PARIS 1832
A feature screenplay by Jeff Weissman
Period Drama

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Logline
In 1832 Paris, a gifted young pianist named Franz Liszt discovers that being excellent is not enough to be remembered, and sets out to become something the world has never seen, whatever it costs him.

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Synopsis
Franz Liszt is twenty, charming, admired, and quietly invisible. He teaches, he performs, he earns polite applause, but at the café tables where Chopin and Mendelssohn talk about the music of the future, he has nothing to say but "...playing."

Then Paganini comes to Paris. A string snaps mid-concert and Paganini plays on, and the silence that follows breaks Liszt open. Haunted by his father's warning that the world remembers only who was first and best, Liszt sets out to learn what Paganini knows: how to seize a room and leave something behind that can't be ignored. His pursuit will test his friendship with Chopin, whose quiet, inward genius offers a very different path, and his love for Marie d'Agoult. But the louder Paris chants his name, the harder it becomes to know whether the man at the piano is still Franz Liszt, or only the performer he invented.

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Recognition
Quarterfinalist, Final Draft Big Break Screenwriting Competition, 2026
Quarterfinalist, PAGE International Screenwriting Awards

"...does an amazing job of making playing the piano... truly riveting... as gripping as any action scene."
"...pulls the reader in so they have no choice but to finish reading in one sitting."
— Reader, BlueCat Screenplay Competition