A story about family, friends, understanding of self-worth and finding passion in life that started during Tricia Horvath’s (MFA ’24) time as a student in the Low-Residency MFA in Screenwriting program is the overall winner of the Austin Film Festival Pitch Competition. 

“Stripper Moms” was a two-year project that originated from a meeting with her MFA program mentor, Tamlin Hall.

A woman who believes she has the perfect life suddenly has everything change when her husband dies, leaving her penniless and stunned to find out her husband had been cheating on her. With her home in foreclosure and no job or college education to fall back on, the woman finds herself feeling hopeless. Unknown to the woman, her husband had invested his money into a business she was soon about to discover.

“Each time a student visits Tamlin, he insists on three pitches. He did this to help us prepare to pitch to a group. He would ask why we picked the topic we did, who the characters were, what potential growth they had and what the story line was,” Horvath shared about the program. This, along with several other opportunities to practice pitches inspired Horvath to compete in the Austin Film Festival’s Pitch Competition. 

Horvath started as one of 196 people competing in front of three judges for this competition. “I thought it would be a great experience to practice presenting,” Horvath shared, “I was shocked to move up to the second round.” Horvath advanced on to the second round of the competition where she competed against 23 others before being announced as the overall winner.

When asked what her next plans for “Stripper Moms” is, Horvath shared, “I am in pre-production on a short/proof-of-concept of Stripper Moms with Taylor Potter (AB ’21, MFA ’23), as producer. We’re currently casting and crewing up, and we plan to film in January in Atlanta.”

Learn more about the Low-Residency MFA in Screenwriting.

Originally reported by Lauren A. Pike, Grady College.