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The Sundance Institute has chosen 10 projects for its Episodic Story Lab.

The lab, launched last year, aims to help promising new writers and creators of TV and online series. Makers of the chosen projects will meet with showrunners, TV executives and producers on developing their spec pilot and series overview, taking part in one-on-one creative story meetings, writers rooms, pitch sessions and group conversations about the creative process and current field of episodic programming.

The lab runs Oct. 1-6 at the Sundance resort.

Here are the 10 projects, with synopses provided by the Sundance Institute:

• "12 Miles South," by Michael Krikorian • "After a gang killing goes wrong, Los Angeles faces a resurgence of violence that threatens to unravel the city's fragile peace. In '12 Miles South,' a cop, a reporter and a gang leader on death row find their agendas dangerously entwined as they deal with the fallout." Krikorian covered crime for the Los Angeles Times for 11 years, and still reports on L.A. street gangs on his website "Krikorian Writes." He is the only American writer to have three personal essays published in the "Lives" page of the New York Times Magazine, and he wrote the novel "Southside."

• "Crude," by John Lopez • "A young mother desperate to sustain her family's existence leaves them behind to pursue a steady job in a North Dakota oil boomtown. A brutal murder on the outskirts of town sets a chain of events in motion that thrusts her into the middle of a war between a drug cartel, a Native American gang, and an overtaxed local sheriff." Lopez, an L.A. native, has written for Grantland's "Hollywood Prospectus," Vanity Fair's "Little Gold Men," GQ and the Huffington Post. He was associate producer on "The Two Faces of January," Hossein Amini's adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel.

• "Degenerates," by Christianne Hedtke • "In 1939 Paris, bohemian Jewish heiress Peggy Guggenheim sets out to establish the first museum dedicated to the art of her time - mischievous, radical Surrealism. As Hitler expands his assault on Europe and wages war on so-called 'degenerate' art, Peggy is torn between helping these endangered artists escape and rescuing the art itself." Hedtke is a screenwriter in L.A., has developed original content for Nickelodeon, and was on the staff of the Telluride Film Festival.

• "Hell or High Water," by Maria Melnik • "'Hell or High Water' takes place during the five-year construction of the Hoover Dam at the height of the Great Depression. Part Western, part political dystopia, part steampunk clash of primordial rock and radical technology, it tells the story of the men and women who lived and died to make the desert bloom." Melnik — born in Magadan, Russia, and raised in Alaska — is a staff writer on Starz' "American Gods."

• "I'm Down," by Mishna Wolff • "'I'm Down' is the story of a socially awkward white girl whose new-agey mother leaves her in the hands of her father, a white man who self-identifies as black. This dysfunctional family comedy, set in 1990s-era Seattle, explores racial identity and the lengths to which a child will go to win a parent's love." Wolff's project is based on her best-selling memoir, also titled "I'm Down."

• "Mistaken for Strangers," by Matt Berninger and Carin Besser • "Based on the acclaimed documentary of the same name, 'Mistaken for Strangers' is the story of an indie rock singer and his family whose lives are upturned when his band begins to enjoy mainstream success and his unemployed younger brother moves in to help out." Berninger is lead singer of the indie-rock band The National and the newly formed EL VY. Besser, Berninger's wife, is a former fiction editor at The New Yorker. Together, they co-produced the documentary "Mistaken for Strangers," which Besser co-edited.

• "MK-Ultra," by Mac Smullen • "At the dawn of the Cold War, a group of CIA agents with conflicting agendas find their morals tested and their lives changed by the clandestine efforts to exploit the newly discovered chemical compound LSD." Smullen is a writer and filmmaker from New York, who has worked as a freelance editor, directed music videos for Stones Throw Records, and had original short fiction published by American Eldritch.

• "Radicals," by Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim • "'Radicals' is a limited series about three Muslim-American friends from Jersey City's 'Little Arabia' whose lives are ripped apart after the FBI accuses them of orchestrating a terrorist plot on American soil." Noujaim won an Emmy for directing the documentary "The Square," which she and Amer produced. Noujaim's other films include "Control Room" and "Startup.com."

• "The Sleep," by Cami Delavigne • "Inspired by the short story by Caitlin Horrocks, 'The Sleep' is a supernatural dark comedy about a small-town history teacher and his two children who, grieving the death of their wife and mother, decide to hibernate through the winter. When they awake as younger, better versions of themselves, their transformation attracts both devotees and detractors to their quiet New England town." Delavigne co-wrote the 2010 Sundance Film Festival entry "Blue Valentine," and is a staff writer on AMC's "The Son."

• "Unlikely," by Akilah Hughes and Lyle Friedman • "'Unlikely' is a comedy web series about a pair of biracial twins, one of whom looks white, the other black. After transferring to the same college in their senior year, the codependent siblings struggle to find their own identities while keeping their close bond." Hughes is a writer, stand-up comedian and YouTube creator in Brooklyn, as well as a digital correspondent for Fusion's Pop and Culture team. Friedman is a staff writer on TV Land's "Younger," has a project in development with Jill Soloway ("Transparent"), and was co-creator of the web series "#hotmessmoves."