NEW YORK, March 18 (Xinhua) -- A crime-comedy about a New York City man who pretends to be a movie producer in order to pay off gangsters threatening to kill him has been nominated for the Best Comedy and Best Screenplay at a world film festival.

SURE-FIRE is among the nominees for the awards at the 8th Annual Queens World Film Festival (QWFF), running from March 15-25, said Chinese-American filmmaker Dave Chan, who is one of the writers/producers of the short film, in an interview with Xinhua.

The film has already screened at over 20 film festivals and picked up multiple awards along the way.

"We are in dialogue with several companies, including Sony Pictures Classics, about turning SURE-FIRE into a feature film," said Chan, who was from Hong Kong and raised in NYC's borough Brooklyn.

Chan said their team has already partnered with casting agency, Chrystie Street Casting (Oscar-nominated "American Hustle"), and production counsel, Jonathan Gray's law firm (Oscar Winner "Moonlight"), on the upcoming feature as a result of the short film.

SURE-FIRE is a fast-paced crime-comedy inspired by director Michael Goldburg's own real-life encounter with a shady New York "producer" who literally conned him to write a script and wanted to pay him in pizza.

New York City con man, Benny Boon, having a midlife crisis, needs to come up with 50,000 U.S. dollars in three days to pay off a gangster-or else.

Luckily, he meets a washed-up actress, Kitty Kinkaid, who's anxious for a comeback and claims to have the money to bankroll a screenplay.

Benny poses as a movie producer and hooks her with a script called "A Woman on the Edge." Problem is, the script doesn't exist, and Benny doesn't know how to write one. So he places an ad on Craigslist for a screenwriter and puts his scheme into high gear.

The QWFF, based in New York City borough of Queens, kicked off last week along with 189 narrative, documentary, animated and experimental films at the Museum of the Moving Image and Kaufman Astoria Studios.