Austin Film Festival Announces In-Person Event, Screenwriting Award to Go to Scott Frank

As more of the country is getting vaccinated, it seems that the film industry is hoping that sometime this year things will be getting back to a place of semi-normalcy (despite COVID cases spiking again in many areas). 

Along with the Tribeca Film Festival and San Diego Comic-Con recently announcing plans for in-person events this year, the Austin Film Festival has now announced that their 2021 festival will be an in-person event with eight days of film screenings and four days of panel conversations on the art, craft, and business of screenwriting. 

To go along with that focus on the writing process, the festival announced that their 2021 Bill Wittliff Award for Screenwriting will be given to Scott Frank, whose decades of acclaimed work includes films like Out of Sight  and The Lookout, as well as TV series Godless and, most recently, The Queen’s Gambit, which just received the Golden Globe for Best Television Limited Series. 

Frank will be recognized at the 2021 Awards Luncheon and will participate in this year’s festival, along with conference guests Peter Craig (The Batman), Javier Grillo-Marxuach (Lost), Meg LeFauve (Inside Out), Nicole Perlman (Guardians of the Galaxy), and more to be announced. 

The eight day festival will take place from October 21-28 in Austin, Texas.