When it was announced that the newest film from eighteen-year-old director Emily Hagins, entitled My Sucky Teen Romance, was going to premiere at SxSW, I was ecstatic. Almost every member of our SXSW coverage team either lives or has previously lived in Austin and knows Emily personally. Hell, some of us even donated our time to assist in the movie’s completion. That made it slightly difficult to lend our voices to reviewing the film. So do we decline to review it? Do we expend no words on it at all? Yes…and no. There is a story here, and a damn good one at that, completely divorced from the film itself. Emily’s story. Hagins wrote her first feature-length film, Pathogen, at age 11.  The next year, she earned a grant from the Austin Film Society to produce Pathogen, effectively becoming the youngest recipient of that award. Her tireless dedication to making her first feature film, and the fact that she wasn’t even in high school yet, attracted the attention of a trio of documentary filmmakers who noticed Hagins’s casting call posted on a local website called Austinactors.net. They crafted their 2009 film Zombie Girl: The Movie around her efforts. Between 7th and 8th grade, when the biggest thing that happened to most of us was getting our first kiss at a skating party, she was hard at work on The Retelling, her second feature. And now, here at SXSW 2011, Hagins’s third film played to bright marquee lights and packed houses [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

This week, on a very special episode of Reject Radio, we do what Hollywood finds impossible by creating a successful reboot. The show is getting an upgrade (which is why you can hear both drilling and confetti being tossed constantly in the background), and the new format promises to make everyone who listens to the show three inches taller and wildly, wildly wealthy. As in, so wealthy you’ll have to figure out how to buy off politicians. You can check out the show guide below, but the quick and dirt version involves two beloved Rejects battling it out in a game of wits, a teenage director seeing her first SXSW premiere, a visual effects artist arguing on behalf of post-conversion 3D, and 5 myths about production that ensure movies will be crappy. Loosen up your tie and stay a while. Listen Here: Download This Episode

The first trailer for My Sucky Teen Romance, the horror comedy from teen filmmaking sensation Emily Hagins (Pathogen, The Retelling) has hit the web after making its debut at this past weekend’s Wizard World Austin Comic-Con. And as you might not expect, it’s a movie that doesn’t feel like it was directed by someone who just turned 18. In fact, you wouldn’t have even noticed that it was directed by an 18-year old if I hadn’t just mentioned it. Twice. But now that you know, please don’t hesitate to be impressed by the quality of the production. Allowing yourself to be awed by the maturity Ms. Hagins shows (especially visually) isn’t a distraction, either. There’s real talent here — talent that can be seen in two and a half minute teaser. And that’s not something we can say of every filmmaker, despite their age.

Having seen both of Emily Hagins’s films – Pathogen and The Retelling – I can firmly say that while there is a spark of potential in both, the amateur nature of both is what shines through the most. Of course, both films come with the caveat of being made by a teenager, but it’s clear that the films are low-budget learning processes. That’s why I was taken aback by the first image that’s emerged from her new film, My Sucky Teen Romance. With a slightly bigger budget and some bigger names in the Austin film scene at her side, the look of the film has jumped from a young girl borrowing her mom’s camera to a young filmmaker making a mark.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, there is a rare opportunity in this life to do the right thing. Whether it’s sheltering those kittens that were going to be euthanized or volunteering to be the one to tell that co-worker about their offensive body odor, the call to greatness doesn’t come around just every day. And when it does, you have to be ready for it.

You may remember the film Zombie Girl: The Movie from Adam Sweeney’s coverage of Fantastic Fest ’08. In his review he called it a “diamond in the rough,” placing it among the best docs he’d seen in all of 2008. We now have a trailer for the film, in anticipation of its Slamdance premiere.

Every film festival has a diamond in the rough. For Austin’s Fantastic Fest the honor belongs to Zombie Girl: The Movie, the story of local writer/director Emily Hagins who made a feature-length zombie movie… at the age of twelve.