KATYA is a feature length romantic comedy written by Cathryn de Prume. In Brooklyn 1979, a teenage girl coming of age in the world of her eccentric, domineering, Russian mother, learns to find her voice as she falls in love with a young, illegal immigrant artist from El Salvador. Seventeen year old, awkward but beautiful, Katya De Loon is on the verge of womanhood, but her opinionated, unconventional, Russian mother, Svetlana, wants her to be by her side forever. If Katya doesn’t liberate herself from the possessive stranglehold of her mother, she will never become the person she was meant to be. Miguel, a handsome young artist, fleeing the violence and dictatorship in El Salvador, answers the family’s ad for a room for rent. Miguel is shocked when he sees how the De Loon family lives – rabbits, chickens and a duck run around freely, not to mention the unbelievable mess. To Katya, he represents everything she wants – expression, sexuality and freedom, but that means betraying her mother. Many of Svetlana’s ideas are brilliant and ahead of her time. She preaches to her children to think for themselves. But Katya begins to realize that her mother actually wants her children to think just like her. Miguel and Katya fall in love. Katya hides the relationship from Svetlana. Miguel opens up Katya’s world. He encourages her to find her own voice and her vision. Katya realizes she’s been suppressing who she is in order to please her mother. She wants to live her dreams but leaving the nest and seeing Svetlana for who she really is, is terrifying and painful. Katya wishes her mother could love and accept her as the woman she’s becoming, but she can’t. Once Svetlana finds out about the relationship she does the unthinkable to destroy it. Full of colorful characters, told in three languages, English, Russian and Spanish, KATYA is about how love can strangle you or love can liberate you.