Helene Forst, Screenwriter and Storyteller, performing with guitarist

SCREENWRITNG AND STORYTELLING

Great storytelling creates magic, breathing fire into our imaginations. It creates worlds, emotions, and ways of thinking that make the ordinary seem fantastic. Stories matter. They’re universal, important to the celebration of cultures and community. They foster human connections, create empathy, enlightenment, entertain, and spread collective customs and values.

While studying creative writing and literature at Harvard, Helene discovered a love for writing image popping screenplays that captured themes relevant today. Her thirst for education, storytelling, writing, literature, theater, and film were passed down from her mother, an NYU professor of Education and Media Ecology. Storytelling, like teaching, is in her blood.

The Rebels Roar

LOGLINE: Rattled by his parents’ decision to send him away, a dyslexic teen struggles to become literate in a divided America during the political turmoil of 1969.

FORM: Feature Screenplay

GENRE: A historical, coming-of-age story with a fish-out-of-water twist.

The Rebels Roar, adapted from Helene’s YA novel, Stoked-1969, is set in the year 1969. It follows the journey of 14-year-old Jake Edwards, a dyslexic teen who can’t read. In a last-ditch effort to further his failed education, his parents send him away from everything he knows to live with his anti-war, hippie grandma in Credence, New York, a small town nestled in the high peaks of the Adirondack Mountains. Jack freaks out and refuses to go. What were his parents thinking when they decided to ask Jake’s grandma to take over his education? According to Jake, they weren’t.

INFLUENCES: The Rebels Roar combines the coming-of-age in Stand by Me (1962), with the political turbulence and change of heart in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), populated with characters reminiscent of Woodstock (1969). It’s an award-winning quarterfinalist in the 2023 Creative Screenwriting Unique Voices Screenplay Competition.

Behind the Hedges

LOGLINE: After a suspicious helicopter crash and the rescue of a kidnapped teen, a first responder is forced to confront a former love, while facing dangers from a sex-trafficking network operating in the shadows of her Hampton's community.

FORM: Feature Screenplay

GENRE: A romantic thriller with a high-society criminal twist.

Do you believe that love can triumph over all things, both good and bad? The film, Behind the Hedges, explores the power of love as it follows the journey of 40-year-old Samantha Lowenstein, a middle-school English teacher as she struggles to deal with a former lover whose family is evil.

INFLUENCES: Behind the Hedges combines the romance in Casablanca (1942), with the suspense in North by Northwest (1959), reminiscent of characters in the TV movie mini-series Human Trafficking (2005).

Additional Projects in Progress.

For more information, please email Helene at hes957@g.harvard.edu or call + 1 516-658-3938.