2024 UNTAPPED Development Lab Recipients
Six people, including one two-person team, were selected for the 2024 UNTAPPED Development Lab, which is designed to upskill the international knowledge of emerging Australian filmmakers. These emerging creatives will receive individualized mentorship, creative feedback and professional development support from leading writers and directors.
Jack Voegt
Writer/Director
Jack Voegt is an African-Australian writer, director and actor.
After graduating from a Bachelor of Arts at the Australian Film Television and Radio School, he wrote, directed and starred in Tint. This semi-autobiographical short film went on to win the People’s Choice at Sydney Underground Film Festival, took home five awards at the Made in the West Film Festival and secured him Young Australian Filmmaker of the Year at Byron Bay International Film Festival.
Jack’s most recent work includes BasedAmy, a short film starring and executive produced by Milly Alcock and Hattie & Holt, which is currently in development.
Development Lab Project Title: Hattie & Holt (Sci-fi/Romance Feature)
Logline: An interracial couple is abducted by aliens in 1960s Australia, forcing them to encounter terrors which lurk in our skies and here on Earth.
Jeni Bezuidenhout
Writer
Jeni Bezuidenhout is a HOH/deaf screenwriter, producer and actor who was born in Pretoria, South Africa and now resides in Naarm, Australia. She is an accomplished screenwriter who has written half a dozen short films and plays, and worked as co-creator on the funded webseries Fleshbags, an interconnected sci-fi anthology.
Jeni wrote on the satirical comedy news show The Leak (7 episodes /Channel 31). Her sci-fi feature She Now Romeo was accepted into the Originate development and production program, a joint initiative by VicScreen, SBS and Arenamedia.
She is a graduate of the Masters in Screenwriting from the VCA and her independent feature We Will Never Die finished filming in April 2024 and is now in post-production.
Development Lab Project Title: Beyond the Veil (Fantasy/Mystery Series)
Logline: When a rising criminal lawyer begins having intrusive dreams of past lives with her soulmate, she uses them to spice up her relationship. When they turn into undeniable visions, it sets off an obsessive investigation that leads her halfway around the world to find him – but sometimes fate can be cruel, and it turns out, so can Billy.
Nicholas Lin
Writer/Director
Nicholas Lin is a Brisbane-based, professional screenwriter.
He was selected for the 2021 SBS Emerging Writers' Incubator and placed as the full-time staff writer for Ludo Studio, a multi-Emmy award-winning studio. Nicholas has since written and worked on a multitude of films and TV series, including Australia's most popular TV show, Bluey.
He loves writing comedies and dramas with a specific focus on diverse stories, both in terms of culture and sexuality – Asian stories in particular.
Development Lab Project Title: Bigfoot Bruno (Comedy/Drama Series)
Logline: Oscar and Bigfoot team up to save his terminally ill younger brother from a gang of invincible drug dealers who’re addicted to Bigfoot’s immortality-granting marijuana.
Phoebe Wolfe
Writer/Director
Phoebe Wolfe is a writer and director based in Sydney. Her work is feminine and character-driven, exploring questions of moral ambiguity and vivid interior worlds.
Phoebe’s debut short film The Overthrow (2023) premiered internationally at HollyShorts in LA and won Best Drama Film at the Australian Women’s Film Festival.
Currently, she is directing fashion films for luxury brands, including a Hitchcock-inspired short film for ELLE Australia and Chanel starring AACTA Award-winner Sophie Wilde. Phoebe is also in post-production on her upcoming short Purity (2025), that she plans to use as a proof of concept to pitch as a feature-length film.
Development Lab Project Title: Purity (Psychological Drama Feature)
Logline: Marianne, a seemingly conservative teenage girl, hides her sexual desires from her religious mother. When her older sister returns home unexpectedly a few days before Christmas, Marianne discovers that her mother and sister may be hiding secrets darker than hers.
Sophie Morgan
Writer
Sophie Morgan is a writer and filmmaker originally from the Adelaide Hills in South Australia.
She was a co-writer, and producer of the Screen Australia-funded web series The Big Nothing, which was released on Dust.
In 2022, Sophie completed her Masters of Screenwriting at the Victoria College of the Arts. Her TV pilot script Torch Fort was selected for the MRC and Australian Writers Guild Script to Screen initiative and was a second rounder in the Austin Screenwriting Competition in the Drama Teleplay Pilot category and AMC One-Hour Pilot Award. Sophie’s feature film concept, Ageing Young, was one of six films accepted into the Epic Films and Madman Million Dollar Baby development program. She was the production manager on the feature documentary Embrace: Kids.
Sophie aims to combine her experience in non-fiction with her screenwriting by focusing on storytelling with a clear social impact informed by lived experience.
Tamara Hardman
Director
Tamara Hardman is a writer and director working on Kaurna Land in South Australia.
Her short films have played at both national and international festivals including Byron Bay Film Festival, Adelaide Film Festival, BUFF Malmo, Flickerfest and Palm Springs International ShortsFest. Her latest short, Are You Really The Universe? stars Tilda Cobham-Hervey and won Best Short Film at the 2022 Adelaide Film Festival.
In 2022, she was accepted into the SA AFTRS Talent Camp, and in 2024 she was shortlisted for the SAFC Low Budget Feature Film Lab initiative. Tamara has worked at Closer Productions since 2018 as the director's assistant to Sophie Hyde. She loves love, sincerity and beautiful things with a violent passion, and aims to combine these in her storytelling and directing style.
Development Lab Project Title: Forget Me, Not (Fantasy/Mystery Feature)
Logline: When Sadie wakes up after a mysterious accident with almost no memory, she must rely on the man claiming to be her boyfriend to piece together who she is. Stuck in a beautiful seaside home, Adrian helps Sadie start to piece together her life, but when a buried memory returns, she is forced to question not only her relationship but also her own existence.