'' Short Term 12 '' was originally conceived by Destin Daniel Cretton as a short film based on his experiences as a line staff worker at a group facility for teenagers where he had worked for two years ; it served as his thesis project for his master 's degree in film at San Diego State University . The short film ran for 22 minutes and premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival , where it won the Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking . After graduating from film school , Cretton decided to adapt the short into a feature-length screenplay , which won one of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ' five Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting in 2010 . The largest change Cretton made when adapting the short film into a longer screenplay was changing the lead character 's gender : Denim , a man loosely based on Cretton himself , became Grace , a young woman and the facility 's supervisor . Cretton researched similar facilities and interviewed former employees for the film , noting that the script featured stories directly told by children in these facilities from his interviews
2009 Sundance Film Festival
2009 Sundance Film Festival
Short Term 12