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Originally Posted On: https://www.theparables.net/article/monte_albers_de_leon_is_rewriting_the_apocalypseone_screenplay_at_a_time
Monte Albers de Leon didn’t set out to become a filmmaker. For over two decades, he was a corporate attorney, working in a world of precision, contracts, and risk mitigation. But a late-night debate in 2023—about AI, humanity, and whether we were doomed to become soulless machines—sparked something bigger. He typed out a rebuttal on his phone. That rant became a screenplay. That screenplay became Good, the first installment of his award-winning anthology The Parables. And just like that, a new voice in cinema was born—clear-eyed, unflinching, and fiercely original.
Good isn’t just a speculative drama about AI and morality; it’s a biting, hilarious, and ultimately hopeful story set in suburban Omaha, where six warehouse workers are the last defense between humanity and collapse. Think Black Mirror meets The Breakfast Club, with a moral backbone that cuts through dystopia like a knife. The script has now won over 130 international awards—and it’s only the beginning.
Monte’s universe—sprawling across Good, Mecca, and the upcoming Hi parts one and two—tackles everything from tech ethics and terrorism to race, faith, class, queerness, and personal responsibility. What unites all his work is an unshakable belief in the human capacity for good. “Even when faced with oblivion,” he told SIFF, “people can still choose to do the right thing. That’s what makes us human.”
Monte’s characters aren’t just archetypes—they’re painfully real. They’re loud, flawed, hilarious, and scared. They pop edibles on the job. They hoard piss bottles in warehouses. They confront terrorism, racism, and AI tyranny not with superhero strength but with wit, resistance, and—sometimes—pure dumb luck. And when they fall apart, they do it in ways that stick with you.
His second film, Mecca, travels back to post-9/11 New York to explore the rise of Islamophobia through the eyes of a young couple navigating love and prejudice in a shaken city. It’s raw, biting, and personal. Like Good, it dares to ask what being “good” really means when the world insists otherwise. Monte is currently developing Hi, the final chapters of The Parables, where the threads of each story converge in a world teetering between salvation and AI-triggered collapse. Ghosts, political dynasties, and divine chaos are all in play.
What sets Monte apart isn’t just his storytelling. It’s his refusal to pander. His work respects the audience enough to make them uncomfortable—and trusts them enough to find the lesson. “Freely choosing one’s better nature,” he says, is his definition of good. That same principle drives his stories, his characters, and his own leap from legal life to artistic disruption.
Monte Albers de Leon didn’t leave law for film. He left it for truth.
Follow Monte on Instagram and LinkedIn, or explore more of his work at montealbersdeleon.com and theparables.net.