MELT: A FEATURE FILM BY MARY BENEDICT
Marilyn Machnik, a disfigured former child star staging a play about her traumatic past, must confront her estranged sister, forcing long-buried truths about their shared history into the spotlight.
PROOF OF CONCEPT FILMING APRIL 2026
AUstin film festival 2025
“Melt is my reckoning with the trauma of being a child in an industry that demands perfection.”
Mary Benedict, Writer/Director
Screenplay Competition Official Selection
SECOND IS THE FIRST TO LOSE
This story is an exploration of the intersection of personal trauma, family loyalty, and the dissonance between public and private selves. The film examines the emotional cost of truth-telling, the role of art in healing, and the weight of inherited guilt.
Melt’s emotional undercurrent revolves around the complexities of forgiveness, both of others and of oneself.
EVERYONE IS REPLACABLE
MEET THE TEAM
MARY BENEDICT
VEE BRUNO
PRODUCER
Vee Bruno was never going to be president. For starters, public speaking is a well-documented weakness of hers. The nail in the coffin, though? She was obsessed with filmmaking by the time she was 11. Her senior year of high school she even managed to convince her teachers to let her take photography classes instead of more Algebra, a decision she came to regret when taking Physics 101 at USC.
Despite her ignorance about quadratic equations, Victoria has found a way to survive. After majoring in Cinema and Media Studies, she started producing unintentionally but fell in love with it. In the past year she formed the production company Nitroglycerin Media and has produced nine short films.
WRITER / DIRECTOR
Mary Benedict was destined to be President. Then two years into getting her fashionably expensive degree she realized she hated politics and loved filmmaking.
The week she received her Bachelor’s in American Government? She sold everything, packed three bags, took a flight to a state she had never been to –thousands of miles from anyone she knew– and began a starvingly chic life as a young artist in LA.
In less than a year, Mary has produced several short scripts, two pilots, and two features. Influenced by the works of Gillian Flynn and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, a trademark characteristic of all her scripts is the divine relationship between the horrific and the laugh-out-loud funny.
TBA
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
“I DON’T LIKE TO LOSE, BUT I DON’T EVER LOSE ANYWAY.”
Stay tuned for our crowdfunding campaign.