![]() ![]() "I lost my childhood to this guy," Hamel said, who moved back to Labrador as a teenager to be with his biological dad. Hamel recalls having to kick away from the side of a pool to get away from his stepfather, who was holding him under water the man ripping a patch of hair from Hamel's head because he was using it to hold him under.Īnother time, Hamel says, the man stalked him around the house with a machete. He remembers his stepfather putting his face over a barbecue grill, shoving a jalapeno pepper up his nose, as well as incidents he describes as water torture. Hamel says his stepfather's abuse first started when he was just four years old when they were living in Oregon at the time. Hamel said the man moved in the day he was released, and they moved to Palm Springs, Calif. The abuse started in 1981, when Hamel was four years old. His mother met the man who'd raise him through a church-based prison outreach program in Oregon. ![]() The story is based on Hamel's childhood growing up in the U.S. He becomes empowered to confront his murderous stepfather. Hamel's screenplay, his first drama, is about a severely abused white boy learning about robotics from his science-fiction-obsessed Black landlady. I want to remind them, again and again, throughout the bombardment of horror, that life is good. "I'm not even going to pretend to be humble about that. My script is amazing," he said in a recent CBC Labrador Morning interview. Out of almost 8,200 scripts - a record for the competition - from 89 countries, Hamel won with his screenplay Shade of the Grapefruit Tree, the only winner in Canada, Hamel said. (Submitted by Byron Hamel)Ī Happy Valley-Goose Bay-born screenwriter has won a prestigious award from the organization that hands out the Oscars every year.īyron Hamel, who now lives in Winnipeg, is one of five winners of this year's Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, an award for new feature film screenwriters, administered by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Byron Hamel's award-winning script, Shade of the Grapefruit Tree, is based on his childhood growing up in the US with an abusive stepfather. ![]()
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