Sundance 2024: Tania Gunadi Selected For The Black List & Cassian Elwes Fellowship

Dominic Patten
·2 min read
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EXCLUSIVE: Transformers Prime actress Tania Gunadi has been awarded a prime Sundance perch.

Author of  dark comedy Teddy script, Gunadi is this year’s Cassian Elwes Independent Screenwriting Fellow. In the 11th year of the indie centric collaboration between the Mudbound producer and The Black List, Gunadi will be attending the Park City fest all-expenses paid and introduced to other industry leaders by Elwes.

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“To me, the Cassian Elwes Screenwriting Fellowship at Sundance means a wonderful opportunity to learn how films get made from Cassian, someone with an exceptional career in doing that,” Gunadi said today of the fellowship.  “I am thrilled about it because it’s been a dream of mine to be a writer/producer, and what better way to understand that journey than by being immersed for several days at one of the top festivals in the world.”

Indonesian-born Gunadi’s Teddy is a dramedy detailing the trials of a suicide obsessed curmudgeon looking for a new home for his pit bull. Elwes found the script on The Black List website.

“I absolutely loved the script. It was so simple and yet so complex, and it completely moved me,” said Elwes of the work by the It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia and Curb Your Enthusiasm actress. “I look forward to meeting Tania in person and discussing the film with her, and I’m very grateful to the Black List for continuing to give me this opportunity to meet exciting new voices.”

Trimmed down to 10 finalists each year, the Fellowship focuses on unrepresented feature writers whose projects spotlights an independent sensibility and have made less than $5,000 in aggregate in their film or television writing careers — AKA Indie as you can be.

“Every year, this partnership with Cassian unearths a special writer with a particularly indie spirit who will have the benefit of a life changing experience at the Sundance Film Festival,” Black List founder Franklin Leonard added. “This year is no different. I believe Tania Gunadi is our first voice actor/screenwriter to be selected, and I’m very excited to read her reflections on the experience and everything that will come as a result of it.”

The 40th annual Sundance Film Festival runs from today until January 28 in Park City, Salt Lake City and partially online.

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