MOVIEXPA SCREENWRITING CONTEST

WHO THIS IS FOR

Screenplay contests give you a placement and nothing else. 

Quarterfinalist, semifinalist, a line for your bio and no answer to the only question that matters: did anyone actually read it, and what happened while they did.

MoviExpa is built the other way round. 

Selected scripts are published on the contest page as an excerpt, alongside a Festival Opinion written by our team on the script and its potential. 

Real readers download it, read it, and vote: recommendation score, rating, and what did and didn't work for them. 

You get what they wrote.

Any genre, any format: feature, short, TV pilot, limited series. Any country, any language with an English translation.

WHAT YOU GET

If your script is selected

✅ An excerpt published on the contest page: five to ten pages, or roughly ten percent, never the full text without your permission

✅ A Festival Opinion: our written read on the script, its craft and its market position

✅ Reader responses: scores and written reactions from people who actually read it

✅ Official Selection laurels and certificate

✅ A project page on our site

✅ Announcement across our channels

If it is not selected

✅ An LSN Reviewer Note: a brief expert read on the script and where it sits

That last one is the part most contests skip. You paid an entry fee and got a form email. We would rather tell you something.

HOW THE READING WORKS

Every script is read in full. Not off a synopsis, not off the first ten pages: in full, by a person.

Selected excerpts go up on the contest page for the duration of the contest, with the Festival Opinion beside them and any pitch material you send us. 

Readers download, read and answer the same three questions we ask film audiences: would you recommend this, how would you rate it, and what did and didn't work.

Those votes produce the Readers' Choice Award, alongside the jury's own nomination awards: Best Feature Screenplay, Best TV Pilot, Best Short Script and others.

If a script was not read, it gets no reader data, and we say so.

WHY A CONTEST IS ATTACHED TO A MARKET

LSN is not only a contest. We run a distribution and representation arm that takes finished films and screenplays to buyers and producers, and we have been reading independent work since 2015: over 5,000 projects from 159 countries.

That changes what a placement here is worth. The Festival Opinion is written by people who spend the rest of their week pitching scripts to producers, so it addresses the things a producer asks first: what this costs to make, what genre lane it sits in, whether the premise survives a one-line summary, and who would actually finance it.

It also means we notice when a script has a real route. One of the scripts we now represent came in through an LSN contest.

We do not guarantee that. Most writers are here for the read and the reader response, and that is a complete reason to enter.