Los Angeles-based filmmaker Jen Prince is coming home.
The 1994 Taft High School graduate will premiere her first feature film “Miles Underwater” at the 32nd Annual San Antonio Film Festival on Wednesday.
The film, which was shot in San Antonio at venues like La Villita, Hemisfair and the San Antonio River, wrapped production just before the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a halt. It was finally completed after years of delays forced the filmmakers to find creative ways to finish the project.
“We planned to shoot more sequences in post-production, but then the pandemic hit,” Prince, 49, told the San Antonio Report during a recent interview. “We didn’t feel comfortable fundraising because there were bigger things to navigate at the time.”
“Miles Underwater” was co-produced by Will Underwood, the longtime director of video production and a cinema instructor at Saint Mary’s Hall, a private college prep school in San Antonio.
The film is a coming-of-age drama that tells the story of 13-year-old Miles (Maxwell Purdy), who relocates to San Antonio with his mother after they are displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Set over the course of a single day on the anniversary of the storm, the film follows Miles as he continues to heal from his past while discovering friendship and a deeper understanding of himself.
“My goal was to celebrate San Antonio in a way that was untraditional,” Prince said. “You get the colors and the feeling and the spirit of the city without [the film] being just about San Antonio. We walk past the Alamo, but it’s not an Alamo story.”
Born at Beale Air Force Base in Northern California, Prince spent her childhood moving from one military assignment to the next. Her family eventually settled in San Antonio when her father was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base before her fifth-grade year.
In high school, Prince tapped into her creative side. She joined theater at Taft and played clarinet in the Youth Orchestra of San Antonio. She enjoyed acting in the plays of William Shakespeare, including “Hamlet” and “The Comedy of Errors.”
“Our theater teacher really found a way to help us reinvent [Shakespeare] on our own, whether it was changing the setting or making the characters modern,” she said. “That helped me find my own voice within it. It was a singular experience.”
Prince went on to earn her bachelor’s degree in acting from the University of Texas at Austin in 1998. She was also accepted into the university’s selective Plan II Honors Program, an interdisciplinary liberal arts curriculum that emphasizes critical thinking, writing and research.
She later relocated to Los Angeles, where she earned a master’s degree in film production from the University of Southern California in 2003.
“USC’s program was very production heavy, so you hit the ground running immediately,” Prince said. “I directed several films while I was there. I tried to soak it all up.”
During her college years, Prince noticed how difficult it was for women directors to break into Hollywood. USC’s production classes, she said, were evenly split between men and women, but when she looked at the industry beyond the classroom, she saw far fewer women getting the opportunity to direct major films. Unfortunately, two decades later, the industry’s numbers still tell a similar story.
According to a recent study by the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), only 10.1% of the top 109 theatrical movies released in 2025 were directed by women filmmakers. That is a 5% decline from the year before.
“I really went on the hunt for female filmmakers,” she said. “I was definitely showing up to anything Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides) made. The films of Agnes Verda (Cléo from 5 to 7) were really inspiring. I was watching everything I could get my hands on.”
With her first feature film now in her back pocket, Prince wants to show audiences that although there are still significant challenges for women directors like herself, she is proof that those barriers can be overcome through persistence, creativity and a commitment to telling stories that matter.
“Those stats represent an obstacle, [but] there is a door for you to push through and announce you’re in the room loudly,” Prince said. “The more we’re vocal about wanting a seat at the table, we’ll find that seat, and then we’ll make our own table.”
Currently, Prince is working as an independent producer and editor for Cosm, an immersive entertainment company that builds large-scale venues to present projects like Mystère by Cirque du Soleil in Shared Reality.
She hopes moviegoers who watch her film this week recognize the heart and effort she put into her first feature. “I hope they see my love for the city,” she said. “It has some of that San Antonio magic in it.”
Prince’s film “Miles Underwater” makes its world premiere at SAFILM at the Radius Center at 106 Auditorium Circle #120 at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, July 22.
It’s one of 181 films to be screened during the festival, which runs from July 21-26 at various sites. Check the full schedule at safilm.com. Single movie tickets range from $6.49 to $11.49. Film badges range from $49.99 to $139.99.
