Keith Rubin's "Helicopter" Takes Two Awards at Austin Film Festival
Keith Rubin's script "Helicopter" won two prizes at the 33rd Austin Film Festival, the Williams N. Collage Screenwriting Award and the Enderby Entertainment Award. The festival named 21 writers and writing teams as winners of its script and film competition, Variety reported on Saturday, 31 October.
The competition drew more than 12,500 submissions, according to Variety. Of those, 78 scripts advanced to the finalist round. The festival tells entrants about finalist status by early October, and it announces winners at the Awards Luncheon held during the conference.
Winners received their awards at that luncheon on Saturday in Austin, Texas. Among the other prizes, "Old Bogus Massacre" by Matthew McFadden, Dawn Cowle and Baylor Knobloch won the Scripted Digital Series Award, a prize for a series written for online viewing. "Paper Plane" won the Narrative Short award, which goes to a short film with a story at its heart.
The awards are one thread of a larger event. The Austin Film Festival & Writers Conference runs from 29 October to 5 November 2026. Barbara Morgan is the festival's Executive Director.
For writers, the competition is a public scorecard. Each winner's name now sits beside a title that a festival has chosen from thousands of entries, and that label can help a script get a second look from readers and producers.
The full list of winners, with categories and names, is on the festival's own pages. The festival runs through the first week of November, so more panels and screenings will follow the awards.
