Film festivals are rich terrain for brilliant cinematic discoveries, and among the finest and funkiest finds of SXSW 2026 is Edie Arnold is a Loser. The feature directorial debut of Megan Rico and Kade Atwood, this coming-of-age comedy is as hilarious as it is chaotic and devilishly iconoclastic.
Like Juno, this fresh and funny film centers on a high school weirdo who treads an unconventional path to finding her bliss. Now, Edie Arnold (Adi Madden Cabrera) is not getting preggo out of wedlock. Sure, the scowling nuns at her all-girls Catholic school consider Edie an underachieving delinquent, but she doesn’t drink, and celibacy is practically the only extracurricular activity she’s succeeding at — though not by choice. Like her classmates, she lusts after the only boy in their orbit, altar boy Walter Boyd (Lucas Van Orden), described by Edie’s friends as “like Jesus’s hotter younger brother, who was too hot to die.” But to him, she’s invisible… until she haphazardly starts a punk band called The Nundead.
So begins a wild ride of self-discovery, friendship, fumbled flirtations, and punk rock.
Edie Arnold is a Loser cleverly explores identity through crushes.
Credit: Courtesy of Infigo Films
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