WATCH: LI Screenwriter's 'Personal Journey' Wins LGBTQ Film Festival
DIX HILLS, NY — A woman, who grew up in Dix Hills is getting praise for her first screenplay.
Christine Oliva-Castillo was recently awarded the Platinum Prize at the LGBTQ Unbordered Film Festival for her screenplay “You Are What You Love.”
“Our hope is to get funding to be able to make it into a film,” Oliva-Castillo told Patch. “We’re looking into all ways to get the story out there.”
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It’s about a young lesbian (Leah) from Long Island, who suffers from opioid addiction and is caught in a love triangle.
“Leah’s journey is definitely based upon a lot of my own journey,” she said. “It is very personal for me, because I have experienced a lot of what Leah has gone through.”
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With millions of overdoses on opioids, Oliva-Castillo wanted to use her voice to find a positive in the “gloom and doom.”
She said: “We need more narratives out there showing hope, stories of resilience, especially for the LGBTQ community, it’s really something that’s needed.”
Oliva-Castillo said the LBGTQ community “deals with a lot of shame. [They] have lots of reasons why they turn to substance abuse, more so than the heterosexual community. That’s why they are twice as more likely to suffer from addiction.”
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As she gives her story a platform, Oliva-Castillo is happy to see it start to resonate.
“It’s really been quite shocking, actually, to receive the accolades that it has,” she said. “But I think people are seeing that there’s really a need for it.
Watch the full “Patch Weekly Spotlight” interview with Oliva-Castillo below.
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