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A film script about a teenage Jehovah’s Witness growing up in Hartcliffe is currently winging its way onto the desks of major Hollywood movie execs - after it made it through to the closing stages of the world’s premier awards competition.

The film, called Snog, was written by Bristol film-maker Paul Holbrook, and has been shortlisted to the semi-final round of the 2018 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting - part of the Oscars Academy Award system.

That competition is the film industry’s leading award for scripts before they are made into movies - and a way for fresh writing talent to break into the Hollywood movie scene.

There were more than 7,000 entrants in the competition, and to make the semi-finals is a huge deal for Paul, whose Bristol-based film company Shunk Films has won awards across Britain, mainly for its short films.

“It is absolutely amazing, and it is quite something to think that there’ll be Hollywood execs reading my script - the biggest deal for me is that reaching the semi-final means that the script will be sent out to all the studios and producers to read,” he said.

“It’s great to think a kid from Hartcliffe has made the semi-finals of the world’s most prestigious screenwriting competition,” he added.

The shortlist in the semi-final will now be whittled down to just four scripts - and Paul said he’s not even thinking about whether that happens.

(Image: Paul Holbrook)

“Stuff I’ve done before has reached the semis and finals and even won competitions over here, but this is Nicholl Fellowship, this is the actual Oscars, so it’s amazing to reach the semi-finals,” he said.

The script itself is a bittersweet coming-of-age drama about a teenager who grows up as a Jehovah’s Witness in Hartcliffe, but then is no longer constrained by those religious rules. And he becomes infatuated with the idea of a girl who works in the corner shop, and tries everything he can to get to kiss her.

“It’s semi-autobiographical, not totally autobiographical,” said Paul.

“I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness in Hartcliffe, but I was about eight years old when I stopped being one, whereas the lad in the film is a teenager.

“But it takes the idea of what it means, and how odd it is, to be a kid who grows up as a Jehovah’s Witness in a tough place like Hartcliffe, and explores that in the setting of a coming-of-age movie.

(Image: Google)

“So there’s this lad and suddenly there’s all the things he has not been allowed to do, like watch TV, talk to girls, drink or smoke and hang out, and the whole world suddenly opens up for him and it’s about how he manages to cope with that, while all the time, he’s chasing his first kiss with the girl from the cornershop.

“I don’t want to get ahead of myself about getting to the final, because it’s a huge achievement to get to the semi-final already. The main thing is my script is getting read by members of the Academy Awards, which is great,” he added.