By Richard L. Gaw
Staff Writer

INT. AUTUMN’S HOUSE – BEDROOM – NIGHT

POUNDING ON THE FRONT DOOR, YOUNG AUTUMN BENNETT (12) jerks from sleep. Far faced, brunette, Autumn is a feisty intellectual.

From A Lion’s Game (2024), screenplay by Bella Dontine and Travis Brown

From the time she was a young child growing up in Wilmington, Bella Dontine’s life has been a tireless pursuit of hers to find, confirm, solidify and protect her authentic self.

For the past three decades, her ‘to thine own self be true” journey has been clearly visible to anyone who wishes to see it: on stage in musicals throughout Delaware, as a singer-songwriter on Instagram video snippets and most especially in films – her films, where she is a producer, actor and writer - the ones she has made with her creative collaborator Travis Brown, most recently A Lion’s Game (2024), for which she and Brown won three awards at the WRPN Women’s International Film Festival and earned a nomination for best film at the Montreal Independent Film Festival. 

To witness Dontine portray the character of Autumn Bennett in the film is to witness a tangible strength that twists and turns with the tension of the script, and one that is defiantly juxtaposed with the shy young girl from Delaware who would not speak in front of strangers and took solace in the shadows.

Then she saw the white glow of a portal coming off the television and movie screens of her childhood and chose to follow the stories in the light.  

“I was painfully shy as a child, and when people would come up to me, I wouldn’t talk to them and I would hide from them,” Dontine said. “At about the same time, I began to fall in love with shows and music and movies, like old Judy Garland films and Beauty and the Beast. My mother took me to see an ice-skating show version of the film, and I remember being mesmerized at the sight of thousands of people enjoying what they were seeing. 

“I was witnessing something magical happening in that arena, and I wanted to be with the performers and step into a character’s shoes rather than be in mine,” said Dontine, who started dance lessons at the age of two, and when she turned six years old, started performing in school theater and at the age of nine she landed the lead role of Mary Magdalene in a Christmas production of Mary & Joseph. “When I was 12 years old, I was performing at the Candlelight Theatre in Arden, and my grandfather saw me and said that he was shocked to see his granddaughter on stage, projecting her voice to the farthest reaches of the theater. ‘Is this the same girl I know?’ he asked.

“I found that I was able to express myself through art. I felt like I was releasing something while still having the freedom to hide. I know that I wouldn’t have the courage to go out and speak for myself, but I was able to do so through the characters I was portraying.”

Before she was old enough to drive, Dontine had already become an unstoppable force, auditioning and rehearsing and performing on stages throughout Delaware and beyond. She began dancing competitively and also took singing, guitar and piano lessons. She performed at Walt Disney World and Planet Hollywood in New York City, and took dance classes with Broadway performers and at Steps on Broadway. To accommodate her busy schedule, she was home-schooled during her junior and senior years of high school.

“When so many other people my age were out on weekends and dating, I did none of that,” she said. “I was working as much as six days a week as a dancer and an actor, because I made the decision not to give myself any other choice. My sole focus since I was about two years old has been to find opportunities and connections.”

EXT. PARK – DAY

RUNNING FEET of Young Autumn and Young Michael transition into the RUNNING FEET of an older AUTUMN BENNETT (26) and MICHAEL WEST (26) running together.

Autumn and Michael stop for a breather. Autumn removes her phone, observes an incoming text, then immediately puts the phone away, shaking her head in frustration.

By the time she entered Wilmington University as a digital filmmaking major, Dontine was fully illuminated by the portal she willingly chose to enter. There, she found a creative partner in Travis Brown, who was pursuing a degree in studio production. Together, they made their first film, The Average Guy – Dontine had the lead role - and then another film. She continued working on and acting in short films in college and went on to receive her master’s degree. Within the span of a few years, Dontine’s trajectory had skyrocketed from merely dreaming to actually doing.

“After we graduated, Travis had left Delaware to Los Angeles, and for a time, we had lost touch,” she said. “Then he reconnected with me and asked me to be a part of a film he was working on a short film called Norwalk Witness. I flew out to LA and filmed it, and ever since then, we have been creative partners, and our working relationship just continues to grow. We have a very similar vision in terms of where we want our careers to take us. We both have the same drive, and that lends itself well to our focus as partners.”

In 2017, Dontine moved to California and worked with Brown on five screenplays, and in 2021, they released their first feature film, Devil’s Hollow, which earned serious buzz at its West Coast premiere in at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard and later received high praise at Louisville’s International Festival of Film, the Golden State Film Festival and the SOHO International Film Festival, among others.

KAREN BENNETT

Don’t you dare shed a tear. Life is not fair. If you cave in and start getting all soft and mushy it’s going to swallow you up. You always gotta have a way out. Always be one step ahead. Whatever it takes, I never want you to end up like your father and I, broke and begging for crumbs from the master’s table. Do you understand me, Autumn?

When Dontine and Brown first began to set down the ideas for the screenplay that became A Lion’s Game, they wanted to create compelling characters and, in an effort to conserve the film’s budget, place them in scenarios that did not involve elaborate sets and costly technical bells and whistles. Armed with a $20,000 budget, a small cast and crew and Dontine in the lead role of Autumn, shooting took place mostly in Los Angeles in September of 2021. 

“The set was chaotic at times, because we didn’t always have a full crew because we didn’t always have the money to pay them, so I was often the assistant director,” she said. “We would go to a location, unpack everything, and then I had to learn my lines for the day and get the call sheets ready for the next shoot. 

One day, we had a few assistants call out, so we had to get food for the cast and crew. This experience taught me that there are people counting on you, so I have to keep a positive attitude. One night, we were filming at three in the morning, and I was so exhausted that I had to slap my face in order to get ready for a scene.” 

Complications with the sound required an additional $20,000 added to the budget, and after post-production was completed, Dontine and Brown sent A Lion’s Game to as many distributors as they could. Gravitas Ventures, a major independent film distributor, took on the project and on April 22, 2025, the film was released.

In addition to the awards the film garnered at film festivals, it became available on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Comcast and Fios, and all of a sudden, the shy little girl who hid behind the clothing and the shoes and the make-up of her characters was now front and center and beaming into thousands of homes.

Earlier this year, Dontine and Brown announced they were working on developing their next film entitled Elite One that once it secures a budget, is expected to be filmed on the East Coast.

It can be said that the world of filmmaking – particularly for a young auteur like Dontine – can be ruthless, unforgiving, like a bolt that is impossible to unlock. 

Rejection waits at every corner. 

All of the accent marks are placed not on one’s talent but on one’s ability to self-promote. 

Great screenplays don’t count for as much as the number of social media followers a filmmaker has.

“Being on the outside and having to fight and claw my way in is frustrating, but I am the victim of my own tunnel vision,” said Dontine, who began her filmmaking company Small Wonder Studios in 2015. “This is all I have ever seen myself doing. I have tried other things, but nothing fills me the way that filmmaking and storytelling do. A lot of people are willing to give up their dreams just for a paycheck and the security of benefits. Of course I want that, too, but I am more afraid of being on my deathbed and asking, ‘I wonder what could have happened if truly pursued my dreams?’ That terrifies me. 

“To this day, I’ve never been to therapy. I have just found my empowerment through my desire to create, to take people away from the world a little while and tell them a great story.

“My younger self would be very proud of me right now.”

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].