Feature Screenplays

Armenian Streetfighter
Charles Garry was a real-life human rights lawyer who fought for dockworkers rights, told Joe McCarthy to go to Hell, and defended the Black Panthers. When he hears of a guy who wants to make an anti-racist, anti-sexist, egalitarian utopia, he jumps at the chance to be his defense attorney. The problem is the 'guy' is Jim Jones, the notorious cult leader. Based on a true story. 

We Can Turn Mountains

(neo-noir, neo-Western)

Hasmik moves to the breakaway republic of Artsakh, a disputed nation in southwestern Asia near Iran and Turkey, in order to help her grandmother on her farm and to get away from a boring middle class life back in America. She discovers that the farm has been left untended for years because of land mines found buried underneath, remnants of a bitter and bloody war nearly thirty years ago. Hasmik befriends Lorik, a quirky  and charming younger woman who works as a ‘deminer’—someone who searches for and destroys the land mines so that people can live safely. 

But just as their friendship begins to blossom, and Hasmik thinks she’s truly found a home for herself in her ancestral land, Lorik goes missing. Quickly realizing the local cops are useless and disinterested, Hasmik becomes an amateur sleuth, digging into what happened. In doing so she uncovers some unpleasant and dangerous truths about how things work in a country that has been at war for decades, where lawlessness is the norm. On top of her grief at losing Lorik, Hasmik must also contend with an impending breakout of war that threatens to plunge the entire country into turmoil. 

This is inspired loosely by the documentary about women deminers in Artsakh, Motherland, which played at film festivals around the world including Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Big Sky Film Festival and many others. 

Other works: Academy of Vengeance (Finalist: Silver Screamfest, International Horror Hotel, New York Screenplay Contest); Like a Motherless Child (Quarterfinalist: Zoetrope Screenplay Contest, New York Screenplay Contest)

Original Pilots

Glass & Steel

(Faculty Honors, Columbia University Film Festival 2016)

Ambition and lust fight with morality in this dramatic pilot about the high-stakes world of construction and development. Centering on an idealistic young woman from the Bronx and her troubled, Machiavellian boss, this is a modern parable about the dangers of capitalism. 

The Abbadon

(Pilot drama/supernatural)

An allegory about wealth inequality and gentrification told through a modern twist on the Picture of Dorian Gray: instead of a portrait getting older, it’s the luxury condos of the 1% that gradually decay and fall apart while their owners stay young. 

The pilot follows a local working class woman who elbows her way into the building, hustling to make a living cleaning the floor, organizing people's offices, and whatever else she can convince people to pay her for. She thinks she's found a goldmine, unaware of the nefarious secret at the heart of the resident's eternal youth.