Cinema and Media
Oberlin Screenwriters Intensive 2025
2025 OSI Mentors and Fellows at the Irene and Alan Wurtzel Theater in Oberlin
Photo credit: Abe Frato
Over Winter Term, five mentors and eight fellows gathered for three days of group intensives, mentoring sessions, panels and screenings. OSI is dedicated to nurturing distinctive voices in both features and television.
OSI 2025 Fellows
Andy Fitoden - Charity and Siren Only Kill People Sometimes (Screenplay): Two teenage girls kill their rapist high school math teacher at a punk gig in Bushwick and find that the murder has endowed them with awesome musical skills -- but their newfound success comes with a cost.
Dino Lepore - PAINBODIES (Screenplay): An ex-con with a Traumatic Brain Injury from her failed heist getaway discovers a wax figurine inside of a desert roadside attraction identical to her younger self before the crash and gets the old crew together for one last job... one that evolves into something much, much stranger.
Diona Reasonover - The Women of Richmond (Screenplay): When a free black woman learns she’s a slave, she joins a female spy ring to win the Civil War and her freedom. Inspired by true events.
Havi Saltz - False Prophets (Screenplay): When a young priest discovers he’s a prophet, he runs away into the desert and joins a revolutionary militia to find his lost sister and uncover the truth about the Gods.
Liam Oznowich - Lulz (Screenplay): After a well-known activist-influencer is viciously targeted by online trolls, a socially awkward teen who moonlights as a troll-hunting vigilante traces the harassment back to a nihilistic “doomer” podcaster called Lulz, who’s determined to destabilize society through live-streamed acts of violence.
LJ Shulman Templin - SPATCHCOCKED (Screenplay): Two best friends are blackmailed by a socially awkward college freshman with one goal: break into the NYC lesbian scene.
Nico Carter - The Zee Files (Screenplay): When migrants start drowning in the Chicago River, two teenagers team up to discover if it’s the work of a demon spirit, or something even more sinister.
Nora Sharp - Another Word for Sandbar (Screenplay): In the mid-2000s midwest, an anxious teenager who doesn’t yet realize they’re trans gets to tag along on their best friend’s family’s annual beach week, but runs into trouble when they try to earn the approval of the family members they idolize.
Mentor Bios
Michele and Kieran Mulroney
Michele and Kieran Mulroney are Los Angeles based writer/directors with over 25 years experience in the industry. They are alumni of the 2004 Sundance Writers and Directors Labs where they developed their debut feature Paper Man, starring Emma Stone, Jeff Daniels, Ryan Reynolds, Lisa Kudrow and Kieran Culkin.
Writing credits include Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law, and Power Rangers. Recent projects include Big Thunder Mountain and Blockbuster for Disney and Land of the Lost for Netflix. They are currently casting their second independent feature directing project Fox Hills and developing several theater pieces.
Kieran is a graduate of Columbia University. Michele graduated from the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama in London.
Michele is the Vice President of the WGA West.
Julian Breece
Julian Breece is an award-winning writer-director whose work crosses film and TV. Notably, Breece wrote the screenplay for the Netflix film Rustin about gay Civil Rights strategist Bayard Rustin and the 1963 March on Washington. He co-wrote the Emmy-nominated Netflix series When They See Us and recently penned the screenplay for Fox Searchlight's forthcoming Alvin Ailey biopic, which will be helmed by Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins. Breece is a consulting producer on Lee Daniels' Sammy Davis Jr. limited series at Hulu, and he’s served as a writer and producer on such critically acclaimed series as Amazon’s Harlem and Hulu’s The First.
Allison Schroeder
Allison Schroeder is the Oscar, WGA, and BAFTA-nominated writer of the film Hidden Figures, starring Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monáe, and Octavia Spencer. She also co-wrote Frozen 2, which grossed over a billion dollars at the box office. Her other credits include Christopher Robin starring Ewan McGregor and Heart of Stone starring Gal Gadot. She’s currently collaborating with Gal Gadot on a new film for Amazon and has projects in development at Netflix, Disney, and Skydance. She holds a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from the University of Southern California.
Aïda Mashaka Croal
Aïda Mashaka Croal was born in Vancouver, B.C., and raised in Surrey and Georgetown, Guyana. The Guyanese-Canadian playwright and screenwriter received her BA from Stanford University and her MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University’s School of the Arts.
An award-winning playwright, she began her TV career writing for ABC’s One Life to Live for which she won a Daytime Emmy. She has since written for Syfy (Sanctuary), Cartoon Network (Star Wars: The Clone Wars), AMC (Turn: Washington’s Spies), Netflix (Marvel’s Luke Cage and Jessica Jones) and Amazon (Outer Range). She was a co-showrunner for Y: The Last Man at FX. In addition, she has won a Saturn Award and been nominated for a Peabody Award.
Aïda is currently writing a pair of feature films – one for Netflix and the other for Universal Pictures.
Micah Schraft
Micah Schraft has written, produced, and directed several television shows including Mrs. America (FX, WGA Award, AFI Award, Emmy nom), The Morning Show (Apple), Jane the Virgin (CW), Jessica Jones (Netflix, Peabody Award), and Hung (HBO). He has co-written two television movies and two indie features, Sunny & Share Love You (Outfest Audience Award, Vanguard) and The Quiet (Sundance Lab, Toronto Film Festival, Sony Pictures Classics).
His play A Dog’s House was produced by IAMA theatre (L.A. Drama Critics Award nomination for Best New Play) and is published by Dramatists. He has developed screenplays and pilots at HBO, FX, Paramount, Sony, Fox Searchlight, Universal, Amazon, MGM, Summit, ABC, Warner Brothers and CBS. He has taught writing at UCLA, NYU, Columbia University, The Ghetto School, Young Storytellers Foundation, and the Outfest Screenwriting Lab.