Set in 1890, the Greens (the leftist) vs Reds (Right Wing Faction) fighting for control of the government. Lucretia, daugher of a Red falls inlove with Mariano a stage actor who also happens to be a green. Her father forbids her to see him, and orders him to be killed while she is sent to a convent. However, things don't go as planned and they both end up running for their lives to Spain away from Columbia.

CAST LIST:

Narrator: Elizabeth Rose Morriss
Calabacillas: Steve Rizzo
Lucretia: Julie Sheppard

Get to know the writer;

1. What is your screenplay about?
The Dwarf's Tale explores a difficult theme. It's about a man in love with a girl who does not see him as a suitor. Painful as that is to him, he is still willing to help her connect with another man, the one she loves, even at the cost of his own life.

2. Why should this screenplay be made into a movie?
Mostly because The Dwarf's Tale is a fun movie to watch. There is a circus underlying the whole story. The bearded lady, the strongman and the other performers add a fun side to the story. And of course the setting itself in Colonial Colombia, the jungle, the sea are also visually appealing. It also seems to me to provide a breakthrough role for a talented young actress to play Lucretia. I think the film would have strong appeal to filmmakers and through them to audiences in the four quadrants. This is a classic tale in the vein of pictures like the Hunchback, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Indiana Jones pictures - movies that benefit from exotic settings as well as human interest stories of adventure and romance.

3. How would you describe this script in two words?
Fun Screenplay

4. What movie have you seen the most times in your life?
Tough question. There are movies I've seen repeatedly but haven't kept score. The Blues Brothers, Pirates of the Caribbean, Casablanca, The God Father, Cabaret, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Patton, West Side Story, So many favorites. These are movies I have and continue to watch.

5. How long have you been working on this screenplay?
Not a long time, I would guess four or five months from start to end. I first drafted a treatment of several pages which I broke into scenes. So it was a fill in the blanks process. I presented select scenes to a small group of novelists and poets I'm in as I went. As long as they continued to think the work was good, I continued until it was written. Since completing the script this past January (typing "the end') I've already written another screenplay.

6. How many stories have you written?
Many. Probably two dozen short plays, five or six feature length stage plays and perhaps a dozen screen plays. Also a novel and two more at various stages. Unfortunately, I'm always into the next project without much effort marketing the last one.

7. What motivated you to write this screenplay?
I've traveled to Panama and Colombia and was fascinated by the jungle and the canal. My novel, Culebra Cut, was set during the building of the canal. An actor friend of mine, a Colombian actor who has played in two of my stage plays, had a story about the civil war in Colombia he asked me to read. The Calabacillas character, a dwarf, was in that story. I became interested in the dwarf as it reminded me of the Dumas character. As in the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the girl in my story doesn't see the dwarf as a man she can love. This was so compelling I drafted the story.

8. What obstacles did you face to finish this screenplay?
There was never a question in my mind that I would finish "a" story because I had the whole story in mind when I started to write. In fact, I wrote the last scene first so I knew where it was going. The difficulty was I wanted the last scene at the beginning and the end of the film without giving away the end-end. Even now, I'm not sure that was a good idea.

9. Apart from writing, what else are you passionate about?
I have a wide range of changing interests. It's easier to say what I am not passionate about. (Marketing is certainly one of those). I'm an animal lover, a flaming political liberal, an amateur historian, a lover of music from Nessun Dorma to Iggy Pop and of Brit Box detective stories. Writing and directing for the stage was a real passion but a degenerative disease of the lower back has put the brakes on that. I did most of the black box work in NYC but travelling there has become a real challenge so I've stopped, or at least, paused.

10. What influenced you to enter the festival? What were your on the initial feedback you received?

I was encouraged by a reviewer's comment to the effect The Dwarf's Tale had an 18th Century classical literature feel. Who doesn't want to write a classic? Even before writing I had the feeling a love story about a dwarf in love with a beautiful girl would be a really good tale to tell. When I read "Romance competition" I felt compelled to submit even with the intuition this was not a contemporary story to be received with open arms by TikTok oriented readers. But the postage was cheap.

11. What genres does your screenplay fall under?
I think it crosses into more than one genre. Certainly, it's a romance. In a larger sense, it's a multifaceted drama about family conflict, civil war, social injustice, and friendship themes. It's also an adventure as the lovers and the dwarf flee through the forests from the villainous police chief.