More than 700 people came out to the Aventura Mall on Thursday, Oct. 23, to attend the premiere of Director, a low-budget action movie shot in Miami.

It was a real coup for filmmaker Aleks Rosenberg, who both directed and served as the director of photography on the film. The maker of one previous feature, 2001's award-winning Zelimo, Rosenberg now teaches in the film department of Miami International University of Art & Design. He said he'd spent the last week-and-a-half working round-the-clock in the editing suite, making last-minute tweaks to prepare the film for its world premiere. The producers sent out invitations to more than 200 journalists, and the response was so enormous they had to rent out a second screen to show the film on.

"It was very surprising," said executive producer Alex Cohen.

In a spin on the usual boys-with-toys action fare, the protagonist of Director is female. Adriana (Claudia Davila) is a Venezuelan dancer who loses her job and decides to relocate to Miami to pursue her dreams of becoming a filmmaker. There, she meets two French brothers, JR (Stephane Kay) and the crazy Mark (Mike Paris), who hire her to videotape their robberies so they can post them on YouTube. Say, maybe in the sequel they can post them on Openfilm!

The stars arrived to the premiere in high style in a stretch limo, which was just barely able to maneuver around the narrow corners of the mall's parking garage. The Openfilm Team was there to film it all and get audience reactions to the screening. Why were we there? Because Alan Melikdjanian, the content director at Openfilm, worked on some of the special-effects shots in the film (try to guess which ones); and because Rosenberg uploaded the trailer for the film to our site and invited us to come out. We'll be uploading footage from the screening soon.

Most of the stars hadn't seen the film yet. They seemed mostly happy with the way their performances turned out. Davila said she was nervous during the shoot and just wanted to give everything 100%, which definitely shows in the final product. Rosenberg, decked out in a Bruce Lee-style button-up shirt, was enthusiastic about the response, though he had a few minor quibbles about the projection. The film was being shown in HD directly from a laptop, and the folks in the projection booth had some trouble keeping the mouse pointer from showing up on the big screen. (The problem was resolved not long into the first reel.)

Whatever the hurdles, the screening proves that you can have a big premiere on a giant screen if you're willing to put up some extra cash to rent a theater and send out invitations. Hard work is rewarded, but there's no rest for the weary low-budget filmmaker. Rosenberg and company are in the midst of shooting another action film, The Bait.

"I'm not doing Lord of the Rings," Cohen said. "I just like action movies."