A Long Gap Between Award-Winning Screenplay and Short Film

Way back in 2010, via the second annual Canadian Short Screenplay Competition (CSSC), British writer Neil Graham won top prize for his script Something Pointless.

Fifteen years later, the movie was finally brought to life in Wales during a shoot in May, 2025. The short film stars Game of Thrones alumnus Owen Teale as an elderly man who befriends a bullied boy played by Leo Harris.

Earlier this spring, the film world premiered at the 56th annual USA Film Festival in Dallas and is poetically set to screen later this month at the 79th annual Yorkton Film Festival in Saskatchewan. It is at the Yorkton event that the 2010 screenplay prize was presented.

"This film has been a labor of love," revealed producer David Cormican, who established the CSSC event. "It's rooted in a remarkable screenplay that has patiently waited nearly fifteen years to reach the screen. We believe audiences are going to feel it deeply."

Coincidentally, after a long hiatus beginning in 2013, the Canadian Short Screenplay Competition was also revived in 2025 at exactly the same time as Something Pointless was shooting in the U.K. The event is set to roll out again later this month in Yorkton, with six short film screenplays competing for the same top prize.

Something Pointless will also have a very grandiose screening May 22nd at the International Sound and Film Music Festival in Croatia, in an outdoor arena. The movie was directed by Asa Bailey and features a pair of executive producers, Shawn Christensen and Damon Russell, who won the 2012 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short for their film Curfew, which somewhat similarly is about an uncle caring for his niece.

In 1997, Teale won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a production of A Doll's House, alongside Janet McTeer, who also won the Tony that year for Best Actress. More recently, in 2022, Teale snagged a Welsh BAFTA Award.

"This is a film that embraces pure, unapologetic sentimentality," stated Bailey. "It's a rare opportunity to portray what it means to be human without frills or fads - just heartfelt storytelling rooted in the textures and truths of a real community."