Unattractive

By Alex Iskounen

*Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab - Advanced for Final Consideration 2018
*Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition - Second Rounder 2017
*Mallorca Film Festival (EMIFF) - Best Screenplay Winner 2016

"Our readers were enamoured with your script thanks to your vivid voice and deft balance of play and darkness." - Matt Dy, Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition Director

Paris, 1955. While Algeria bleeds for independence, a Kabyle youth named Akli survives the only way he knows how in the Belleville quarter.

Abandoned by parents who never came home from the factory one day, Akli lives above a bustling French restaurant under the volatile care of Sophie, its owner, his guardian, and the woman who demands his body as rent. To scrape together enough money for a ticket back to Algeria, he sells the only thing Paris lets him: his youth, his charm, and whatever passes for love among lonely women with spare change and empty beds.

Then he meets Manon, a girl his own age with slanted dimples and a geometry exam she can't pass. She offers him a way home and he accepts with joy in his heart. But Sophie's grip looms over them and the streets of Paris have their own plans for an Algerian boy trying to outrun his pitiful place in the world.

At turns darkly funny and devastating, Unattractive is a coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of colonial war. A tale of survival, exploitation, and the stubborn refusal to accept life as it is by a boy who thinks he's already a man.

Written in the tradition of classic French cinema, this award-winning screenplay aches with the raw energy of a young screenwriter himself caught between two countries. The script features French and Francophone characters, but is intended to be performed in English for an international audience. By now, the world's exciting North American and European actors can deliver fantastic performances with the French language thanks to their curiosity and exposure. This vision is not a rare quirk and is entirely possible. In fact, it is remarkably entertaining and a totally worthwhile endeavor.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GWPMNWXX
• ISBN13: 9798255325245
• Release Date: April 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 100 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 8.5" x 11.0"