New film office prize goes to a screenwriter who rediscovered herself in Philly

Kiz Mentor spent more than a decade working behind the scenes at some of Hollywood’s biggest studios. But it wasn’t until she came home to Philadelphia a few years ago that she finally began to tell her own stories.

On Monday, the Greater Philadelphia Film Office announced that Mentor’s screenplay, Power of Balance, was the first winner of the Nina Lo Presti Award. The award, a new category this year in the film office’s annual “Set in Philadelphia” Screenwriting Competition, is sponsored by Laurie Lo Presti and her husband, Ron Masciantonio, in honor of Lo Presti’s late mother, a film buff. It carries a $5,000 prize for the best screenplay or TV pilot by a female writer with strong ties to the Philadelphia area.

A graduate of Franklin Learning Center and Shippensburg University, Mentor was a broadcast page at QVC in her first job after college. After moving to Los Angeles in 2002 “with no connections or contacts,” she eventually worked in everything from development and production to marketing for Warner Bros., Universal, HBO, and 20th Century Fox.

She was also writing “on and off,” she said, but “every job I had was kind of rigorous,” and she tended not to finish things.

When she left Fox in 2018, “I was kind of done with corporate. I needed to decompress,” Mentor said. “I kind of lost myself.”

After spending nearly a year traveling the country and visiting friends, she returned to Philadelphia for what she’d expected to be a short stay. But here, she said, “I really found myself. … I decided to write and I have written like nonstop for the past two years.”

Besides Power of Balance, a script about “a young woman with mysterious powers who becomes a local hero in Philadelphia,” Mentor has written three other screenplays and two TV pilots, one of which, she said, came close to being picked up. She’s hoping to direct Power of Balance herself and is seeking investors for a production she describes as “low-budget, … commercial, and marketable.” (Potential investors can reach her at pobinquiry@gmail.com.)

When she’s not writing, Mentor works part-time as the program manager for the online movie club at Lil’ Filmmakers, a Philadelphia nonprofit that employs arts and entertainment in its work with 11- to 17-year-olds and exposes them to potential careers.

In a statement released by the film office, Laurie Lo Presti described her mother, who “had a Philly zip code all her life,” as a lover of the arts who “admired all the hard work that goes into one film, especially a well-written script,” and who “passed away while watching the Turner Classic Movies channel.”

“The love and support that [Nina Lo Presti] had for the arts and film community will not go unnoticed, especially in my film,” Mentor said. “Because I plan to get this made.”

In addition to the new Nina Lo Presti Award, winners in other categories and for the annual grand prize were also announced Monday, all to Philly natives: