South by Southwest has carved out a specific niche for itself on the festival circuit, a little rowdier and more spirited than the likes of Sundance or Cannes.
That off-kilter ethos is encapsulated in the opening-night lineup at the festival’s centerpiece venue, Austin’s Paramount Theatre. World-premiering Friday, Paul Feig’s “Another Simple Favor,” a sequel to the 2018 hit “A Simple Favor,” leads the way with returning stars Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick. Then comes Seth Rogen’s Apple TV+ series “The Studio,” a knowing satire of contemporary Hollywood with many celebrity cameos. And finally Michael Shanks’ buzzy Sundance premiere “Together,” a shocking body-horror movie starring Alison Brie and Dave Franco, will play at midnight.
Exactly how to describe what distinguishes SXSW from other festivals is another matter.
“I think the word is fun. The festival is about fun,” said filmmaker Jay Duplass, who has been to the event many times and will be there this year to premiere the low-key, character-driven dramedy “The Baltimorons.” “The intention is like, ‘Guys, everything’s so hard. Let’s try to have some fun,’” said Duplass. “Austin’s changed a ton over the years but it is kind of still the spirit of Austin.”
Part of the larger South by Southwest event, which also includes music, technology and a conference that draws boldface names from an array of disciplines, the film and TV festival has gained a reputation for splashy, celebrity-driven premieres such as “The Fall Guy” with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt last year or this year’s “The Accountant 2” with Ben Affleck, “Holland” starring Nicole Kidman and “The Death of a Unicorn” with Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega. But the festival has long been a hotbed for the discovery of emerging talent.
Sean Baker, who just won four Oscars for “Anora,” premiered his first feature film, “Four Letter Words,” at SXSW in 2001. “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” whose directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert had previously won music video prizes at the fest, premiered their film at SXSW in 2022 before going on to win seven Academy Awards. Other filmmakers who have had early works premiere here include Barry Jenkins, Greta Gerwig, Josh and Benny Safdie, Ti West, Destin Daniel Cretton and Lena Dunham
“For us this is the point of everything we do,” said Claudette Godfrey, the festival’s vice president of film and TV. “Finding people we think have an interesting voice or vision and [being] able to support them and be a stepping stone on their road. This is why I’m watching hundreds and hundreds of movies. This is why we are working so hard.”
SXSW was among the earliest festivals to spotlight episodic work; other notable TV premieres this year include showrunners Ramy Youssef and Pam Brady’s “#1 Happy Family USA,” showrunners Paul Hunter and Aeysha Carr’s “Government Cheese” and showrunner Jennifer Cacicio’s “Happy Face.”
On the documentary side, Giselle Bailey and Phil Bertelsen’s “Seen & Heard,” executive produced by Issa Rae, looks at the lives of Black creators in television. Xander Robin’s “The Python Hunt” examines a Florida contest to capture pythons in the Everglades. Margaret Brown’s “The Yogurt Shop Murders” covers the unsolved 1991 murder of four teenage girls in Austin. Dan Farah’s “The Age of Disclosure” explores what the U.S. government knows about the existence of nonhuman intelligent life.
Amanda Peet and Matthew Shear in “Fantasy Life.”
(Fantasy Life Productions LLC)
Feig previously premiered his films “Bridesmaids” and “Spy” at the festival, while Rogen is a reliable SXSW regular as an actor and producer, having been there with “Long Shot,” “Observe and Report,” “Knocked Up” and others. Affleck previously premiered “Air” at the festival.
“I think they all want the same thing,” said Godfrey of what draws filmmakers back to the festival, “which is to get to see their film on a big screen with a great audience. Their positive experiences here in the past is what makes them want to come back. I just think that in this time that is rarer than ever before. There’s just something intangible. It feels like a little bit of magic in there that’s hard to describe.”
Among titles poised to break out of this year’s festival are “Fantasy Life,” the debut for actor Matthew Shear as writer-director. He stars in the film as a depressive young man who falls into a job as babysitter to three young girls and develops a crush on their mother (Amanda Peet). Actress Amy Landecker also makes her feature debut as writer-director in “For Worse,” in which she stars as a recently divorced woman invited to a wedding with the much younger members of her new acting class.
“Baltimorons” is Jay Duplass’ first solo-directed movie without his brother and longtime creative partner, Mark Duplass. It is also the first movie Jay Duplass has directed in some 14 years, a period that has found him working in television as both an actor and a director. (Mark Duplass is an executive producer on the film.)
Co-written by Jay Duplass and Michael Strassner — the pair met on Instagram — the film stars Strassner as a newly sober comedian in Baltimore who breaks a tooth on Christmas Eve and sets off on a series of spontaneous adventures with the one dentist who would see him (Liz Larsen).
Michael Strassner and Liz Larsen in Jay Duplass’ “The Baltimorons.”
(SXSW)
Also premiering at the festival is the relationship drama “Magic Hour,” starring Daveed Diggs and Katie Aselton, who also directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Mark Duplass, her husband. (Jay Duplass is an executive producer on the film.)
Jay Duplass, who moved to Austin in the early 1990s and lived there for 12 years, recalled what it meant to see local filmmakers like Robert Rodriguez and Richard Linklater around town.
“Austin is like my spiritual home,” he said. “That’s really where I came of age being a filmmaker and learned how to do it and still use those methods. Even though we do really big stuff sometimes, I still use a very personal, handmade way of making art, especially with this movie. That’s the arts-and-crafts way of making things in Austin that I learned about.”
Chad Hartigan, director of “The Threesome,” has not been to SXSW in nine years but had previously attended many times even before his 2016 film “Morris From America” played the festival. He met Cherie Saulter, producer of his 2013 film “This Is Martin Bonner,” at the festival. It was also at SXSW that Hartigan met future Oscar winner Adele Romanski, who produced “Morris.”
“I don’t want to say it was networking, but it was really just going and meeting like-minded individuals that became your friends first,” said Hartigan. “And then when it came time to make movies, you had more talented friends to partner up with.
“There’s less of a feeding frenzy for press and buyers and things like that,” he added. “It’s more just focused on having a great screening, having a great time, and it usually always ends up that way. The audiences are really fun and, I mean, sometimes the lines to get food can be a little much, but otherwise no complaints.”
Ruby Cruz, left, Zoey Deutch and Jonah Hauer-King in Chad Hartigan’s “The Threesome.”
(Star Thrower Entertainment)
“The Threesome” stars Jonah Hauer-King as a young man pining for his spiky co-worker (Zoey Deutch) when one night they fall into a threesome with a woman they just met (Ruby Cruz), setting in motion a chain of unforeseen complications.
Making her feature debut as writer-director, Annapurna Sriram also stars in ‘F—toys,” a ribald, campy journey as a young woman attempts to lift a curse placed on her. Sriram first wrote the script some eight years ago, predating projects such as “Euphoria,” “Zola,” “Pleasure” and “Anora” that have similar gonzo vibes and open-minded attitudes toward sex work. Citing influences such as John Waters, Harmony Korine and Gregg Araki, Sriram always felt that SXSW could make a good home for the film, unconventional title and all.
“South-by was definitely our target festival,” said Sriram. “I think we kind of knew we were maybe a little bit too cuckoo-crazy for Sundance, but we were like, Austin is the right kind of weird for this type of cult art-house smutty cinema.”
Annapurna Sriram in “F—toys.”
(Trashtown Pictures)
And while the political realities of the present moment are hard to put completely out of mind in Austin, where the Texas Capitol Building is visible just blocks from the Paramount, Godfrey has no doubt that a little escapism is in order when times are bleak.
“It’s fun to do this, to be an artist and to just be in community,” she said. “You gotta live while you’re alive, man. Things are dark and terrible and I think that people are getting enough of that. To a certain extent, people have always felt like, ‘Oh, I’m going to go on this trip to SXSW and take a little break’ from whatever it is they’re being weighed down with. And I think also if we’re going to make anything better, then we’re going to have to get together and figure it out.”
