screenwriting at the AFI Conservatory and never looked back. Since then, she has worked at several indie production companies evaluating submissions, developing projects, and of course grabbing coffee. When Rebecca is not reading scripts or watching movies, you can find her playing board games or excising herself from YouTube rabbit holes.