In Megan Rico and Kade Atwood’s Edie Arnold is a Loser, Catholic school student Edie Arnold (Adi Madden Cabrera) is far from popular but starts a punk rock band with the equally uncool Frances (McKenna Tuckett) after ending up onstage at a concert, throwing her carefully-policed educational experience into chaos and showing how the world works differently for those who are considered cool.
Awards Buzz had a fun opportunity to speak with the filmmakers and stars about how they reflect back on their own time at school. Rico summed up who the film might be intended for but why that isn’t necessarily applicable:
“We’ve been saying that we think this film is most for weird fourteen-year-old girls, but, I don’t know, Kade loves it and he helped make it and he was never a weird fourteen-year-old girl, so we do think it has some universal appeal. But that is kind of our target demo, I think.”
Atwood responded to my enthusiasm for the movie:
“As we’ve slowly been slowly sharing the film with people like yourself that we wouldn’t necessarily expect it would resonate with, there have been a lot of people that have really loved it and enjoyed it. But I think most of those people are kind of losers at heart. Losers in a good way! Because I am a loser myself.”
Cabrera shared what enticed her about the project:
“Honestly, I was pretty hooked even from just reading the description on the casting call. I was like, this concept is so cool. I love punk music and never went to Catholic school, but was kind of a loser in high school. Then, once I read the script, reading the sides for auditions and stuff, and then eventually getting to read the full script, just every time I got a new piece of it, I was like, oh, this is so good. I just always knew it was going to be really fun.”
Tuckett came to the same conclusion from a different perspective:
“I graduated high school in May, so I was actually in high school while filming it. I just remember this sense of just watching movies and consuming media where there’s all these teenage girls and they were always incredibly feminine, even the dorky people were still super hot and looked like twenty-eight years old. I just remember always being like, why am I not this yet? I’m in high school now, shouldn’t I be like this? And just no, the happiest I am is when I’m super dorky. So reading the script where these characters, these girls, they’re weird, they’re horny, they’re super dorky. It was like, oh, this is me. These are my friends. Having a representation of that was so exciting and I was like, I need to be a part of this. I need to help share this story.’
Edie Arnold is a Loser makes its world premiere in the Narrative Feature Competition at the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival.
