Maddy’s screenplays landed Official Selection and Semi-Finalist status in competition!
Growing Up in Palm Springs
Official Selection:
Ink and Cinema 2023 Adapted Story Showcase
Kent, 18, has always struggled with having a famous mom, but he’s devastated when his girlfriend runs off with mom’s latest boyfriend. Mother and son are bitterly estranged, but a beloved uncle’s illness forces them back together.
Based on Chekhov’s play, The Seagull, with a reimagined ending, this gripping family story blends the melodramatic style of Douglas Sirk with the social satire of Palm Royale, currently on Apple TV+.
Influences: Chekhov’s The Seagull, Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life, starring Lana Turner, this Mel Roberts photo titled, Rich Thomson, Indio, 1963, the beauty of mid-20th Century Palm Springs.
Ava and The American
Reboot Studios: 2023 Semi-Finalist
Flicker’s Rhode Island International Film Festival: 2023 Semi-Finalist
(Finalists announced Oct 2023)
Ava, 20, an actress, is detained along with Nazi secretaries, housewives, and sadistic concentration camp guards in an all-female camp as the Allies prepare cases for the Nuremberg trials. They spend their days in captivity playing cards and spinning gossip, many don’t believe the war is over. Ava falls in love with the Black-American Captain in charge of questioning them. When she overhears a real plot to kill him, she sets out to stop it.
“People are forgetting the lessons of the Holocaust, and we’re plagued with misinformation, making my screwball romp through war, racism, and greed more relevant than I’d like. Told with love and humor, it’s about the end of World War II and an homage to satires like Seven Beauties, Mash, and Dr. Strangelove. I was inspired by this picture in a 1940’s Life Magazine.” –Maddy Lederman, writer, Ava and The American
Reboot Studios provides seed investments to develop new inspirational and transformational Jewish content. Driven by the belief that art influences our world, enriches our lives and has the power to educate, inspire, create movements and change the way we think, Reboot Studios tells stories through a Jewish lens about the shared human experience.