Erin Kitzinger was an underclassman at St. Petersburg High School when she spent a spring break day at the beach that eventually led to a filmmaking career, and the Gasparilla Film Festival entry Hope for a Thorn.

Kitzinger and a friend drove to St. Pete Beach and the Don CeSar resort where director Paul Schrader was filming scenes for the sexy flop Forever Mine.

"Joseph Fiennes was in the movie, and he'd just done Shakespeare in Love, and I was, like, oooooh.," Kitzinger said during a telephone chat. "So, we spent every day watching the shoot, and getting to know some of the crew members. They let us back behind the scenes and I just got hooked.

"I'd never experienced anything like that before.(Filmmaking) was always something I had been interested in, but after that I really decided I wanted to pursue it."

Kitzinger graduated in 2000 from St. Pete High then studied at the University of Central Florida's film school for eight years before moving to Chicago to make movies. Hope for a Thorn is her first feature film.

"It was very important to me to make a female-oriented film," Kitzinger said. "There are so many movies about women in terms of their relationships with men -- the wife, whatever -- but I wanted to focus on women and their relationships with each other.

"The film is about a troubled widow who finds herself as the guardian of the granddaughter she had never met. They're both hiding loss, loneliness and madness, and they're forced to confront their pasts, and rely on each other for redemption. So, it's about family, love, grief, regret and second chances."

Hope for a Thorn debuted in October, 2009 at L.A.s Femme Film Festival where it earned Kitzinger an award for best director. "That was fantastic," she said. "I'm not used to winning things. It's nice validation when people are responding to it."

Hope for a Thorn will be shown a the Gasparilla festival on Mar. 20 at 1 p.m. at Cinebistro in Tampa's Hyde Park shopping district. Tickets are available online at the festival Web site.