The Film & TV Festival returns to Austin, March 7th-15th
SXSW is back. For their 32nd year the venerable convergence of education, tech, music, film, TV, and more is taking over Austin’s streets, bars, theaters, and random little nooks and crannies you never knew existed. Cinapse has it’s base in Austin and has extensively covered our home festival for many a year, and 2025 is no different. As ever, the programmers have done sterling work for put together a compelling (and at a glance, daunting) film lineup. To help, and give you an idea about where to find us during the fest, our team attending has put down some thoughts on their most anticipated features. Read on, and be sure to follow us and our updates during the fest as we look to cover these and other films that deserve your attention.
David Delgado
I’m ill prepared as per usual, so I’ll be extremely brief on the films that I’m even remotely aware of and looking forward to.
Friendship is near the top – all I know is that it’s a comedy with Paul Rudd and Tim Robinson, and that’s all I need to know to be interested. It seems to be the feature director’s debut I have no expectations on that end, but with those two helming I have confidence it’ll be worthwhile.
Drop is a movie where I’m very familiar with the director’s work, and while I don’t know much about the film other than it’s a larger wide release, Christopher Landon’s Happy Death Day series are among my favorite horror comedies of the last decade and I’ll always give him a shot. Everything else is almost totally new to me, but here’s a shortlist of sci-fi or horror that I usually gravitate to, all of which I’ll be interested in checking out: Ash, The Infinite Husk, Redux Redux, It Ends, and The Astronaut.
The multiverse stormed SXSW a few years ago with the smash premier of Everything Everywhere All At Once. This year it’s Redux Redux that is crossing realities, albeit with a much darker twist. A woman with an unsatiated need for revenge, killing her daughter’s murderer in every parallel universe she can find. Hopefully it’s the kind of emotionally driven, small scale sci-fi that shines at festivals.
Christopher Landon’s Happy Death Day movies were smart crowd-pleasers that mixed some sci-fi loop-erly with a fun slasher. We’re still waiting a closing chapter to the trilogy, so here’s hoping the director’s latest film Drop will fill the void. A mystery/thriller where a young woman is terrorized by a series of messages and instructions ‘dropped’ to her phone while on a date.
The Surrender spells out a dark and emotional journey as a mother/daughter pair seemingly make a pact with the devil to bring the patriarch of their family back from the dead. We know that never turns out good, but it’ll undoubtedly make for some impactful viewing.
Another horror-hook comes with Good Boy, where a family is plagued by a spectral force, but the focus is on the family dog Todd. Leveraging in those animal senses and perspectives could make for a unique addition to the haunted house genre, just so long as Todd survives…
Finally, Fuck Toys. With a title like that you’re assured something a bit bold and edgy, and the synopsis implies it will deliver. A tale of a woman seeking to lift a curse via her journey into the seedy underbelly of Trashtown. We’re promised a “fever-dream” of a feature, one that seems set to explore sexuality and sex-work in the current age. It’s also shot on 16mm film too, so what more do you need to know to support it!
The Rivals of Amziah King: The Vast of Night was far and away my favorite independent film at Fantastic Fest 2019, and I’ve been on tenterhooks waiting for what Andrew Patterson would do next. The answer is a star-studded drama led by Austin’s own Matthew McConaughey and Kurt Russell that blends bluegrass, family strife, and the “ruthless game” of the Honey industry. If The Vast of Night revealed the promise of a breakout indie auteur, The Rivals of Amziah King hints that such promise will pay off in spades.
Friendship: Like millions of other Americans, I can’t help but quote one of Tim Robinson’s rage-filled relatable quips from I Think You Should Leave on what seems to be a near-daily basis. This two-hander with fellow charismatic agent of chaos Paul Rudd looks like an equally hilarious and uncomfortable paean to new friendships in male middle age–an exciting minefield of comedy and cringe I can’t wait to see this pair navigate.
Holland: Finally making its debut after topping the esteemed Black List in 2013 (when Errol Morris and Naomi Watts were its director/star combo), Andrew Sodroski’s screenplay finds exciting new life with a dream team pair of Fresh’s Mimi Cave and the legendary Nicole Kidman. I’m all for a suburban drama with far more brimming under the surface–and it’ll be a treat seeing what this pairing of auteur and actor bring to a screenplay with years of anticipation behind it.
Redux Redux: I’m always in the tank for anything that combines revenge, time travel, and a Jim Cummings appearance–but even the first looks for Redux Redux took me by surprise. Spinning this kind of thriller on its head, Kevin & Matthew McManus don’t just wonder whether those wronged by tragedy will get satisfaction from revenge–but question if having infinite chances at vengeance gets them anywhere closer to closure. It’s the kind of gripping stuff I immediately gravitate to with any festival film.
Hallow Road: Babak Anvari’s Iran-set supernatural horror film Under the Shadow was one of 2016’s most underrated jewels, and his follow-up cerebral thriller Wounds was just as compelling, if a bit more rough around the edges. It’s exciting to see Anvari return to grim and fertile ground for scares and suspense with Hallow Road, to say nothing of what performances he’ll bring out of his leads Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys.
The Surrender: From films like A Dark Song and All You Need is Death to shows like Servant, one of my favorite niche horror subgenres is the paranormal procedural, tracking characters as they methodically evoke the supernatural through complex, demanding means as a way of enacting sickeningly Faustian bargains. The Surrender appears to be right up my alley, as a mother and daughter struggle to keep control of their family patriarch’s resurrection–and is part of an impressive Midnighter lineup assembled by the SXSW team.
The fight for Deaf rights also has incredible representation in the pairing of Deaf President Now! and Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, both of which provide audiences with a double-feature of stories about the Deaf experience–one from the POV of its Academy-Award-winning, trailblazing lead, the other from four College students as they forced a national spotlight on a transforming Civil Rights landscape. Both documentaries are told on scales that are epic as they are intimate, and in ways that are as fascinating and immersive to Deaf and Hearing audiences alike as they more than demand to be.
Friendship: Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd? In the same movie? Just tell me when and where. I heard this movie come up on a podcast a couple months ago and there was a passing reference to this movie being incredibly funny. Getting a chance to check it out a couple months before its May release? Say no more.
The Python Hunt: Apparently there’s a state government sponsored competition in which people help hunt down pythons. You probably already knew the state in question before you finished that first sentence. I can only imagine the insanity that was captured for this doc. The Florida Man vibes are off the chart and I can’t wait to see it.
As always, I’m on the hunt for the newest/latest/best in my genre of choice: action cinema. So while I’m anticipating all sorts of incredible indie drama, righteous fury via documentary, and emerging stories from minority voices… when I’m being honest the stuff I’m most hyped about is always the action and action-adjacent. Here are my most anticipated, in alphabetical order:
40 Acres: The premise grabbed me: Danielle Deadwyler starring as a matriarch and former soldier living a tenuous existence on a post-apocalyptic farm threatened by raiders? Her partner is Michael Greyeyes? They’ve got to fight to survive? This is extremely up my alley, sounds incredibly evocative, and may have just shot from “I’ve never heard of this” to “is this my most anticipated film of the festival?” real quick.
The Accountant 2: No shame, no holding back, I love The Accountant. It’s exploitative, egregiously fanciful, and more than a little busy. But the cocktail of entertainment that comes when you assemble the ingredients of genius/killer/autistic Ben Affleck protagonist, the swagger of Jon Bernthal, and returning director Gavin O’Connor, there’s just so much potential for this sequel to go to even more entertaining places and I’ll be at this premiere grinning like a madman.
Ash: I admittedly had to look up who Flying Lotus was, but I’m down to see a musician/artist turned director helm a sci-fi/action/thriller starring Eiza González, Aaron Paul, and my guy Iko Uwais. I don’t really know what to expect here, but that assemblage of talent in a spacey-sci-fi package has my butt in the theater. New Jack Fury: I know very little about the film, its creators, or its on screen talent. But as a lifelong fan of 1980s action films, Blacksploitation cinema, and the like, this appears to be a loving send up (or maybe a modern take?) on films like The Last Dragon or I’m Gonna Get You Sucka and I’m very much all in to check something like this out from an emerging team of filmmakers!
The Surfer: Sometimes, a person is simply a movie star, and their mere presence will be all I need to be attracted to a project. And while I can’t say I’ve seen every title the man has ever made, you best believe I’ll be attending a screening of a Nic Cage film when the SXSW programmers have brought it into the fold. I also love the basic premise of a humiliated man fighting back against a local surfer gang. Let’s ride.
We Are Storer: Look, in my house, we respect Michael Bay. If the maestro is going to direct a documentary about a Parkour crew, I’m as all in as someone can get. I don’t follow parkour culture or anything like that, but I adore the form when I see it in action movies and as much as I often enjoy maximalist Bay, I’m almost always on board when he dials it back and does something a little more stripped down. Baytriots, let’s do this.
There are a lot of promising, and fairly eclectic, things that I am looking forward to catching at the festival this year. Top of my list is the idiosyncratic-looking folk musical O’Dessa; I really enjoyed director Geremy Jasper’s debut film Patty Cake$ and what he has come up with here seems fairly singular. Speaking of director’s whose work I have enjoyed in the past, Drop is the latest from Happy Death Day’s Christopher Landon, a thriller about anonymous threats appearing on a widowed mother’s phone.
On the documentary side of the festival, I typically pass on the musical biopic docs that pop up all over the place at SXSW, but this year a Butthole Surfers doc (delightfully subtitled The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt) definitely has my attention. And Arrest the Midwife, a documentary covering the plight of Mennonite midwives facing legal challenges in Northern New York, seems like it could be a vital look at rights surrounding birth choice that often get lost in larger conversation around abortion access.
About SXSW Film & TV Festival
Now in its 32nd year, SXSW Film & TV Festival brings together creatives of all stripes over nine days to experience a diverse lineup and access to the SXSW Music and Comedy Festivals plus SXSW Conference sessions with visionaries from all corners of the entertainment, media, and technology industries.
About SXSW
An essential destination for global professionals, the annual March event features sessions, music and comedy showcases, film and television screenings, world-class exhibitions, professional development and networking opportunities, tech competitions, awards ceremonies, and much more. SXSW proves that the most unexpected discoveries happen when diverse topics and people come together.
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