David Mills

In 1982 Ohio, a closeted high-school graduate with college ahead of him risks the future everyone expects when his growing attraction to another boy makes it impossible to keep pretending that his girlfriend and small-town life are enough.

The primary audience is adults 18–49, particularly viewers interested in LGBTQ+ cinema, intimate coming-of-age stories, period dramas, and character-driven independent films. The film should also appeal to LGBTQ+ audiences who connect with stories about discovering identity in an era when being openly gay carried substantially different social risks, as well as older audiences who experienced the 1980s firsthand.

Somewhere Else is a quiet, 1982 coming-of-age drama in the tradition of Edge of Seventeen and My Beautiful Laundrette, following a closeted Ohio teenager through the final summer before college as he discovers who he is just as he's preparing to leave home. But Somewhere Else differentiates itself through its more restrained, observational style—the story is built around behavior, objects, silence, and what Billy doesn't say.

Somewhere Else is deeply personal and semi-autobiographical, drawn from my own experiences of growing up, coming of age, and trying to understand who I was in a time when there were far fewer places for a young person to see himself reflected honestly. I wanted to capture the particular feeling of being seventeen in 1982—when leaving home for college could feel like an escape, while acknowledging your sexuality could feel like risking everything you had built. The story isn't a literal retelling of my life, but the emotional experiences, relationships, uncertainty, and small-town environment are rooted in things I remember and understand personally.

I believe now is the right time to make Somewhere Else because we have enough distance from the early 1980s to look honestly at what that period meant for LGBTQ+ young people without reducing it to tragedy. The film takes place just after the Anita Bryant controversy, the Moral Majority, before the full impact of the AIDS crisis was beginning to emerge. Ohio also has a particularly rich LGBTQ+ history from this period, including documented accounts of young people coming out and building communities during the 1980s.

But the urgency isn't simply historical. Somewhere Else is about the universal experience of becoming the person you actually are while everyone around you has already decided who you're supposed to be. By telling that story through a semi-autobiographical lens, with the intimacy and restraint of memory rather than hindsight, I hope the film can preserve a moment that many people lived through—and allow a younger generation to understand just how different, and how difficult, that journey could be.

I am currently seeking literary representation for my four-feature screenplay slate, as well as attached producers, development financing, shopping agreements, options or sales, and ultimately production partnerships. The four screenplays explore LGBTQ+ coming-of-age through very different worlds and circumstances, allowing me to offer a representative a cohesive body of work rather than a single project.

BEYOND THE ARC — An LGBTQ+ coming-of-age drama set in rural Kentucky, following a star high-school basketball player whose carefully constructed future collapses when his sexuality is exposed, forcing him to determine who he is beyond the identity his community gave him. Winner, 2026 Scriptapalooza Fellowship.

SOMEWHERE ELSE — A semi-autobiographical 1982 Ohio coming-of-age drama about a closeted teenager spending his final summer before college quietly falling for another boy while trying to maintain the life everyone expects him to leave behind. Best Feature Screenplay, Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards Diversity XV.

CAMERON LOVES... — An LGBTQ+ romantic drama about a closeted teenage television star whose carefully manufactured public image is threatened when he falls for another boy, forcing him to choose between protecting his career and living honestly. Award Winner, LGBTQ Unbordered International Film Festival.

DISTANT LIGHTNING — A survival drama in which two teenage boys from very different backgrounds are stranded on a remote island after a charter boat sinks, and survival gradually gives way to an unexpected intimacy neither is prepared to acknowledge. Award Winner, The Indie Gathering International Film Festival.

My immediate goal is to find the right representative and producing partners who see the commercial and emotional potential across the slate, beginning with Somewhere Else, while developing the other projects toward their appropriate markets. Ultimately, I'm looking for relationships that can move these screenplays beyond competition recognition and toward professional development, financing, packaging, representation, and production.