Paper Moon Rise

Ten years after their divorce, a couple unexpectedly reunites at an amusement park, forcing them to confront their unresolved passion.

For a group of NYC actors, the audition of a lifetime becomes a deadly lesson in how cutthroat show business really is.

A former child star spirals as he becomes convinced that the people he loves most have been replaced by impostors. This listing represents an early 2025 production version of Occam’s Beard that was later withdrawn from active production. Following the withdrawal of that version, the creator returned to the original treatment and developed an entirely new screenplay from the ground up. The new screenplay received Best Short Screenplay honors at the Big Apple Film Festival (2025), along with recognition from multiple international screenplay competitions, and as of May 2026 is shortlisted for the Cannes Film Awards.

Occam’s Beard is an award-winning psychological thriller centered on a tense therapy session between a former child actor and his longtime psychiatrist. What begins as a routine appointment gradually unravels into a confrontation over memory, identity, and the stories people create to survive emotional trauma. Through fragmented flashbacks and shifting perspectives, the film explores the instability of memory and the danger of overly simple explanations in both psychology and human relationships. As buried truths emerge, the boundaries between perception and reality begin to blur for both men. The screenplay received Best Short Screenplay honors at the Big Apple Film Festival, was named a Top 10 finalist for the Filmmatic InRoads Fellowship, and in June 2026, was awarded Best Short Screenplay at the Cannes Film Awards.