MATADORA is the 3rd Annual Ojai Film Festival Screenplay Competition Winner

The public is welcome to attend the third annual LIVE READ, the grand prize given to this year's winning entry, Matadora of the 3rd Annual Ojai Film Festival Screenplay Competition. The reading will be on Sunday November 4 at 1 pm in the Ojai Art Center Gallery. Miguel Orozco, Artistic Director of Ánimo Theater Company, will direct and use his company's roster of talent to fill out the cast of Matadora for the festival performance. Along with the LIVE READ, the winning script will also have a Teaser Scene, produced by John Branagan, for the writers to use in their promotion of the script.

"This year's winner," said Bruce Novotny, Director of the Screenplay Competition, "is a period drama set in 1920-era Mexico, featuring a strong female protagonist. The submitting writer, Lisa Cole, is the first woman to win the competition and she and her co-writers are the first Americans to win."

Written by Lisa Cole, Rick Najera, and Mark Monroe the script is set in Mexico during the time of the Mexican Revolution. Matadora tells the story of a brave young woman, who disguises herself as a man and becomes a bullfighter to save her family from ruin. The screenplay is full of action, adventure, and memorable characters - particularly 20-year-old Esperanza, a strong female protagonist who faces an often-brutal world with unflinching courage and determination.

The Festival received over 70 entries from across America and Europe for the third annual Screenplay Competition. A panel of judges read each entry in order to name twenty finalists. The grand prize for the winning script includes a LIVE READ and the Teaser Scene.

This year's final judges were Peter Bellwood, Valerie Levett, and Michael Ewing. The Festival extends its many thanks to the readers who scored the first round of judging: John Garcia, Sam Kurd, Bob Ehrhardt, Sarah Howery Hart, Louise Wilding, and Zach Abdallah.