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Connecting Emerging Playwrights With Professional Filmmakers
Connecting Emerging Playwrights With Professional Filmmakers
Connecting Emerging Playwrights With Professional Filmmakers
Connecting Emerging Playwrights With Professional Filmmakers
Connecting Emerging Playwrights With Professional Filmmakers
Connecting Emerging Playwrights With Professional Filmmakers
An 11 minute two hander starring Emmy Nominee Asante Blackk (When They See Us, This is Us, Euphoria) and Malia Pyles (Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, Cape Fear).
Set during a late-night study break, the film follows a grief-stricken college athlete as he opens up to a classmate and begins to navigate emotions he’s never dared name.
STORY
After losing his mother and suffering a shoulder injury that takes him out of competitive diving, a freshman athlete finds himself emotionally unmoored at an elite university he no longer feels he belongs. But when a classmate from his philosophy seminar gives voice to an emerging feeling he’s unable to define, he invites her out on a late-night study break—hoping, perhaps unconsciously, that connection might offer him a way back to himself.
What follows is a charged, chicken-or-the-egg debate about the origins of language and feeling: Do we inherently know what we feel, and seek language to articulate it? Or can the addition—or absence—of vocabulary shape feelings we’ve lost, forgotten, or have yet to discover?
Asante Blackk
Jerrod
Asate Blackk is an Emmy-nominated actor from Maryland. He made his television debut in Ava DuVernay’s Netflix miniseries When They See Us, earning a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series for his role as Kevin Richardson. He went on to star as Malik Hodges in NBC’s This Is Us, receiving a Critics’ Choice Television Award nomination.
His feature film work includes Landscape with Invisible Hand (MGM/Annapurna) and Story Ave (SXSW premiere 2023), which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Blackk also voices Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Brown in Disney’s The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder. He will next appear in HBO’s Euphoria.
Malia Pyles
Chloe
Malia Pyles will soon be seen starring alongside Amy Adams and Javier Bardem in Apple TV’s adaptation of “Cape Fear,” executive produced by Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. She is best known for her television roles in HBO’s “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” and FX’s “Baskets,” and recently appeared in the SXSW-debuted indie comedy “She’s the He.”
An American-Filipino actor, Pyles is a proud advocate for the visibility and inclusion of queer and diverse voices in film and television.
Ty Molbak
Director, Writer, Producer
Ty Molbak is a director and actor raised between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Whidbey Island, Washington. "You Tryna Say You Love Me?" marks his first short film with dialogue. Though he’s primarily worked as an actor, his multidisciplinary career—producing indie films, 1st ADing, directing for stage, and currently as executive assistant to Jeff Goldblum—has shaped his transition into filmmaking.
As an actor, Ty recently appeared in Hamlet directed by Tony nominee Robert O’Hara and is best known for starring in the BAFTA-winning interactive project Immortality by Sam Barlow which premiered at Tribeca in 2022. Additional credits include Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, Master (Sundance & SXSW 2022), Next Exit (Tribeca 2022), She Taught Love (Hulu), and Law & Order, portraying the counterpart to Luigi Mangione in the series' viral episode. Directing credits include TAN (a dance-film featuring dancers from San Francisco Ballet), SCORCH (a one-person play), Mary Poppins (reimagined with shadow puppetry), and Something Yellow (a silent short acquired by IndieFlix).
Ty is also the founder of Blue Collaborative, a nonprofit production company where he’s produced projects starring actors like Kaia Gerber, Bob Odenkirk, and Nat Wolff. He attended LMU’s School of Film and Television before transferring to Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts and Shakespeare’s Globe in London to study acting.
Ian Overton
Producer
Ian Overton is a producer and creative lead at Raw Color Studios, an award winning independent film production company based out of Los Angeles. After pursuing Film Studies at Santa Barbara City College, he has spent the past four years building the production company and telling diverse stories through a Gen Z lens. Earlier this year he produced The Raw Color Picture Show, a grassroots independent pre-screening festival showcasing five Raw Color films to an audience of well over 150.
In his most recent producing work, Violet Mind, he worked alongside acclaimed producer Marisa Milroy and actor J. Santiago in a film exploring how we process grief when memories can be bought and sold. Currently he is in post-production for his first feature, Deep Dish, and in pre-production for two in-house features.
Doug Potts
Director of Phorography
Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Doug earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Oregon and a Masters of Fine Arts from Chapman University, Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. For his work on Andre Foster, Doug received the "Best Cinematography - Graduate Award" Cecil at Chapman University, was nominated for the ASC Linwood Dunn Student Heritage award for the same film, and later nominated for the Jury Prize for Best Cinematography at the Santa Monica Film Festival for The Love Effect. In 2023, Doug received a BAFTA Nomination in Artistic Achievement for his work on the Interactive Trilogy, IMMORTALITY.
His work also premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival for the short film, Walk of Shame. Doug was accepted in the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Vision Mentorship Program for 2024 / 2025.
Doug is currently based in Los Angeles, California, USA.