Read you script this afternoon. Boy, it is packed with a very intricate plot and a lot of history. This is great for the most part, but sometimes it seems the characters take a back seat. It seems the majority of the script is plot heavy and the characters are simply there to move the plot along (and they are interesting characters too). So when there are huge character moments, I don't really know how they should react. I was surprised with some of their actions because I am not quite grasping "who they are". And when Emily offhandedly uses a homophobic slur or goes on a drug binge or even doesn't have the reaction to Chloe's death i expected, it is a little offputting.

However, there is a really great story of Emily (and women for that matter) going to a male dominated society to create change, all motivated by the search for a "father". That's great.

Also, I think it might help if the conflict is introduced a little earlier, it seems they are simply searching and having flashbacks for a long time before they are actually "involved" in the story.
That said, great job. A very dense story with surprising twists.

That narration. It's stopping me from moving on. Partially because it's blatant exposition, but also because they're big clunky run-on sentences.

Thought I’d go through it since I’m Brazilian, but this is a tough read. Got to page 15 before I dropped it. All we got in 15 pages (of a supposed action flick) was tons of exposition through voice over narration, a drawn out board meeting and weird conversations that’d never happen in real life.

We don’t care about Emily’s father at this point, and we certainly don’t care about Emily (since you used up all those pages providing backstory instead of furthering her character), so the audience has no real incentive to pay attention what you’re saying. The long monologue about her parents and her childhood counts as exposition, not character development, btw. I’d suggest focusing on making either one of these characters empathetic to the audience first, then sprinkling the exposition (whatever isn’t 100% necessary early on to get the plot moving) throughout the rest of the story.

Big Fish does a good job at this so you might want to give it a read (the screenplay is better than the movie, I’d say). Paper Towns did a terrible job at this, so you might want to give that a watch -- try to see what not to do.

Good luck and keep on writing!



EDIT: forgot to mention it, but there's some good writing here -- you're clearly talented in that department. It's the story and plot that needs some work. I'm not sure why, but I especially liked this sentence: "In the audience young GRACE listens to him with unconcealed interest."

Anton,

I would make an adjustment to your logline.

A young woman anthropologist ventures to Brazil to find traces of her missing father and makes some life-threatening discoveries... [that call into question...] [that she must...]

The beginning is good, but we need a secondary, hopefully eventually a more important goal, after finding her missing father. Get that and you got something good going, in the logline at least.

Good luck.