For as long as Georgia Carls (11) can remember, she has been making films. Carls herself says, “As soon as I found out that phones had cameras, I was pretty much recording everything.” Her first short film was a game show featuring her as the emcee and her Zhu Zhu Pets as contestants.

After this, Carls made her first Youtube channel in fourth grade with the handle “lordofdodos.” “[It] was the first time that I actually consistently created videos [and] edited videos,” Carls says about the channel. Following the Youtube channel, Carls moved into short films, such as her most recent short film, “Touch.”

“Touch” is a short film based on the Daft Punk song of the same name that follows a couple’s love story from youth to old age. Carls says the film is an “homage to [her] grandparent’s love story,” and conveys the messages of “moving on after death [and] acceptance” and “memories of a person don’t always have to be soiled by their passing.”

Messages are a very important part of Carls’ filmmaking process, and she believes it is necessary to have some sort of message in every film she makes no matter the genre or film’s content. Carls says “Not every piece of art has to have meaning, but every piece of art should be meaningful.”

It comes as no surprise to those close to Carls in the SMS community that “Touch” is one out of 100 short films nominated in the Los Angeles International Children’s Film Festival. When Carls found out the news, she says, “I submitted to eight festivals … and was not expecting to get into any except Indie Memphis … [but] it’s very validating to know that the work I create is viewed and appreciated by a larger audience.”

In terms of the future, Carls definitely has plans to attend film school and to continue making films. “Living in Los Angeles and creating films with a bunch of people who also love making films is like a big dream of mine,” says Carls.