Over the years, Austin and Meredith Bragg have participated in a number of MPI’s talent development workshops through our Rising Filmmaker Program (RFP) including MPI’s Short Film Lab. Through the Lab they wrote and directed the MPI Original Film A Piece of Cake, starring Rich Sommer (Mad Men), which won several awards and was nominated for Best Narrative Short at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2020. In 2021, they led our comedic screenwriting workshop, and most recently they wrote and directed the MPI Original Film Pinball which is their first narrative feature.
Their journey is a great example of MPI’s mission in action and the synergy between our Rising Filmmaker Program and MPI Original Films. We invest in talented, like-minded filmmakers and work with the best of them to produce culture-changing MPI Original Films that can move the needle on important issues by reaching broad audiences with the ideas of freedom.