The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released its annual winners of the Nicholl Fellowships.  About 500 Academy members evaluated this year’s submissions to determine the 10 finalists; the Nicholl Committee selecting the final five.  Submissions came through global university programs, screenwriting labs and filmmaker programs, and the Black List to identify potential Nicholl fellows.

Here are the  2025-2026 Nicholl fellows:

Leo Aguirre (San Antonio, TX), “Verano”
Nicholl partner: Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab
During a sweltering summer in Texas, a withdrawn teen’s world is upended when his parents decide to foster an asylum seeker from Central America — what begins as resentment evolves into unexpected friendship as the threat of deportation forces both boys to confront loss, identity and belonging.

Omar Al Dakheel and Elie El Choufany (Los Angeles, CA), “The Washroom”
Nicholl partner: Urbanworld Festival
In small-town Texas, a young imam fights for his community’s right to bury their dead while hiding a forbidden love that could cost him everything.

Sara Crow and David Rafailedes (Brooklyn, NY), “Satoshi”
Nicholl partner: NYU Tisch School of the Arts
After her family loses everything in the 2008 financial crisis, a teenaged anime-obsessed hacktivist realizes money isn’t fair…so she sets out to reinvent it with a new digital currency called Bitcoin.

Lynn McKee (Queens, NY), “I’m Ready to Go Anywhere”
Nicholl partner: The Black List
Desperate to escape the heat, chaos and danger of 1980s Phoenix, ten-year-old Patty must protect and parent her mom and little sister while crafting a plan to get them all out.

Katla Sólnes (New York, NY), “Eruption”
Nicholl partner: Columbia University School of the Arts
In the highlands of 1970s Iceland, a geologist’s wife finds her marriage tested when a wily American student arrives, stirring tensions as volatile as the surrounding volcanic landscape.