South By Southwest Film Conference and Festival (SXSW)

How a Legal Battle With Sony Put This Documentary in Jeopardy

Graham Winfrey — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 14:00:00 GMT

One of the lessons from the documentary "Breaking a Monster" is that emerging musical talent and record industry executives don't always mix well. The film, which chronicles the breakout year of teenage metal band "Unlocking the Truth," had its premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2015. Since then, it has been caught in something of a holding pattern due to a legal situation involving Sony Music Entertainment and the release of the band's debut album.

Now, director Luke Meyer and producer Tom Davis are raising funds through a Kickstarter campaign to self-release the film with Abramorama. "We feel strongly that 'Breaking the Monster' will resonate powerfully with audiences," said Richard Abramowitz, president of Abramorama. "Having released 'Anvil: The Story of Anvil,' I know how audiences can respond to a well-made underdog music story." As of April 24, the filmmakers had raised more than half of their $55,000 target, with less than a week left in the campaign.

Though "Breaking a Monster" is in some ways a classic tale of raw talent clashing with the branding-focused record industry, it has one of the most unlikely premises of any film in the music documentary genre. The heavy metal band at the film's center is comprised of three seventh-graders, all of whom are black.

After a short film about the band (also directed by Meyer) and a YouTube video of a live performance both went viral, things started heating up for Unlocking the Truth. The band took on longtime manager Alan Sacks, who previously worked with the Jonas Brothers, and signed a $1.8 million record deal with Sony.

Just as band members Alec Atkins, Malcolm Brickhouse and Jarad Dawkins began to see their hard rock dreams come true — playing for crowds at Coachella and Bonnaroo, attracting feature articles in Spin magazine and appearing on "The Colbert Report" — things started to go south. Massive delays in the release of their debut album led the band to question whether they should have signed their record deal in the first place. On the day that the documentary premiered at SXSW, the band announced that they would try to get out of their contract with Sony.

READ MORE: "I Want My MTV": James Ponsoldt to Write & Direct Film Outlining First Decade of the Iconic Network

While a contractual dispute might be a welcome development for filmmakers looking to attract buzz for their movie, for Davis and Meyer, the band's situation with Sony put their film's future in jeopardy. "It's hard to premiere at a festival and then premiere theatrically so far apart in time," Meyer said.

READ MORE: How a Series of New Music Documentaries is Shaking Up the Genre

The uncertain fate of the band's album also made it close to impossible to find a buyer for the movie. "When you're releasing a music documentary, the music needs to be tested in the marketplace," Davis said.

With Unlocking the Truth's contract termination with Sony now settled and a new album release date set for June 17 — TuneCore is distributing the record — Meyer and Davis are finally ready to bring their movie to the masses. Regardless of what happens with the film, Unlocking the Truth will finally have the opportunity to put their music out there and be heard.

"I truly believe that within a year they're going to be one of the biggest metal bands on the music scene," said Gary Adelman, the attorney for the band who negotiated both their deal with Sony and their eventual contract termination. "It's not a manufactured boy band. For 15-year-olds, they have accomplished music skills of someone twice their age."

So what happens if "Breaking a Monster" doesn't reach its $55,000 Kickstarter target?

"We have a backup plan that will allow us not to flake on the arrangements relating to the longer-lead parts of the theatrical release, but these routes are problematic in their own right," Meyer said. "It's really important for us to reach our Kickstarter goal."

"Breaking a Monster" is planning a theatrical release in roughly half a dozen U.S. cities this summer. Check out Meyer and Davis's short film about the band's origins below.

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Memo to Distributors: Buy These SXSW 2016 Films

Eric Kohn — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 16:36:11 GMT

This year's 2016 SXSW Film Festival featured a lot of new work worthy of anticipation, from a work-in-progress screening of the raunchy animated comedy "Sausage Party" to another party movie from Richard Linklater. There were some appealing television offerings (get ready for "Preacher"), some unorthodox studio projects (hello, "Keanu") and a peek at the future of storytelling. But all of these instances are almost certainly going to be available to most people soon enough. That's not the case for many of the other highlights from the program, which entered the festival without theatrical distribution and have left it the same way. Here's a look at some of those notable titles, in the hopes that someone will do what it takes to get them out there.

"A Stray"

Musa Syed's tender look at a Somali refugee community in Minneapolis puts a human face on the immigration crisis through the exploits of Adan (Barkhad Abdirahman), a young man adrift in his solitary world. Kicked out by his mother and unwelcome at the local mosque where he tries to crash, Adan meets his only source of companionship in a stray dog he finds wandering the streets. Alternating between social outings and job prospects, Adan's struggles never strain credibility, even when an FBI agent tries to wrestle control of his situation to turn him into a spy. Shot with near-documentary realism, Syed's insightful portrait of his forlorn character's life recalls the earlier films of Ramin Bahrani ("Man Push Cart," "Chop Shop"), which also capture an oft-ignored side of modern America. With immigration stories all too frequently coopted for political fuel, "A Stray" provides a refreshingly intimate alternative, which should appeal to audiences curious about the bigger picture — or those who can relate to it.

Sales Contact: musa.syeed@gmail.com

"Best and Most Beautiful Things"

The story of a young blind woman attempting to achieve her dreams could risk mawkishness, but "Best and Most Beautiful Things" mercifully avoids condescending to its subject. Garrett Zevgetis' involving portrait focuses on 20-year-old Michelle Smith, who's both legally blind and autistic, as she attempts to figure out young adulthood. Rather than exploring her story from her parents' point of view, Zevgetis stays with his young heroine, as she develops an S&M romance that liberates her from the reductive sympathies of the other adults in her life. Even as she has a rough time figuring out her career, and faces the lingering wounds of her parents' divorce, Smith's attitude remains defiant. Studios would be wise to adapt this non-fiction material for the YA crowd that flocked to "The Fault in Our Stars" last year. Whereas that story revolved around a young woman making the most of her limited time, "Best and Most Beautiful Things" focuses on the discovery of boundless opportunities in a society designed to suggest otherwise for those facing Smith’s plight.

Sales Contact: Preferred Content

"Hunter Gatherer"

Writer-director Josh Locy's first feature provides terrific material for under-appreciated character actor Andre Royo ("The Wire") as the alienated Ashley Douglas, who's fresh out of a three-year prison stint and stuck at his mother's house. Approaching middle age, Ashley can't seem to find his place anywhere: His ex-girlfriend has moved on and he doesn't have a job. Struggling to set up a ramshackle career selling discarded refrigerators, Ashley joins forces with a young sidekick in his aimless pursuit of restarting his life. Both gently amusing and melancholic, Royo's performance is matched by Locy's astute direction, which make its beleaguered anti-hero's series of dead-ends into a kind of lower class adventure tale. While set in a struggling African American community, "Hunter Gatherer" exists a world away from the simplified portraits found in countless other dramas with similar settings. It's also got one of the most charming ex-cons to grace American screens in some time.

Sales Contact: Cinetic Media

"Donald Cried"

The obnoxious man-child is a common trope in American comedies, but few recent examples can match the hilariously unsettling presence of Donald Treebeck, the obnoxious central figure played by writer-director Kris Avedisian in his effective black comedy "Donald Cried." Avedisian's feature-length debut builds on the distinctively off-putting persona first seen in his short film, a bespectacled pariah stuck in perpetual arrested development. While hardly reinventing the wheel, "Donald Cried" spins it faster than usual, taking cues from its memorably irritating protagonist. Beneath its entertainment value, the movie also hints at the tragedy of aimless adulthood.

Sales Contact: Cinetic Media

"Teenage Cocktail"

John Carchietta's edgy debut is equal parts erotic thriller and coming-of-age drama. The story finds alienated teen Annie (Nichole Bloom) befriending naughty classmate Jules (Fabianne Therese) as the pair develop a clandestine romance. Initially, they plot a reckless escape plan from their boring lives. Then they find something more profitable: the murky field of webcam modeling, which eventually finds them receiving propositions from some of their online clients — taking them into more dangerous territory. With yet another creepy performance from the great Pat Healy ("Cheap Thrills"), "Teenage Cocktail" starts off like "Virgin Suicides" and winds up in "Heathers" territory, hitting a lot of appealing genre buttons at once. Despite the plot's erratic twists, however, "Teenage Cocktail" is grounded in the deeply involving performances of its two young leads, who imbue the increasingly absurd developments with a legitimate air of excitement — and, eventually, dread.

Sales Contact: CAA

"Tower"

The winner of SXSW's grand jury prize for best documentary is a radically fresh approach to the history of mass shootings in America. It focuses on one instance in particular: the events at Austin's University of Texas Tower in 1966, when 25-year-old engineering student Charles Whitman opened fire on the campus square with a sniper rifle, killing 14 people and injuring scores more. Those horrors continue to haunt the city where they take place, but director Keith Maitland doesn't take them for granted. Instead, "Tower" recreates the drama with a mixture of animation and contemporary interviews, imbuing the catastrophe with renewed immediacy. More than just another harrowing reenactment, "Tower" actually turns the material into a bracing suspense film before putting it in context. No matter where you fall in the debate over gun control, Maitland's approach offers a thrilling entry point.

Sales Contact: Cinetic Media

SXSW 2016 Analysis: When Obama Comes to Town, Who's Talking About a Film Festival?

Eric Kohn — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 14:52:39 GMT

A few hours after President Barack Obama lands in Austin to deliver a keynote at SXSW, the festival rolls out the red carpet for one of its homegrown heroes: Richard Linklater, whose college baseball comedy "Everybody Wants Some!!" serves as the opening night entry for the film festival. While Obama and Linklater hail from different universes of productivity, they're similarly effective at galvanizing a community.

Obama, after all, sped his way to the White House on the wings of his "community organizer" past, while Linklater essentially built the Austin film scene that continues to sustain his career. Both men know how to get things done against difficult odds. Is it any surprise that the President singled out "Boyhood," a seemingly impossible 12-year production, as one of his favorite recent movies?

The parallels don't stop there. Obama arrives at the biggest convention for America's professional class at a moment of tremendous cultural upheaval, in the midst of an election cycle where the very liberties of a progressive society are considered at stake. Linklater, meanwhile, remains doggedly committed to making movies at one of the most uncertain periods in the history of the medium.

Linklater's perseverance sends an idealistic message. "Everybody Wants Some!!" will receive a limited release by Paramount in a few weeks, which is a lot better than many of the films at this year's festival can expect. They hover in the growing shadow of the television boom, not to mention a society increasingly committed to portable screens, and the many bright, distracting treats they contain. Over the past decade, as its Interactive section has ballooned to massive proportions, SXSW has reflected the increasing fragmentation of the entertainment landscape, which makes the whole idea of a feature-length movie look like a dated concept.

The SXSW Film Festival is a microcosm of those concerns. The 20 films in its narrative and documentary competitions have no distribution and in most cases, limited commercial viability. Recognizing as much, the industry presence at the festival has dwindled in recent years; while SXSW remains a focal point for networking, anyone seeking an active marketplace should look elsewhere. Mainly, these days, these look to Sundance — and if they don't make the cut there, the Tribeca Film Festival scores a lot of features in need of an atmosphere where they're more likely to stick out to potential buyers.

But the SXSW lineup has the leg up on Tribeca in one key regard: Sensibility. The films that stick out in the program, from the studio entries to the microbudgets, largely resist or subvert traditional storytelling formulas. Joel Potrkyus, a Michigan-based filmmaker whose anarchic movies ("Buzzard" was a SXSW premiere) continues to go against the grind. His latest feature, "The Alchemist Cookbook" — about a deranged man living in the woods — is reportedly even more defiantly offbeat than his earlier works. It's in the "Visions" section for good reason. At this festival, a movie that intrigues a few people may do its job just as well as a universal crowdpleaser.

Other unorthodox entries populate the rest of the sections. In the narrative competition, the anthology film "collective:unconscious" finds five different filmmakers adapting each other's dreams, a tricky proposition that nevertheless reflects the collaborative bonds of America's film scene, and the productivity that results from it. The half-animated documentary "Tower" offers a unique look at a mass shooting through bracing reenactments more surprising and innovative than any more familiar treatment could allow.

Even the studio entries at this year's festival don't walk a familiar path. Hollywood may use SXSW as a marketing engine for some of its more off-kilter titles, but that's not a knock on their ability to offer something different: Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, two of the more iconoclastic comedy writers working in Hollywood today, will premiere a work-in-progress look at their R-rated animated romp "Sausage Party," a Sony Pictures production; "Keanu," a zany buddy movie about a missing kitten starring Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, arrives with similar expectations.

Collectively, the program offers the opportunity to look at America through the movies from a slanted angle, whether by way of edgy humor or narrative invention. It's place for the medium to look in the mirror and prove itself.

But who watches movies these days, anyway? When I first attended SXSW a decade ago, Interactive was an intriguing sidebar for anyone excited about new technologies. I'll never forget the first time I heard about this confusing new social network called Twitter, or the sudden onslaught of check-ins on Foursquare, both of which were unveiled by the Interactive conference with the glittery hype of a revolution. Later came the introduction of a television section in the lineup, which further hinted at the direction of the industry.

But the movies have remained. Their marginalized position — not just at the festival but in society at large — only serves to heighten the intrigue surrounding them. The most exciting ingredients in this year's program aren't the anticipated titles, but the unknown ingredients yet to be discovered. Whether or not 2016 winds up as one of the better years, the festival's continuing attempts to break through the noise retains a symbolic power. At least that much should survive the end of the Obama age.

Stay up to date on all of Indiewire's coverage of the 2016 SXSW Film Festival here.

AMC's 'Preacher' Releases Badass First Look Character Photos Before SXSW Premiere

Kristen Santer — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 21:11:48 GMT

Today AMC released three first-look character photos from the upcoming new drama "Preacher," which is set to release early this summer. Based on the comic books written by Garth Ennis and drawn by Steve Dillon, "Preacher" is a supernatural drama with hints of comedy and dark humor, although producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg might be thinking more along the lines of their apocalyptic comedy "This Is the End." The show will also premiere at the SXSW Film Festival on Monday, March 14 at 2:45pm.

READ MORE: SXSW Film 2016 Unveils Early Highlights, From Jeff Nichols' 'Midnight Special' to Seth Rogen's 'Preacher'

The upcoming series follows a West Texas preacher named Jesse Custer, who seems to be inhabited by a supernatural being. Jesse, his ex-girlfriend and an Irish drifter come together to face the daunting creatures from Heaven, Hell and everywhere in between. "Preacher" stars Dominic Cooper as Jesse Custer, Ruth Negga, Joseph Gilgun, Ian Colletti, W. Earl Brown and Lucy Griffiths.

"Preacher" will premiere this May. See the three new character photos below and watch the trailer above.

READ MORE: Watch: Seth Rogen's 'Preacher' TV Adaptation Debuts First Trailer on AMC

SXSW 2016: 8 Exciting Films From This Year's Festival

Eric Kohn — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 16:41:56 GMT

READ MORE: Ethan Hawke, Jake Gyllenhaal and More Headline 2016 SXSW Features Lineup

There's no reason not to get excited about the bigger films at this year's SXSW Film Festival, which include a work-in-progress look at the R-rated animated comedy "Sausage Party" co-directed by Seth Rogen and the clearly outrageous dog-in-peril romp "Keanu" that reunites "Key & Peele" stars Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele (also playing as a very exciting work-in-progress screening). But those are just a small fraction of the lineup from the Austin festival, which is filled with a number of lesser known entries across multiple sections. Here are a few of the ones that have us excited.

"The Alchemist Cookbook"

"Chicken People"

SXSW's documentary lineup tends to favor more esoteric titles from off the beaten path. Based on premise alone, "Chicken People" falls into this trend. Nicole Lucas Haimes' non-fiction enterprise explores the oft-ignored arena of competitive poultry — and the eccentric characters attracted to the sport. With scenes set at events such as the Ohio National Poultry Show — aka "the Westminster of Chickens — "Chicken People" sounds like a Christopher Guest movie stuffed into the mold of the competitive spelling bee classic "Spellbound."

"Donald Cried"

The downtrodden tale of a successful city dweller returning to his suburban roots may not be the freshest idea for a comedy, but Kris Avedisian's first feature dares to turn the formula into a pitch-black comedy filled with awkward moments. The director co-stars the titular Donald, an obnoxious interrupter for the ages. The movie finds former Rhode Island resident Peter (Jesse Wakeman) returning to his old neighborhood 15 years after graduating high school, with the sole intention of burying his grandmother. In the process, he runs into his loud-mouthed, bespectacled old pal, whose shameless means of inserting himself into Peter's life leads to a series of cringe-worthy encounters. Set over the course of a long day, "Donald Cried" is a painful nostalgia trip that's also terribly funny. Also a selection for the upcoming New Directors/New Films series, it's set to unveil a new comedic talent both behind the camera and in front of it.

"The Dwarvenaut"

"Dungeons and Dragons" obsessives are fertile terrain for cultural analysis, but documentary filmmaker Josh Bishop focuses on one man who's turned the obsession into art. Stefan Pokorny's lifelong interest in the role-playing game led him to start a company called "Dwarven Forge" 20 years ago that involves the creation of actual dungeons to surround players in the midst of the game. A compelling subject whose passion has been transformed into a career, "The Dwarvenaut" promises a lively look at the evolution of a unique creative mind.

"I Am a Hero"

An award-winner last fall at the horror-focused Sitges Film Festival in Catalonia, Spain, "I Am a Hero" adapts Kengo Hanazawa's manga about a cartoonist bit by a zombie, which leads the unhappy protagonist down a path of even greater chaos. Directed by Sato Shinsuke, the film stars Yo Oizumi (a voice actor best known for "Howl's Moving Castle"), and promises a fast-paced mixture of action sequences and blood-soaked mayhem that's bound to shake up the overwrought zombie genre in more ways than one.

"Tower"

One of the most buzzed-about non-fiction entries in this year's festival revolves around a notorious incident in Texas history: In 1966, University of Texas college student Charles Whitman sat with a sniper rifle at the top of the University of Texas Tower, killing 16 people over the course of 96 terrifying minutes. Director Keith Maitland revisits the scenario with a mixture of rotoscopic animation and first-person accounts of the harrowing situation that promises a bracingly new way of looking at one infamous mass shooting in an era when such horrific events are anything but history.

"Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru"

Motivational speaker Tony Robbins may not be the most obvious fit for the behind-the-scenes documentary treatment, since his sensationalist stage presence often speaks for itself, but filmmaker Joe Berlinger (the "Paradise Lost" trilogy, "Brother's Keeper") has plenty of experience with turning widely publicized events into cinematically-inspired cultural dissections. This one promises a closer look at Robbins' "Date With Destiny" seminars to explore the mania surrounding his advice as well as the energetic personality responsible for the fame.

"Karaoke Crazies"

One of the more intriguing out-there selections in the off-kilter material of its "Visions" section, this Korean entry focuses on the story of a karaoke bar that's struggling for customers and somehow lures a serial killer. The premise alone holds plenty of intrigue, but "Karaoke Crazies" is also reportedly just as bizarre as it sounds. Of course, it doesn't help that film festivals are a haven for karaoke obsessives, which makes this seemingly non-commercial title readymade for SXSW's party-loving atmosphere.

Watch: Imagination Runs Wild in Exclusive 'Donald Cried' Clip

Bryn Gelbart — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 18:48:51 GMT

READ MORE: 140 Projects Selected for 2015 Project Forum at Independent Film Week

Kris Avedisian is the man in charge of "Donald Cried." The new indie, premiering at the SXSW Film Festival next month, stars the writer-director as the titular Donald. The film marks Avedisian's debut feature and is based on a short of the same title that he released in 2012.

The official synopsis reads: "Peter Latang (Jesse Wakeman) left working class Warwick, Rhode Island to reinvent himself as a slick, Wall Street mover and shaker. Fifteen years later, when he's forced to return home to bury his Grandmother he loses his wallet on the trip. Stranded, the only person he can think of to help him out is his next door neighbor and former childhood friend Donald Treebeck (Kris Avedisian). Donald hasn't changed a bit, and what starts as a simple favor turns into a long van ride into their past."

In the exclusive clip above, Donald pontificates on the secret life of Peter, only to be disappointed. "Donald Cried" is coming to SXSW next month. Check out the exclusive clip above and the poster below.

SXSW Reveals More Titles for 2016, Including Midnighters and Fest Favorites

TOH! — Tue, 09 Feb 2016 20:00:00 GMT

The South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival (March 11 to 19, 2016) has completed its lineup with the Midnighters, Festival Favorites, Shorts Programs and Special Events for its 23rd year in Austin, Texas. As already announced, Austin fave Richard Linklater will open SXSW with “Everybody Wants Some.” In total, 139 features and 114 shorts will play the fest.

Jury Awards will be revealed during the SXSW Film Awards on Tuesday, March 15 at the Paramount Theatre. Other awards announced will include Narrative Feature Competition and Documentary Feature Competition, Design Awards and Special Award winners. All feature film categories, except Special Events, will be eligible for Audience Awards, announced online on Saturday, March 20.

SXSW Adds World Premieres from Alumni Mike Birbiglia and Ti West to 2016 Lineup

Previously announced highlights include the world premieres of Netflix original film "Pee-wee's Big Holiday," produced by Judd Apatow and star Paul Reubens, director Joe Berlinger's ("Metallica: Some Kind of Monster") documentary portrait " Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru," and the AMC series "Preacher." SXSW will also see the North American premiere of Jeff Nichols' highly anticipated "Midnight Special," as well as screenings of Mike Birbiglia's comedy "Don't Think Twice," with Keegan-Michael Key, Ti West's revenge drama "In the Valley of Violence," starring Ethan Hawke, Taissa Farmiga and John Travolta, and the U.S. premiere of "Wild" director Jean-Marc Vallee's "Demolition," with Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts, and Chris Cooper.

FEATURES

MIDNIGHTERS

Scary, funny, sexy, controversial – provocative after-dark features for night owls and the terminally curious.

Carnage Park

Director/Screenwriter: Mickey Keating

The year is 1978. A team of wannabe crooks botch a small-town bank heist and flee with their hostage deep into the California desert, where they find themselves in a harrowing fight for survival against a psychotic ex-military sniper. Cast: Ashley Bell, Pat Healy, Alan Ruck, Darby Stanchfield, Larry Fessenden, Graham Skipper, James Landry Hebert, Michael Villar

Hush

Director: Mike Flanagan, Screenwriters: Mike Flanagan, Kate Siegel

A deaf woman is stalked by a psychotic killer in her secluded home. Cast: Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr, Michael Trucco, Samantha Sloyan (World Premiere)

I Am a Hero (Japan)

Director: Shinsuke Sato, Screenwriter: Akiko Nogi

Japan’s first major zombie movie based on a blockbuster manga series! Cast: Yo Oizumi, Kasumi Arimura, Masami Nagasawa (U.S. Premiere)

Jack Goes Home

Director/Screenwriter: Thomas Dekker

After his father is killed in a car crash, Jack travels home to Colorado to help nurse his mother (who was injured in the crash) back to health. There, he uncovers long buried secrets and lies within his family, his friends and his very identity. Cast: Rory Culkin, Lin Shaye, Daveigh Chase, Natasha Lyonne, Louis Hunter, Nikki Reed, Britt Robertson (World Premiere)

Johnny Frank Garrett's Last Word

Director: Simon Rumley, Screenwriters: Ben Ketai, Marc Haimes, Tony Giglio

When a young man is executed for committing murder, he leaves behind a curse letter in which he promises to take vengeance on all those connected to his trial. Cast: Sean Patrick Flanery, Erin Cummings, Devin Bonne, Mike Doyle (World Premiere)

My Father Die

Director/Screenwriter: Sean Brosnan

A young deaf boy avenges the death of his brother, and the killer happens to be his father. Cast: Joe Anderson, Gary Stretch, Candance Smith, Kevin Gage, John Schneider, Gabe White, Ross Britz, Michael Francis Murphy, William Mark McCullough, Frances Reagan James (World Premiere)

Pet

Director: Carles Torrens, Screenwriter: Jeremy Slater

A lonely man fatefully reunites with a former high school classmate. When she spurns his advances, he takes her prisoner, only to find that she is not what she seems. Cast: Dominic Monaghan, Ksenia Solo, Jennette McCurdy, Nathan Parsons, John Ross Bowie, Da'Vone McDonald, Janet Song (World Premiere)

PHANTASM: Remastered

Director/Screenwriter: Don Coscarelli

Filmmaker J.J. Abrams and his company Bad Robot have undertaken a meticulous 4K restoration of writer/director Don Coscarelli's beloved horror fan favorite about a young boy confronting the embodiment of death in the form of the sinister "Tall Man." Cast: Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury, Angus Scrimm, Reggie Bannister, Kathy Lester

Under the Shadow (Jordan, Qatar, UK)

Director/Screenwriter: Babak Anvari

As a mother and daughter struggle to cope with the terrors of the post-revolution, war torn Tehran of the 80s, a mysterious evil begins to haunt their home… Cast: Narges Rashidi, Avin Manshadi, Bobby Naderi, Arash Marandi, Ray Haratian, Hamid Djavdan, Nabil Koni

Untitled Fede Alvarez/ Ghost House Thriller

Director: Fede Alvarez, Screenwriters: Fede Alvarez, Rodo Sayagues

A group of teens break into a blind man's home thinking they'll get away with the perfect crime. They're wrong. Cast: Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, Daniel Zovatto, Stephen Lang (World Premiere)

FESTIVAL FAVORITES

Acclaimed standouts & selected previous premieres from festivals around the world.

Cameraperson

Director: Kirsten Johnson

Exposing her role behind the camera, Johnson reaches into the vast trove of footage she has shot over decades around the world. What emerges is a visually bold memoir and a revelatory interrogation of the power of the camera.

Chevalier (Greece)

Director: Athina Rachel Tsangari, Screenwriters: Efthimis Filippou, Athina Rachel Tsangari

Six men on a fishing trip on a luxury yacht decide to play a game to compete. Things will be compared. Things will be measured. Songs will be butchered, blood will be tested. Friends will become rivals and rivals will become hungry. Cast: Yorgos Kentros, Panos Koronis, Vangelis Mourikis, Makis Papadimitriou, Yorgos Pirpassopoulos, Sakis Rouvas

Free In Deed

Director/Screenwriter: Jake Mahaffy

Free in Deed depicts one man’s attempts to perform a miracle when a single mother brings her young boy to church for healing. Cast: David Harewood, Edwina Findley, RaJay Chandler, Kathy Smith

Gleason

Director: Clay Tweel, Screenwriters: Seth Gordon, Clay Tweel At the age of 34, Steve Gleason was handed a death sentence. When doctors diagnosed him with ALS, they gave the former NFL defensive back and New Orleans hero two to five years to live. So that is what Steve chose to do - LIVE.

The Greasy Strangler

Director: Jim Hosking, Screenwriters: Jim Hosking, Toby Harvard

Ronnie runs a Disco walking tour with his son, Brayden. When a sexy woman takes the tour, it begins a competition between father and son for her love. It also signals the arrival of an oily strangler who stalks the streets at night. Cast: Michael St Michaels, Elizabeth De Razzo, Sky Elobar, Joe Walters, Gil Gex, Abdoulaye NGom, Sam Dissanayake, Holland MacFallister

Hunt For The Wilderpeople (New Zealand)

Director/Screenwriter: Taika Waititi

Ricky (Julian Dennison) is a defiant city kid who finds himself on the run with his cantankerous foster uncle (Sam Neill) in the wild New Zealand bush, in this hilarious and heartfelt adventure from director Taika Waititi (What We Do In The Shadows). Cast: Julian Dennison, Sam Neill, Rima Te Wiata, Rachel House, Oscar Kightley, Rhys Darby, Stan Walker, Cohen Holloway, Mike Minogue, Troy Kingi



Morris from America

Director/Screenwriter: Chad Hartigan

Morris From America is an endearing, heartfelt coming-of-age comedy about Morris, a 13-year-old African-American boy who has just moved to Heidelberg, Germany with his caring but troubled single father. Cast: Markees Christmas, Craig Robinson, Carla Juri

Newtown

Director: Kim A. Snyder

Newtown documents the aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting of schoolchildren in American history. A cast of characters within Newtown and beyond interconnect to weave an intimate story of trauma, grief and community resilience.

Operation Avalanche

Director: Matt Johnson, Screenwriters: Matt Johnson, Josh Boles

In 1967, four undercover CIA agents were sent to NASA posing as a documentary film crew. What they discovered led to one of the biggest conspiracies in American history. Cast: Matt Johnson, Owen Williams, Josh Boles, Ray James

Presenting Princess Shaw (Israel)

Director: Ido Haar

Presenting Princess Shaw is the true story of the incredible Princess Shaw and the enigmatic composer Kutiman, who discovers her from the other side of the world.

Richard Linklater - dream is destiny

Directors: Louis Black, Karen Bernstein

Richard Linklater - dream is destiny is a feature-length documentary on the filmmaker Richard Linklater and an unusual look at a fiercely independent film style that emerged from Austin, Texas in the 1990s.

Sing Street (USA/Ireland)

Director/Screenwriter: John Carney

A boy growing up in Dublin during the 1980s escapes his strained family life by starting a band and moving to London. Cast: Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Lucy Boynton, Jack Reynor, Aidan Gillen, Mark McKenna, Maria Doyle Kennedy

Trapped

Director: Dawn Porter, Screenwriters: Dawn Porter, Sari Gilman

Trapped follows the clinic workers, women, and lawyers on the frontlines of the battle as they fight to keep abortion safe and legal across the US for millions of poor and uninsured women caught in a political quagmire.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES

24 BEATS PER SECOND

Showcasing the sounds, culture and influence of music & musicians, with an emphasis on documentary. (Open to Music badgeholders)

Robert Klein Can't Stop Shaking His Leg

Director: Robert Klein

A hilarious and heartfelt look at the career and influence of comedy legend Robert Klein. (World Premiere)

Sidemen - Long Road To Glory

Director: Scott Rosenbaum, Screenwriters: Scott Rosenbaum, Jasn Cadic

An intimate look at the lives and legacies of piano player Pinetop Perkins, drummer Willie 'Big Eyes' Smith and guitarist Hubert Sumlin, all Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf sidemen. (World Premiere)

SXGLOBAL

A diverse selection of International filmmaking talent, featuring innovative narratives, artful documentaries, premieres, festival favorites and more.

Semana Santa (Mexico)

Director/Screenwriter: Alejandra Márquez Abella

Dali and her 8-year-old son Pepe take a vacation with Dali’s boyfriend, Chavez. Instead of bringing them closer, their beach holiday brings out things in each of them that threaten to pull this emerging family apart. Cast: Anajosé Aldrete, Tenoch Huerta, Esteban Ávila (U.S. Premiere)

VISIONS

Visions filmmakers are audacious, risk-taking artists in the new cinema landscape who demonstrate raw innovation and creativity in documentary and narrative filmmaking.

Boone

Director: Christopher LaMarca

A unique sensory and unsentimental peek beneath the veil of the Utopian dream of farming. Stripped of interviews with farmers or agricultural experts, a sense of time and place serve as a meditation on the gritty reality of three young goat farmers. (World Premiere)

Shorts and special events on page two.

SHORT FILM SCREENING SECTIONS

NARRATIVE SHORTS

A selection of original, well-crafted films that take advantage of the short form and exemplify distinctive and genuine storytelling.

Barry

Director/Screenwriter: Jay Rondot

A homespun cocaine dealer takes to social media to expand his operation, but things don't go as planned. (World Premiere)

Boys (Sweden)

Director: Isabella Carbonel, Screenwriters: Isabella Carbonell, Babak Najafi

Markus is in an institution for young sex offenders. His only friend inside is the unpredictable and violent Tobias. (North American Premiere)

Crooked 180 (Netherlands)

Director/Screenwriter: Kevin Boitelle

A young skateboarders summer with endless possibilities and an approaching ending. (World Premiere)

Dastaar

Director/Screenwriter: Javian Ashton Le

Harpreet and Emily drive to New York days after 9/11 (World Premiere)

Ernestine & Kit (UK)

Director: Simon Bird, Screenwriters: Simon Bird, Kevin Barry

A darkly comic fairytale about two elderly women who travel the countryside of rural Ireland, imagining the terrible, immoral lives people are living today. Their one consolation is the innocence of children… (World Premiere)

The First Men

Director/Screenwriter: Benjamin Kegan, Story by: Stacey Richter

An overextended teacher bumps into a troubled student while at the mall with her mom. (World Premiere)

Greener Grass

Director: Paul Briganti, Screenwriters: Jocelyn DeBoer, Dawn Luebbe

In this dark comedy of manners set in a surreal world, meticulously-coiffed soccer moms Jill and Lisa vie for perfect children, perfect husbands, and most importantly, perfect teeth. (North American Premiere)

Her Friend Adam (Canada)

Director/Screenwriter: Ben Petrie

A boyfriend's jealous impulse spirals out of control in 16 minutes of romantic doom.

Het Geluk (Belgium)

Director/Screenwriter: Jan Van Dyck

One evening, 38-year-old Frank returns to his quiet residential house where his family has organized a surprise birthday party. (North American Premiere)

Hip Hip Hooray

Director: Lizzy Sanford, Screenwriters: Lizzy Sanford, Anna Cordell

Harry breaks up with his girlfriend on his 30th birthday, moments before discovering she has thrown him a surprise birthday party.

Homebodies (Australia)

Director/Screenwriter: Yianni Warnock

Shannon cooks dinner whilst speaking to a perverted stranger online. Andrew takes a bath wrapped in seared Christmas lights. What could possibly shock this estranged couple from their malaise? (World Premiere)

How Was Your Day? (Ireland)

Director: Damien O’Donnell, Screenwriters: Nollaig Rowan, Damien O’Donnell

A woman is excited about the approaching birth of her first child. (North American Premiere)

Jumpers

Director/Screenwriter: Anonymous

One way or another, Paul is getting Cody off the roof.

Quelques Secondes (France)

Director: Nora El Hourch

The daily life of five girls living in a hosting center in Paris, and trying to move forward. (U.S. Premiere)

She Stoops To Conquer (Canada)

Director: Zack Russell, Screenwriters: Zack Russell, Kayla Lorette

A struggling performer stumbles upon a real-life version of the character she plays in this doppelgänger rom-com.

Thunder Road

Director/Screenwriter: Jim Cummings

Officer Arnaud loved his mom.

Too Legit

Director/Screenwriter: Frankie Shaw

After becoming pregnant from sexual assault on campus, a young woman goes on a journey to find out if the rape was 'legitimate.'

Victor XX (Spain)

Director/Screenwriter: Ian Garrido

What would happen if you didn't feel comfortable with your body? What if you decided to experiment with your gender?

Where You Are

Director/Screenwriter: Graham Parkes

When Jen's son disappears in a game of hide-and-seek, she unwittingly embarks on a journey through time in order to find him. (World Premiere)

Woman in Deep

Director/Screenwriter: Janicza Bravo

A woman struggles to make it through her birthday in one piece. (World Premiere)

DOCUMENTARY SHORTS

Slices of life from across the documentary spectrum.

Alive & Kicking: The Soccer Grannies of South Africa (South Africa/USA)

Director: Lara-Ann de Wet

A story that brings to life the struggle of grannies in South Africa through the game of soccer. (World Premiere)

Another Kind of Girl (Jordan)

Director/Screenwriter: Khaldiya Jibawi

17-year-old Khaldiya meditates on how the refugee camp has opened up new horizons and given her a sense of courage that she lacked in Syria.

Bacon & God's Wrath (Canada)

Director: Sol Friedman

A 90-year-old Jewish woman reflects on her life’s experiences as she prepares to try bacon for the first time.

The Black Belt

Director: Margaret Brown

In September 2015, Alabama closed 31 DMVs, which largely impacted voters in Alabama's Black Belt. To combat these closures, the Secretary of State issued a Mobile Voter Registration unit, which traveled to every county to issue voter IDs. (World Premiere)

Dollhouse

Director: Terri Timely

An aesthetically lavish portrait of a “reborn” artist who strives for maximum verisimilitude in her creation of newborn baby dolls. (World Premiere)

Like

Director: Garrett Bradley

At the intersection of internet popularity and economic gain a booming industry grows in Bangladesh based on Likes. (World Premiere)

Love Bite: Laurie Lipton and her disturbing black & white drawings (UK)

Director: James Scott

No one on the planet has drawn more than Laurie Lipton. Armed with only a pencil, her haunting images seek answers to the most uncomfortable themes in our culture. But what compels her to live a life of isolation drawing is neither black nor white. (World Premiere)

Miss Me: The Artful Vandal

Director: Mohammad Gorjestani

Renowned Montreal street artist, “Miss Me”, gives us an unprecedented inside view into her life and her quest for self-liberation and authenticity, as she uses her art to take aim at the objectification of women in advertising. (World Premiere)

Phil's Camino

Directors: Annie O'Neil, Jessica Lewis

Due to treatments for his stage 4 cancer, Phil can only dream of walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain. He does the next best thing: he builds a Camino behind his house and along the way he learns his true pilgrimage is the one he travels within. (World Premiere)

The Provider

Directors: Leah Galant, Maya Cueva

Restrictive laws, such as HB2 in Texas, threaten abortion providers and force clinics to shut down or hire out-of-state practitioners. Some abortion doctors, such as Dr. Shannon Carr, travel hundreds of miles to provide legal and safe abortions.

These C*cksucking Tears

Director: Dan Taberski

The gritty, fearless voice behind the world's first and only gay-themed country music album, 40 years after its release. (World Premiere)

The Vodou Healer

Director: Lucy Walker

In post-earthquake Haiti, Vodou healer Katy leads a captivating and cathartic all-night ceremony. (World Premiere)

ANIMATED SHORTS

An assortment of stories told using traditional animation, computer-generated effects, stop-motion, and everything in-between.

Accidents, Blunders and Calamities (New Zealand)

Director/Screenwriter: James Cunningham

A father possum tells his kids a story about the most dangerous animal of all – humans! (World Premiere)

David Gilmour - "The Girl in the Yellow Dress" (UK/USA)

Director: Danny Madden

Paris, 1961—The "it" girl walks into a jazz club, imaginations run wild.

Deer Flower (Republic of Korea)

Director/Screenwriter: Kangmin Kim

Deer Flower is a stop motion and 3d printed film following elementary student, Dujung and his parents. Dujung drinks rare food and suffers side effects.

Edmond (UK)

Director/Screenwriter: Nina Gantz

A funny and dark story of a man with cannibalistic urges who travels back through his life, looking for the root of his unhappiness.

Geist (Ireland)

Directors: Alex Sherwood, Ben Harper, Sean Mullen

A shipwrecked fisherman is led to a dark secret within this short thriller. (World Premiere)

Glove

Directors: Alexa Lim Haas, Bernardo Britto

The true story of a glove that has been floating forever in space since 1968.

Heila Ormur

Director/Screenwriter: Rose Stark

A man, infected, runs for his life.

LOVE (Hungary)

Director/Screenwriter: Réka Bucsi

LOVE is a short film describing affection in 3 different chapters, through an impact on a distant solar system. (U.S. Premiere)

Pombo Loves You (UK)

Director: Steve Warne, Screenwriters: Josh Blaaberg, Steve Warne

A distant father is forced to confront a heroic but troubled past life as the 1980's TV show character Pombo.

Shiny

Directors: Daniel Cloud Campos, Spencer Susser

A damsel in distress gets undressed when a man from the Midwest puts to rest a world that’s obsessed with “the priceless,” also known as “the shiny.”

Snowfall (Ireland)

Director: Conor Whelan

A story of fleeting love at a house party.

Things used to be hidden (Germany)

Director/Screenwriter: Tara Mercedes Wood

Things used to be hidden is a mockumentary about the aftermath of a disaster which caused everyone to loose their perception filters. Various characters tell us how they feel about their new lives. Is knowing it all really what we want? (North American Premiere)

Trash Cat

Director/Screenwriter: Kelsey Goldych

A cat that likes to knock over trashcans. (World Premiere)

Vocabulary 1

Director: Becky James

An oblivious Snake and his neighbor, Butterfly, come to life on a vocabulary worksheet. (World Premiere)

MIDNIGHT SHORTS

Bite-sized bits for all of your sex, gore, and hilarity cravings.

An Arms Length (UK)

Director/Screenwriter: Max Weiland

God couldn’t be everywhere, so he created mothers.

Battlefield Casualties (UK)

Director: Price James, Screenwriters: Darren Cullen, Price James

Battlefield Casualties is a Veterans For Peace UK Film challenging the British Army's policy of recruiting 16-year-olds into the most dangerous army jobs.

Don't Tell Mom (Japan)

Director: Sawako Kabuki

A nocturnal education film, designed to help children develop their emotions and expressions as well as language and physical skills by enjoying singing and exercising with a big brother.

Eat My Shit (Spain)

Director/Screenwriter: Eduardo Casanova

Samantha has an anus instead of a mouth. Everyone picks on her but she just wants to be normal.

Gwilliam

Director: Brian Lonano, Screenwriters: Brian Lonano, Victoria Cook, Kevin Lonano

A disgusting love story between Man and Goblin.

MANOMAN (UK)

Director: Simon Cartwright

When Glen attends primal scream class, he releases something from deep within that knows no limits.

Night of the Slasher

Director/Screenwriter: Shant Hamassian

A 'shot-in-one-take' slasher film about a teenage girl who must commit horror movie sins by drinking alcohol, doing drugs, and having sex in order to lure a masked killer and exact revenge.

Night Stalker

Director: New Media Ltd , Screenwriters: Mike Anderson, Ryan Dickie, Abigail Horton

The Night Stalker gives you poisoned to go container of food and you turn to clay and go to another dimension!!!

The Procedure

Director/Screenwriter: Calvin Lee Reeder

An unassuming man is forced to endure a strange experiment.

A Reasonable Request

Director: Andrew Laurich, Screenwriters: Gabriel Miller, Andrew Laurich

A desperate son reconnects with his estranged father to ask an unspeakable favor that will change their lives forever.

Seth

Director/Screenwriter: Zach Lasry

There comes a point in every young man's life where he must rise to the occasion or admit defeat. For Seth, impressing his father is his only goal, his greatest test, his Everest. Today is the day.

The Smiling Man

Director/Screenwriter: A.J. Briones

A little girl home alone finds herself face-to-face with pure evil.

Snatchers

Directors: Stephen Cedars, Benji Kleiman, Screenwriters: Stephen Cedars, Benji Kleiman, Scott Yacyshyn

A teenager's trip to the clinic becomes freakier than usual when she learns that something supernatural is involved. (World Premiere)

MUSIC VIDEOS

A range of classic, innovative, and stylish work showcasing the scope of music video culture.

Childish Gambino - "Sober"

Director: Hiro Murai

Dillon Francis - "Not Butter"

Director/Screenwriter: Brandon Dermer

DJ Carnage feat. Tomas Barfod - "November Skies"

Director/Screenwriter: Saman Kesh

Earl Sweatshirt - "Grief"

Director: Hiro Murai

Elliot Moss - "Pattern Repeating" (Norway)

Director: Daniel Howlid

Flying Lotus - "Coronus, the Terminator"

Director: Young Replicant

Fur Voice - "Fantasia" (Spain)

Director/Screenwriter: Pablo Maestres

Joywave - "Somebody New"

Director: Keith Schofield

Leftfield & Sleaford Mods - "Head and Shoulders" (UK)

Directors: Casey Raymond, Ewan Jones Morris

Lorn - "Acid Rain"

Director: R113

Modestep - "Rainbow" (UK)

Director: Jamie Delaney

Naughty Boy ft. Beyoncé and Arrow Benjamin - "Runnin' (Lose It All)" (UK)

Directors: Charlie Robins, Julie Gautier

Robin Schulz - "Sugar (feat. Francesco Yates)" (Germany/USA)

Director: Zak Stoltz

Rudimental - "I Will For Love" (Belgium)

Director: I Owe Youth

The Shoes - "Drifted" (France/USA)

Director: Dent De Cuir

The Shoes ft. Blaine Harrison - "Submarine" (UK/USA)

Director: Karim Huu Do

Son Lux - "Change is Everything"

Director: Nathan Johnson

Tussilago - "Waltz" (Sweden)

Director: Maceo Frost

Vance Joy - "Georgia" (Australia)

Director/Screenwriter: Luci Schroder

Vince Staples - "Señorita"

Director: Ian Pons Jewell

Yvein Monq - "Twun" (Hungary)

Director: Kinopravda, Screenwriter: Viktor Horváth

TEXAS SHORTS

An offshoot of our regular narrative shorts program, composed of work shot in, about, or somehow relating to the Lone Star state.

1985

Director/Screenwriter: Yen Tan

A dying man seeks out a beauty consultant to hide his symptoms. (World Premiere)

Becoming Blair

Director: Brianna Barsalou

An exploration of the lifestyle and challenges faced by those who are transgender through the lens of one individual, Blair.

Joan on the Phone

Director/Screenwriter: Kayla Abuda Galang

Joan delivers an overzealous apology in a series of voicemails. (World Premiere)

The Mink Catcher

Director: Samantha Buck, Screenwriters: Marie Schlingmann, Samantha Buck

Dallas, Texas, 1980: A gossip columnist hunts down Dallas’s new First Lady to unearth the truths underneath her legendary mink coat.

Minor Setback

Director/Screenwriter: Augustine Frizzell

Two teen girls scheme their way out of work to spend a day at the beach. Things don't go as planned. (World Premiere)

The Send-Off

Directors: Ivete Lucas, Patrick Bresnan

Emboldened by a giant block party on the evening of their high school prom, a group of students enters the night with the hope of transcending their rural town and the industrial landscape that surrounds them.

The Superlative Light

Director: Ben Steinbauer, Screenwriters: Ben Steinbauer, Robert Shults

Documentary photographer, Robert Shults, went from being a homeless dreamer to a home-owning artist after taking photos of the brightest light source in the known universe, a laser in basement of the physics department at UT. (World Premiere)

Thunder P.

Director/Screenwriter: Steve Collins

An I.T. employee discovers a shameful secret during a routine printer malfunction. (World Premiere)

Two Cities

Director: Darius Clark Monroe

Locked inside the mind and memory of Dr. Mtangulizi Sanyika, he reflects what it means to be part of the displaced New Orleans population in Houston.

TEXAS HIGH SCHOOL SHORTS

A preview of the next filmmaking generation, as Texas High Schoolers present shorts of 5 minutes or less.

Always With You

Director/Screenwriter: Jonathan Schuette

Emotionally struggling to prepare for a funeral, a teenage boy receives crucial encouragement from his father.

The Ambition Song

Director: Ian Chapoy

An animated interpretation of "The Ambition Song."

The Archer Hadley Story

Directors: Ben Root, Alex Treviño

The Archer Hadley Story follows Archer Hadley, a senior student who has cerebral palsy as he hosts the Wheelchair Challenge fundraiser in hopes of buying his school automatic doors.

Art

Directors: August Grau, Devan Prabhakar

Two artists of different style interpret the same landscape.

Badi' Al Zaman

Director/Screenwriter: Arhum Khan

Badi' Al Zaman is a story about a musician's experiences that go into constructing his art, and with all the content, he can't help but think you never really feel him, because you don't hear his words, you probably watch them.

Coffee

Director/Screenwriter: Zoe Allen

You might think you are enjoying your coffee, but what if someone is enjoying you?

Dejection

Directors/Screenwriters: Francisco Alvarez, Linda Robledo

A young man contemplates suicide while drinking heavily, never leaving his room, due to his survivor's guilt over a previous incident that inadvertently killed his loved one.

Distractions

Directors: Devan Prabhakar, Matthew Theilman, Screenwriter: Devan Prabhakar

The world is filled with distractions, and one boy is engulfed by social distractions.

DoubleDVE - "Endeavor"

Director: Gilbert Giles-Sosa, Screenwriter: Daniel Vango

Taking back hip-hop from the mainstream.

Goin' Nuts

Director/Screenwriter: Delaney Alexander

A Dragosaur doesn't need anyone's help in claiming the largest nut he has spotted for himself, especially a pesky Dragoroo. It soon finds that even the smallest critters can be the biggest help.

Good Night Lizzie

Director/Screenwriter: Kriti Narayanan

A group of women have sinister plans for an abusive father and his daughter.

Hello

Directors/Screenwriters: Autumn Grounds, Andrew Fleming

In the dramatic short film Hello, Lawrence Kelly, a suicidal boy, meets a girl named Eden, and without even knowing it, she singlehandedly saves his life.

Icarian

Director/Screenwriter: Jonah Goldberg

A girl is put through a series of trials to join a group of apocalypse survivors.

KATHAROS

Director/Screenwriter: Evan O'Brien

Haunted by his past, a tortured boy turns to KATHAROS, a dream therapist to help him overcome his trauma.

Lady of Paint Creek

Director/Screenwriter: Alexia Salingaros

A woman, trapped in a society of mindless ritual and minimal emotion, must find it in herself to escape — and face the consequences.

Lucid

Director/Screenwriter: Remy Dunagan

A girl with insomnia sees a figure during a sleepless night. Was she dreaming?

Memories Upon Memories

Director: Geoffrey S. Glenn, Screenwriters: Dominique Coleman, Geoffrey S. Glenn

When a man's reality is questioned, he goes on both a mental and physical journey looking for answers.

Mischief & Mayhem

Director/Screenwriter: Isabelle Hodge

A mischievous fairy intercedes between a girl and her crush.

Of Gods and Bells

Director/Screenwriter: Alexia Salingaros

A unique exploration of the hidden, magical world of classical Indian dance in a seemingly modern and suburban environment.

Out of Reach

Director: Max Wilson, Screenwriters: Kyria Seitz, Brad Kowalski, Max Wilson

An animator on a tight deadline just wants take a sip of his hot chocolate and continue working. Unfortunately his computer and his reaching tactics conspire against him.

Smashed

Director/Screenwriter: Adam Weider

They 1v1 irl.

The Third Floor

Director: Jesse Scholz, Screenwriters: Jesse Scholz, Garrett Avey

A detective hunts down the man that murdered his partner.

Through the Eyes of Autism

Director: Jared DeDonato

Do You See What We See?

Trolley

Directors: Cole Forson, Cameron Bossalini, Dirk Czarnecki, Jason Davis, Arhum Khan, Garrett Stoler

Hey, you ever heard of one of them thought experiments?

SPECIAL EVENTS

Live soundtracks, cult re-issues & much more. Our Special Events section offers unusual, unexpected & unique one-off film events.

Doug Benson & Master Pancake Interrupt Leprechaun 4: In Space

Directors: Doug Benson, John Erler

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, Doug Benson (Doug Loves Movies) and Master Pancake (resident film-talkers at the Alamo Drafthouse) verbally disrupt Leprechaun 4: In Space (1997). Cast: Warwick Davis, Brent Jasmer, Jessica Collins, Guy Siner, Gary Grossman

Last Night at the Alamo

Director: Eagle Pennell, Screenwriter: Kim Hinkel

A stunning restoration of Eagle Pennell’s important feature that has been lost for 30 years. Sonny Davis and Lou Perryman return to star in Kim Henkel note-perfect script under Pennell's direction. Classic indie filmmaking. Restoration Premiere. Cast: Sonny Carl Davis, Lou Perryman, Steven Mattila, Tina-Bess Hubbard, Doris Hargrave, Peggy Pinnell, Kim Hinkle, J. Michael Hammond, Amanda Lamar, Earnest Huerta Jr. (World Premiere)

Three Nights of Free SXSW Outdoor Film Screenings!

New for 2016, enjoy three nights of free film screenings under the stars in the heart of Downtown Austin, Texas!

Where: Long Center Terrace (South 1st and Riverside)

When: Saturday, March 12 + Sunday, March 13 + Monday, March 14

How: Open to the public with free SXSW Guest Pass. Available at guestpass.sxsw.com

Saturday, March 12 / Rock Out With Your Doc Out

Darkon: 10th Anniversary screening

Directors/Screenwriters: Luke Meyer, Andrew Neel

10th Anniversary screening of the cult-hit documentary Darkon about American LARPers. The film covers an epic war raging through the fantasy realm of Darkon, investigating our complex relationship with fantasy and reality.

with Heavy Metal Parking Lot: 30th Anniversary Screening

Directors: John Heyn, Jeff Krulik

Hailed as one of the greatest rock films ever, this short documentary follows the tailgating antics of metal fans in a parking lot before a Judas Priest concert in 1986. This year marks the 30th anniversary of a pre-internet viral video cult classic.

Sunday, March 13 / The Best Little Outdoor Screening in Texas!

Smokey and the Bandit with an intro by The Bandit himself, Mr. Burt Reynolds

Director: Hal Needham, Screenwriters: James Lee Barrett, Charles Shyer, Alan Mandel, Story by: Hal Needham, Robert Levy

The Bandit is hired on to run a tractor trailer full of beer over county lines in hot pursuit by a pesky sheriff. Cast: Burt Reynolds, Sally Fields, Jerry Reed, Paul Williams, Jackie Gleason

Monday, March 14 / Family Night Under The Stars!

Cartoon Network presents: The Powerpuff Girls

Directors: Nick Jennings, Bob Boyle

Before the broadcast debut of the newly re-imagined series this Spring, Cartoon Network will take over the Long Center in Austin and host a fun-filled event under the stars to celebrate the premiere of The Powerpuff Girls! Be among the first in the world to see episodes from the new series, along with fun, food, and surprises. (World Premiere)

Check Out Exclusive Poster for Insightful SXSW Doc 'Best and Most Beautiful Things'

Mike Lown — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 16:17:44 GMT

READ MORE: Ethan Hawke, Jake Gyllenhaal and More Headline 2016 SXSW Features Lineup

Before it plays at this year's SXSW, the documentary "Best and Most Beautiful Things" is drumming up some anticipation with a poster premiere here on Indiewire. The film was directed by Garrett Zevgetis ("A Mercenary Tale") and executive produced by Kevin S. Bright, best known as one of the co-creators of the hit show "Friends."

The film follows a precocious 20-year-old woman named Michelle Smith who lives with her mother, Julie. Michelle is quirky and charming, legally blind and diagnosed on the autism spectrum, with big dreams and varied passions. Zevgetis documents her eclectic journey of self-discovery with her fellow outcasts, while redefining what it really means to be "normal."

"Best and Most Beautiful Things" will be having its world premiere at the 2016 SXSW Film Festival in March. Preferred Content will be selling the picture to prospective buyers. Check out the exclusive poster below.

READ MORE: 7 Hidden Gems in the 2016 SXSW Features Lineup

SXSW Announces Most of Its 2016 Lineup: Competition Sections Are 40% Female-Helmed

Laura Berger — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 20:00:00 GMT

South by Southwest has announced the bulk of its 2016 lineup, and eight of twenty films in competition are female-helmed or co-helmed: That amounts to a not-at-all shabby 40%. In 2015, only 25% of the films in competition were directed or co-directed by women. What a difference a year makes -- in the Competition sections, at least.

Female filmmakers are typically better represented in the documentary world than the narrative, but happily women account for 40% of both the Narrative Feature and Documentary Feature Competitions at the 23rd edition of SXSW.

The Narrative Feature Competition includes Debra Eisenstadt's "Before The Sun Explodes," Lisa Robinson and Annie J. Howell's "Claire in Motion," Julia Hart's "Miss Stevens" and Lily Baldwin, Frances Bodomo, Josephine Decker and Lauren Wolkstein's "collective unconscious." Among the diverse offerings are portrayals of a chaperone at a drama competition ("Miss Stevens") and a woman making sense of her husband's disappearance ("Claire in Motion").

The Documentary Feature Competition features "Alive and Kicking" by Susan Glatzer, "The Liberators" by Cassie Hay, "The Seer" by Laura Dunn and "Ovarian Psychos" by Joanna Sokolowski and Kate Trumbull-LaValle. You can look forward to docs about topics as varied as feminist bicycle crews ("Ovarian Psychos") and medieval treasure in Texas ("The Liberators").

Other sections of the festival's programming are dramatically less female-friendly.

The Headliners category is described by SXSW as follows: "Big names, big talent. Headliners bring star power to SXSW, featuring red carpet premieres and gala film events with major and rising names in cinema." Zero of eight films screening in this section are directed by women -- and none of them are about women, either.

The Narrative Spotlight category, where "[h]igh profile narrative features [receive] their World, North American or U.S. premieres at SXSW," is comprised of 17 films, only two of which, or 12%, are helmed by women: Stella Meghie's "Jean of the Joneses" and Sophie Goodhart's "My Blind Brother."

While the improved numbers of women directors in the Competition sections at SXSW are worth celebrating, the fest still has its work cut out for it when it comes to representing female filmmakers in some of its other noteworthy, attention-grabbing categories.

See below for all of the films announced for SXSW 2016 so far. List adapted from Variety. All female-directed selections in bold.

NARRATIVE FEATURE COMPETITION

Ten world premieres; ten unique ways to celebrate the art of storytelling. Selected from 1,442 narrative feature submissions in 2016.

“The Arbalest”

Director/Screenwriter: Adam Pinney

The inventor of the world’s greatest toy reflects on his decade-long obsession with a woman who hates him. Cast: Mike Brune, Tallie Medel (World Premiere)

“Before The Sun Explodes”

Director: Debra Eisenstadt, Screenwriters: Debra Eisenstadt, Zeke Farrow

After his wife kicks him out, an anxious comedian is lured in by an intriguing woman with a stalker. Cast: Bill Dawes, Sarah Butler, Christine Woods, Michael Rivkin, Amir Arison, Kerri Safran, Anna Margaret Hollyman, Gene Serritella, Kristin Slaysman, Eric Fillipkowski (World Premiere)

“Claire in Motion”

Directors/Screenwriters: Lisa Robinson, Annie J. Howell

Claire is sure of herself, her work and family, until — like a bad dream — her husband disappears, leaving a trail of puzzling secrets that shatter her certainty. Cast: Betsy Brandt, Chris Beetem, Zev Haworth, Anna Margaret Hollyman, Sakina Jaffrey (World Premiere)

“collective:unconscious”

Directors: collective:unconscious (Lily Baldwin, Frances Bodomo, Daniel Patrick Carbone, Josephine Decker, Lauren Wolkstein), Screenwriters: Jamal Batts, Lily Baldwin, Frances Bodomo, Daniel Patrick Carbone, Mariama Diallo, Lauren Wolkstein, Dan Schoenbrun (Concept By)

Five of independent film’s most adventurous filmmakers adapt each other’s dreams for the screen. This is going to get strange… Cast: Frank Mosley, Will Blomker, Lily Baldwin, Tonya Pinkins, Daniel Ryan, Ryan Cassata, Sanda Weigl, MJ Frank, Samuel John Damon, Jamal Batts (World Premiere)

“Donald Cried”

Director: Kris Avedisian, Screenwriters: Kris Avedisian, Kyle Espeleta, Jesse Wakeman Returning home to working class Warwick, Rhode Island, Peter Latang encounters childhood friend Donald Treebeck for what starts as a simple favor and turns into a long van ride into two friends past. Cast: Kris Avedisian, Jesse Wakeman, Louisa Krause (World Premiere)

“Hunter Gatherer”

Director/Screenwriter: Josh Locy

After a three-year stint in prison, an unreasonably optimistic middle-aged man returns to his stagnant neighborhood to win back his girlfriend only to find that she and his family have done what they always wanted to do – forget he exists. Cast: Andre Royo, George Sample III, Kellee Stewart, Ashley Wilkerson, Kevin Jackson, Antonio D. Charity, Celestial, Alexis DeLaRosa, Jeanetta Arnette (World Premiere)

“Miss Stevens”

Director: Julia Hart, Screenwriters: Julia Hart, Jordan Horowitz

Stuck at a crossroads in her personal life, it falls on Miss Stevens to chaperone three of her students — Billy, Margot and Sam — on a weekend trip to a drama competition. Cast: Lily Rabe, Timotheé Chalamet, Lili Reinhart, Anthony Quintal, Rob Huebel, Oscar Nuñez (World Premiere)

“The Other Half” (Canada)

Director/Screenwriter: Joey Klein

A grief-stricken man and a bipolar woman fall in love and try to forge a simple life together. Cast: Tom Cullen, Tatiana Maslany, Suzanne Clement, Henry Czerny, Mark Rendall, Deragh Campbell, Nancy Palk (World Premiere)

“A Stray”

Director/Screenwriter: Musa Syeed

Trying to outrun his bad luck, a young Muslim refugee in Minneapolis seems like he just might make it — until he crosses paths with a stray dog. Cast: Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed , Christina Baldwin, Ayla, Fathia Absie, Jamaal “Happy Khalif” Farah, Abdullahi Haji-Mohamed, Ifrah Mansour, Rhiana Yazzie, George McCauley (World Premiere)

“Transpecos”

Director: Greg Kwedar, Screenwriters: Greg Kwedar, Clint Bentley

For three US Border Patrol agents, the contents of one car reveal an insidious plot within their own ranks. The next 24 hours may cost them their lives. Cast: Johnny Simmons, Gabriel Luna, Clifton Collins, Jr. (World Premiere)

Narrative Feature Jury: Lindsay Bahr, Associated Press; Richard Brody, New Yorker; and Alonso Duralde, The Wrap

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE COMPETITION

Ten world premieres: ten real world stories that demonstrate innovation, energy and bold voices. Selected from 1,013 feature documentary submissions in 2016.

“Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America”

Director: Matt Ornstein

Daryl Davis has an unusual hobby. As a musician he has played with legends like Chuck Berry and Little Richard, but in his spare time he likes to meet and befriend members of the Ku Klux Klan. Join Daryl on his personal quest to understand racism. (World Premiere)

“Alive and Kicking”

Director/Screenwriter: Susan Glatzer

Alive and Kicking gives the audience an intimate, insider’s view into the culture of the current swing dance world while shedding light on issues facing modern American society. (World Premiere)

“Best and Most Beautiful Things”

Director: Garrett Zevgetis

In a celebration of outcasts everywhere, a precocious young blind woman disappears into quirky obsessions and isolation. With humor and bold curiosity, she chases love and freedom in the most unexpected of places: a provocative fringe community. (World Premiere)

“Goodnight Brooklyn – The Story of Death By Audio”

Director: Matthew Conboy

Death By Audio, an underground art and music venue, is forced to close in 2014. The film focuses on the struggles of maintaining a community in the face of Brooklyn property development, hostileconstruction workers and a one billion-dollar company. (World Premiere)

“The Liberators”

Director: Cassie Hay

A tiny Texas town. $350 million worth of medieval treasure. The discovery is just the beginning. (World Premiere)

“Orange Sunshine”

Director/Screenwriter: William A. Kirkley

The never-before-told story of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love – a spiritual group of surfers and hippies in California who became the largest suppliers of LSD and Hash in the world during the 60’s and 70’s. (World Premiere)

“Ovarian Psycos”

Directors: Joanna Sokolowski, Kate Trumbull-LaValle

In East Los Angeles, three young misfit women find solace in an unapologetic, feminist bicycle crew. They call themselves the Ovarian Psycos Bicycle Brigade. (World Premiere)

“The Seer”

Director: Laura Dunn

The Seer is a cinematic portrait of farmer and writer Wendell Berry. Through his eyes, we see both the changing landscapes of rural America in the era of industrial agriculture and the redemptive beauty in taking the unworn path. (World Premiere)

“The Space in Between – Marina Abramovic and Brazil” (Brazil)

Director: Marco Del Fiol, Screenwriters: Marco Del Fiol, Marina Abramovic, Fabiana Werneck Barcinski

In search of personal healing and artistic inspiration, Marina Abramovic travels through Brazil experiencing sacred rituals and exploring the limits between art and spirituality. How far will she go to create another work of art? (World Premiere)

“TOWER”

Director: Keith Maitland

An animated and action-packed look at America’s first mass school shooting, when the worst in one man brought out the best in so many others. (World Premiere)

Documentary Feature Jury: David Edelstein, New York Magazine; Jen Yamato,The Daily Beast; and Stephanie Zacharek, Time Magazine

HEADLINERS

Big names, big talent: Headliners bring star power to SXSW, featuring red carpet premieres and gala film events with major and rising names in cinema.

“Demolition”

Director: Jean-Marc Vallee, Screenwriter: Bryan Sipe

Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal), a successful investment banker, struggles after losing his wife in a tragic car crash. Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts, Chris Cooper, Judah Lewis (North American Premiere)

“Don’t Think Twice”

Director/Screenwriter: Mike Birbiglia

An improv group loses the lease on their home theater at the same time that one of their cast members gets chosen for the biggest sketch comedy show on TV. Cast: Keegan-Michael Key, Gillian Jacobs, Mike Birbiglia, Kate Micucci, Tami Sagher, Chris Gethard (World Premiere)

“Everybody Wants Some”

Director/Screenwriter: Richard Linklater

In Richard Linklater’s anticipated “spiritual sequel” to Dazed and Confused, a group of college friends navigate their way through the freedoms and responsibilities of the wild final weekend of the summer of 1980. Cast: Will Brittain, Zoey Deutch, Ryan Guzman, Tyler Hoechlin, Blake Jenner, J. Quinton Johnson, Glen Powell, Wyatt Russell (World Premiere)

“Hardcore Henry” (Russian Federation)

Director/Screenwriter: Ilya Naishuller

An unflinchingly original, first-person action film where YOU are the main character, Henry. Resurrected from death with no memory by your wife, your mission is find her, solve the mystery of your existence and discover the truth behind your identity. Cast: Sharlto Copley, Danila Kozlovsky, Haley Bennett, Andrey Dementyev, Dasha Charusha, Sveta Ustinova (U.S. Premiere)

“In A Valley of Violence”

Director/Screenwriter: Ti West

From Blumhouse, the film tells the story of a drifter named Paul who arrives in a small town, seeking revenge on the thugs who murdered his friend. Sisters Mary Anne and Ellen who run the town’s hotel, help Paul in his quest for vengeance. Cast: Ethan Hawke, Taissa Farmiga, James Ransone, Karen Gillan, John Travolta (World Premiere)

“Midnight Special”

Director/Screenwriter: Jeff Nichols

A father goes on the run to protect his young son and uncover the truth behind the boy’s special powers in writer/director Jeff Nichols’ sci-fi thriller Midnight Special, a film as supernatural as it is intimately human. Cast: Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver, Jaeden Lieberher, Sam Shepard (North American Premiere)

“Pee-wee’s Big Holiday”

Director: John Lee, Screenwriters: Paul Reubens, Paul Rust

In Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, a fateful meeting with a mysterious stranger inspires Pee-wee Herman to take his first-ever holiday in this epic story of friendship and destiny. Cast: Paul Reubens, Joe Manganiello, Jessica Pohly, Alia Shawkat, Stephanie Beatriz (World Premiere)

“Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru”

Director: Joe Berlinger

Granted unprecedented access, Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru captures renowned life and business strategist Tony Robbins behind the scenes of his mega seminar Date with Destiny, pulling back the curtain on this life-altering and controversial event (World Premiere)

NARRATIVE SPOTLIGHT:

High profile narrative features receiving their World, North American or U.S. premieres at SXSW.

“9 Rides”

Director/Screenwriter: Matthew A. Cherry

An Uber driver gets life changing news on the busiest night of the year. Cast: Dorian Missick, Omar Dorsey, Robinne Lee, Xosha Roquemore, Amin Joseph, Skye P. Marshall, Thomas Q. Jones, Tracie Thoms, Aasha Davis, Sujata Day (World Premiere)

“Another Evil”

Director/Screenwriter: Carson D. Mell

After encountering a ghost in his family’s vacation home, Dan and his wife Mary hire an “industrial-grade exorcist” named Os to get rid of the beings. Cast: Steve Zissis, Mark Proksch, Jennifer Irwin, Dax Flame, Steve Little, Dan Bakkedahl (World Premiere)

“BLACK” (Belgium)

Directors: Adil El Arbi, Bilall Fallah, Screenwriters: Nele Meirhaeghe, Adil El Arbi, Bilall Fallah, Hans Herbots

Mavela, 15, is a Black Bronx. She falls madly in love with Marwan, a charismatic member of a rival gang, the 1080s. The young couple is forced to make a brutal choice between gang loyalty and the love they have for one another. An impossible dilemma. Cast: Martha Canga Antonio, Aboubakr Bensaihi (U.S. Premiere)

“Black Mountain Poets” (United Kingdom)

Director/Screenwriter: Jamie Adams

Two professional con artist sisters go on the run and assume the identities of The Wilding Sisters, guest stars of the a poetry retreat in the depths of the Black Mountains. A romantic comedy drama about love, crime, spirituality and soul. Cast: Alice Lowe, Dolly Wells, Tom Cullen, Rosa Robson, Richard Elis, Laura Patch, Roger Evans, Hannah Daniel, Ben McGregor, Claire Cage (North American Premiere)

“From Nowhere”

Director: Matthew Newton, Screenwriters: Matthew Newton, Kate Ballen

Three undocumented Bronx teenagers are graduating from high school while navigating the treacherous waters of trying to get their papers to stay in the US. Cast: Julianne Nicholson, Denis O’Hare, J. Mallory McCree, Octavia Chavez-Richmond, Chinasa Oghuagu, Raquel Castro, Tashiana Washington, Sydni Boudin, Jim Norton, Portia Johnson (World Premiere)

“I Am Not A Serial Killer” (Ireland, United Kingdom)

Director: Billy O’Brien, Screenwriters: Billy O’Brien, Chris Hyde

In a small Midwestern town, a troubled teen with homicidal tendencies must hunt down and destroy a supernatural killer whilst keeping his own inner demons at bay. Cast: Max Records, Christopher Lloyd, Laura Fraser, Karl Geary (World Premiere)

“Jean of the Joneses” (Canada, United States)

Director/Screenwriter: Stella Meghie

Chaos ensues after the estranged patriarch of the Jones family dies on their doorstep. When the paramedic who answers their 911 call tries to win over acerbic Jean Jones, his attempts are disrupted by old conflicts that come to a boil at the funeral. Cast: Taylour Paige, Sherri Shepherd, Gloria Reuben, Michelle Hurst, Erica Ash, Mamoudou Athie, Francois Arnaud, Demore Barnes, Anna Hopkins (World Premiere)

“Long Nights Short Mornings”

Director/Screenwriter: Chadd Harbold

An examination of the romantic life of a young man in New York City and his sometimes fleeting, sometimes profound experiences with the women he encounters. Cast: Shiloh Fernandez, Ella Rae Peck, Paten Hughes, Layla Koshnoudi, Christine Evangelista, Cassandra Freeman, Helen Rogers, Stella Maeve, Natalia Dyer, Ebonee Noel, Addison Timlin (World Premiere)

“The Master Cleanse”

Director/Screenwriter: Bobby Miller

Down, out and heartbroken, Paul attends a spiritual retreat to cleanse himself and fix his broken life but soon discovers that the cleanse releases more than everyday toxins… a lot more. Cast: Johnny Galecki, Anna Friel, Kyle Gallner, Diana Bang, Kevin J. O’Conner, Oliver Platt, Anjelica Huston (World Premiere)

“My Blind Brother”

Director/Screenwriter: Sophie Goodhart

Love for the same woman causes conflict between an over-achieving blind athlete and the brother who made him that way. Cast: Adam Scott, Nick Kroll, Jenny Slate, Zoe Kazan, Charlie Hewson, Maryann Nagel, Greg Violand (World Premiere)

“Rainbow Time”

Director/Screenwriter: Linas Phillips

A developmentally delayed 40-year-old man named Shonzi is sent to live with his brother Todd. But when Shonzi developes a crush on Todd’s new girlfriend Lindsay, he threatens to reveal past secrets that could ultimately tear the couple apart. Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Linas Phillips, Timm Sharp, Tobin Bell, Lauren Weedman, Artemis Pebdani, Jay Duplass, Reagan Yates, Austin Fryberger (World Premiere)

“Shovel Buddies”

Director: Si&Ad, Screenwriter: Jason Mark Hellerman

After the death of their best friend, Jimmy (Alex Neustaedter) enlists childhood friend Dan (Kian Lawley), little brother Lump, and crush Kate (Bella Thorne) to fulfill his last request. Cast: Bella Thorne, Kian Lawley, Alex Neustaedter, Anton Starkman, Philip Labes, James C. Burns, Jenny Cooper (World Premiere)

“Slash”

Director/Screenwriter: Clay Liford

Neil is a questioning teen who secretly writes erotic fan fiction about popular sci-fi characters. When his classmate Julia discovers his writing, she leads him down a rabbit hole deep into the world of ‘slash’ fiction. Cast: Michael Johnston, Hannah Marks, Michael Ian Black, Missi Pyle, Jessie Ennis, Peter Vack, Sarah Ramos, Robert Longstreet, Tishuan Scott, Lucas Neff (World Premiere)

“Suntan” (Greece)

Director: Argyris Papadimitropoulos, Screenwriters: Argyris Papadimitropoulos, Syllas Tzoumerkas

On a hedonistic Greek island, a local doctor becomes obsessed with a young female tourist when she lets him tag along with her group of hard-partying friends. Cast: Efthymis Papadimitriou, Elli Triggou, Dimi Hart, Hara Kotsali (North American Premiere)

“The Trust”

Directors: Ben Brewer, Alex Brewer, Screenwriters: Ben Brewer, Adam Hirsch

Two corrupt Las Vegas police officers plan to rob a large stash that they find in connection to a local drug operation. Cast: Nicolas Cage, Elijah Wood, Sky Ferreira, Jerry Lewis (World Premiere)

“The Waiting”

Director: Kasra Farahani, Screenwriters: Mark Bianculi, Jeff Richard

Two high school filmmakers decide to create the illusion of a haunting on an unsuspecting neighbor. Cast: James Caan, Logan Miller, Keir Gilchrist, Laura Innes, Edwin Hodge, Bailey Boble, Lili Reinhart, Anne Dudek, Mindy Sterling, Tamlyn Tomita (World Premiere)

“War On Everyone” (United Kingdom)

Director/Screenwriter: John Michael McDonagh

Two corrupt cops in New Mexico set out to blackmail and frame every criminal unfortunate enough to cross their path in this volatile jet-black action comedy. Cast: Michael Peña, Alexander Skarsgård, Theo James, Tessa Thompson (North American Premiere)

DOCUMENTARY SPOTLIGHT

Shining a light on new documentary features receiving their World, North American or U.S. premieres at SXSW.

“Asperger’s Are Us”

Director: Alex Lehmann

In this coming of age documentary, four friends on the autism spectrum whom have bonded through humor and performed as the comedy troupe Asperger’s Are Us will prepare for one final, ambitious show before going their separate ways. (World Premiere)

“The Bandit”

Director: Jesse Moss

The Bandit is a film about 70s superstar Burt Reynolds, his best friend, roommate and stunt-double Hal Needham, and the making of their unlikely smash-hit Smokey & The Bandit. (World Premiere)

“Beware the Slenderman”

Director: Irene Taylor Brodsky

Beware the Slenderman tells the story of a Boogeyman lurking on the internet and two 12-year-old girls who would kill for him. A horrifyingly modern tragedy, this film explores children’s accountability in the online age. (World Premiere)

“Chicken People”

Director: Nicole Lucas Haimes

In a high stakes world where a single broken feather can mean a shattered dream, Chicken People follows the trials and tribulations of those who breed exotic birds in the world of competitive poultry. (World Premiere)

“The Dwarvenaut”

Director: Josh Bishop

The Dwarvenaut is a dreamlike documentary chronicling Brooklyn-based artist Stefan Pokorny’s lifelong quest to inspire humanity through the one medium he knows best: Dungeons & Dragons. (World Premiere)

“Fantastic Lies”

Director: Marina Zenovich

Ten years after the Duke Lacrosse case exploded into the national media, we revisit the case which divided America and explore how it affected the lives of those involved. (World Premiere)

“Hit it Hard”

Directors: Gabe Spitzer, David Terry Fine

Hitting it hard is the only way John Daly knows. It’s how he plays golf. It’s how he lives life. After 25 years of extreme highs and devastating lows, this film explores why Daly has remained one of America’s most beloved athletes. (World Premiere)

“The Hollywood Shorties”

Director/Screenwriter: Ryan Steven Green

In 1980s Los Angeles, a professional dwarf basketball team composed of recognizable-but-typecast actors finds itself the unwitting vanguard of a revolution to represent little people as something other than objects of curiosity. (World Premiere)

“The Incomparable Rose Hartman”

Director: Otis Mass

With a career spanning decades Photographer Rose Hartman is known for her iconic photos from Studio 54 and the fashion world, her boisterous personality and ever presence capturing the New York social scene. (World Premiere)

“Insatiable: The Homaro Cantu Story”

Director: Brett A. Schwartz

Chef and inventor Homaro Cantu helped put Chicago on the culinary map and wanted to change the world. Insatiable takes you on a dizzying and thrilling ride with Cantu, in a story that moves from redemption and inspiration to tragedy and back again. (World Premiere)

“Learning To See”

Director: Jake Oelman

One man’s transformational journey to find the Amazon’s strangest creatures. (World Premiere)

“Mr. Gaga” (Israel)

Director/Screenwriter: Tomer Heymann

Mr. Gaga tells the story of Ohad Naharin, renowned choreographer and artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company, an artistic genius who redefined the language of modern dance. (North American Premiere)

“Seven Songs for a Long Life” (United Kingdom)

Director: Amy Hardie

The intimate story behind our changing relationship with death – with great songs! (North American Premiere)

“Silicon Cowboys”

Director: Jason Cohen, Screenwriters: Steven Leckart, Jason Cohen

Three friends dream up a portable computer at a Texas diner in 1981, and soon battle IBM, the world’s most powerful tech company, for PC supremacy. Compaq Computer’s improbable journey altered the future of computing and shaped the world we now know. (World Premiere)

“The Slippers” (Canada)

Director: Morgan White, Screenwriters: Derek Lageunesse, Morgan White

The Slippers pulls back the Wizards curtain the unbelievable story of Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz, and their impact on popular culture, and the now multi-million dollar a year industry of Hollywood memorabilia collecting. (World Premiere)

“Starving the Beast: The Battle to Disrupt and Reform America’s Public Universities”

Director/Screenwriter: Steve Mims

The story of money, power and politics and the well organized, yet little noticed, efforts to radically disrupt and reform America’s public universities. (World Premiere)

“Thank You Del: The Story of the Del Close Marathon”

Director: Todd Bieber

Fifteen years after Del Close’s death, thousands of comedians (both famous and unknown) gather to celebrate modern comedy’s most important person that no one knows. (World Premiere)

VISIONS

Visions filmmakers are audacious, risk-taking artists in the new cinema landscape who demonstrate raw innovation and creativity in documentary and narrative filmmaking.

“The Alchemist Cookbook”

Director: Joel Potrykus

Self-made chemist Sean, a recluse living in an old trailer in the woods, suffers from pill-popping delusions of fortune. When his manic attempts at cracking the ancient secret of alchemy go awry he unleashes something far more sinister and dangerous. Cast: Ty Hickson, Amari Cheatom (World Premiere)

“American Fable”

Director/Screenwriter: Anne Hamilton

When an 11-year-old girl named Gitty discovers that her father is holding hostage a wealthy man on their family’s remote farm, she chooses to dive into a dark and magical world in this Midwestern-set, fairytale thriller. Cast: Kip Pardue, Peyton Kennedy, Gavin MacIntosh, Rusty Schwimmer, Zuleikha Robinson, Marci Miller, Richard Schiff (World Premiere)

“Baby Bump” (Poland)

Director/Screenwriter: Kuba Czekaj

Growing up is not for kids. Cast: Kacper Olszewski, Agnieszka Podsiadlik (U.S. Premiere)

“I Am Belfast” (United Kingdom)

Director/Screenwriter: Mark Cousins

A visual, poetic depiction of Belfast and its citizens, told with love and passion by someone who has left the city many years ago but is still fascinated by it. (North American Premiere)

“In Pursuit of Silence”

Director: Patrick Shen

In Pursuit of Silence is a meditative film that explores our relationship with silence, sound, and the impact of noise on our lives. (North American Premiere)

“Jules and Dolores” (Brazil)

Director: Caito Ortiz, Screenwriters: Lusa Silvestre, Caíto Ortiz

Jules and Dolores is a pop comedy about the theft of the World Cup Trophy that occurred in Brazil in 1983. Curiously enough, nobody truly knows the details surrounding this unbelievable event, until now. Cast: Paulo Tiefenthaler, Taís Araujo, Danilo Grangheia, Milhem Cortaz, Fabio Marcoff, Pedro Wagner, Álvaro Diniz, Thelmo Fernandes, Otto Jr (World Premiere)

“KARAOKE CRAZIES” (Korea, Republic of)

Director: Kim Sang Chan

Welcome to ADDICTION KARAOKE and let’s sing till the end! (World Premiere)

“Little Sister”

Director/Screenwriter: Zach Clark, Story by Zach Clark, Melodie Sisk

A young nun returns home to visit her estranged family. Cast: Addison Timlin, Ally Sheedy, Keith Poulson, Peter Hedges, Kristin Slaysman, Molly Plunk, Barbara Crampton (World Premiere)

“LOEV” (India)

Director/Screenwriter: Sudhanshu Saria

A weekend trip between friends takes a sudden turn, making them each examine what love is and what it means to them. Cast: Shiv Pandit, Dhruv Ganesh, Siddharth Menon (North American Premiere)

“My Beautiful Broken Brain” (United Kingdom)

Directors: Sophie Robinson, Lotje Sodderland

Her brain is broken. Her mind is limitless. A film about a young woman’s cerebral hemorrhage with outcomes no one could have predicted. (North American Premiere)

“Operator”

Director: Logan Kibens, Screenwriters: Sharon Greene, Logan Kibens

JOE, a programmer and obsessive self-quantifier, and EMILY, a budding comedy performer, are happily married until they decide to use one another in their work. Operator is a dark comedy about love, technology, and what can’t be programmed. Cast: Martin Starr, Mae Whitman, Nat Faxon, Cameron Esposito, Retta, Christine Lahti, Kate Cobb, Kristopher Lofton, Tim Hopper, Trevor Dawkins (World Premiere)

“Spaceship” (United Kingdom)

Director/Screenwriter: Alex Taylor

A girl fakes her own alien abduction and disappears, leaving her father to search for her in a strange teenage world of unicorns and black holes. Cast: Antti Reini, Alexa Davies, Lara Peake, Lucian Charles Collier, Tallulah Haddon, Steven Elder, Jack Winthrop, Kristof Gerega, Harry Jarvis (World Premiere)

“Teenage Cocktail”

Director: John Carchietta, Screenwriters: John Carchietta, Sage Bannick, Chris Sivertson, Amelia Yokel (Story By)

Teenage Cocktail is the story of how Annie and Jules fell in love and how it all got weird. Cast: Nichole Bloom, Fabianne Therese, Pat Healy, Michelle Borth, Joshua Leonard, AJ Bowen (World Premiere)

“Under the Sun” (Czech Republic, Germany, Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of, Latvia, Russian Federation)

Director: Vitaly Mansky

“My father says that Korea is the most beautiful country,” says schoolgirl Zin-mi. Despite continuous interference by government handlers, Under The Sun reveals a never-before-seen glimpse of one family’s life in North Korea. (North American Premiere)

EPISODICS

Featuring innovative new work aimed squarely at the small screen, Episodic tunes in to the explosion of exciting material on non-theatrical platforms, including serialized TV, webisodes and beyond. (New for 2016: Open to all badgeholders)

“Outcast”

Director: Adam Wingard, Screenwriter: Robert Kirkman, Showrunner: Chris Black

Outcast, based on the Skybound/Image comic title by creator Robert Kirkman and artist Paul Azaceta, follows Kyle Barnes, a young man who has been plagued by demonic possession all his life. Cast: Patrick Fugit, Philip Glenister, Wrenn Schmidt, Reg E. Cathey, David Denman (World Premiere)

“Preacher”

Directors: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Screenwriter: Sam Catlin

Preacher is a supernatural, twisted and darkly comedic drama that follows a West Texas preacher named Jesse Custer, who – along with his ex-girlfriend Tulip and an Irish vagabond named Cassidy – is thrust into a crazy world, much bigger than he is. Cast: Dominic Cooper, Ruth Negga, Joseph Gilgun, Ian Colletti, W. Earl Brown, Lucy Griffiths (World Premiere)

“Search Party”

Directors/Screenwriters: Sarah-Violet Bliss, Charles Rogers

Search Party is a dark comedy about four self-absorbed twenty-somethings who become entangled in an ominous mystery when a former college acquaintance suddenly disappears. Cast: Alia Shawkat, John Early, John Reynolds, Meredith Hagner (World Premiere)

“Vice Principals”

Directors: Jody Hill, David Gordon Green, Screenwriters: Danny McBride, Jody Hill

A dark comedy series that tells the story of a high school and the two people who almost run it, the vice principals, who are engaged in an epic power struggle for the top spot. Cast: Danny McBride, Walton Goggins, Kimberly Herbert Gregory, Georgia King, Busy Philipps, Shea Whigham, Sheaun McKinney (World Premiere)

“You Me Her”

Director/Screenwriter: John Scott Shepherd

You Me Her is a poly-romantic half hour series that merges Billy Mernit’s classic Romantic Comedy Structure with the style and tone of a Woody Allen film in a dynamic love story unlike anything we’ve ever seen before on television. Cast: Greg Poehler, Rachel Blanchard, Priscilla Faia, Jarod Joseph, Melanie Papaila (World Premiere)

“24 BEATS PER SECOND”

Showcasing the sounds, culture and influence of music & musicians, with an emphasis on documentary. (Open to Music badgeholders)

“The American Epic Sessions”

Director: Bernard MacMahon, Screenwriters: Allison McGourty, Bernard MacMahon

On the 90th anniversary of the first electrical sound recordings, twenty of today’s greatest artists test their skills against the lost recording machine that first gave America her voice.

“And Punching the Clown”

Director: Gregori Viens, Screenwriters: Henry Phillips, Gregori Viens

Comedian Henry Phillips is lured to LA by a renowned TV producer who wants to bring his story of failure to the screen. But when a major network gets involved, Henry must decide whether he wants to make jokes for a living, or be the butt of them. Cast: Henry Phillips, Sarah Silverman, Tig Notaro, J.K. Simmons, Jim Jefferies, Ellen Ratner, Mike Judge, Mark Cohan, Clifton Collins (World Premiere)

“The Art of Organized Noize”

Director: Quincy ‘QD3’ Jones, III Screenwriter: Joshua A. Krause

Organized Noize shaped the landscape of Hip Hop music with a distinct sound created in the confines of a dungeon. They’re responsible for the careers of Outkast, CeeLo, Goodie Mob and the Dungeon Family. This is the story of the Art of Organized. (World Premiere)

“Artist & Repertoire” (United Kingdom)

Director: Matthew Jones

A pulsating documentary charting the extraordinary life and career of underground DJ icon, music producer and global trip hop mogul, James Lavelle. Starring DJ Shadow, 3D of Massive Attack, Futura, Ian Brown, Grandmaster Flash and Josh Homme. (World Premiere)

“BANG! The Bert Berns Story”

Directors: Brett Berns, Bob Sarles

Music meets the Mob in this biographical documentary about the meteoric career and tragic life of Bert Berns, the most important ’60s songwriter that you never heard of. His hits include Twist & Shout, Hang On Sloopy, and Piece Of My Heart. (World Premiere)

“Born To Be Blue” (Canada, United Kingdom)

Director/Screenwriter: Robert Budreau

Ethan Hawke lights up the screen as jazz legend and icon of cool, Chet Baker, whose comeback from heroin addiction is thrillingly told with wit, verve, and style to burn. Cast: Ethan Hawke, Carmen Ejogo, Callum Keith Rennie, Tony Nappo, Stephen McHattie, Janet-Laine Green, Dan Lett, Kedar Brown, Kevin Hanchard, Tony Nardi (U.S. Premiere)

“Gary Numan: Android In La La Land” (United Kingdom)

Directors: Steve Read, Rob Alexander

The Godfather of electronic music is on a one-way trip to crack America, returning to the studio for the first time in nearly a decade. Android is a celebration of a music-making pioneer and the love story that helped him turn his life around. (World Premiere)

“Honky Tonk Heaven: Legend of the Broken Spoke”

Directors: Sam Wainwright Douglas, Brenda Greene Mitchell

The Broken Spoke has hosted country greats like George Strait, Willie Nelson, Ernest Tubb, Bob Wills, George Jones and Roy Acuff. A profile of “the last of the true Texas dance halls” and the tenacious family keeping it alive amid rapid urban growth. (World Premiere)

“I Go Back Home – Jimmy Scott” (Germany, United States)

Director: Yoon-ha Chang

In I go back home – Jimmy Scott we meet 54 year old Ralf Kemper, a successful German music producer. He takes on the journey to produce a record with the almost forgotten jazz icon Jimmy Scott. (World Premiere)

“Miles Ahead”

Director: Don Cheadle, Screenwriters: Don Cheadle, Steven Baigelman

Inspired by events in his life, Miles Ahead is a wildly entertaining, impressionistic, no-holds barred portrait of one of 20th century music’s creative geniuses, Miles Davis. Cast: Don Cheadle, Ewan McGregor, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Lakeith Lee Stanfield, Michael Stuhlbarg

“Miss Sharon Jones!”

Director: Barbara Kopple

Dreams never expire, but sometimes they are deferred. Miss Sharon Jones! tracks the talented and gregarious soul singer of the Grammy-nominated R&B band Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings during the most challenging year of her life.

“A Song For You: The Austin City Limits Story”

Director: Keith Maitland

From Willie Nelson to Wilco, Ray Charles to Radiohead, A Song For You: The Austin City Limits Story offers the ultimate backstage pass to 40 years of incredible music from the longest running music show in television history. (World Premiere)

“Soundbreaking – Stories from the Cutting Edge of Recorded Music”

Directors: Jeff Dupre, Maro Chermayeff

An eight-part series that explores the nexus of cutting-edge technology and human artistry that has created the soundtrack of our lives. (World Premiere)

“The Smart Studios Story”

Director: Wendy Schneider

From the outside Smart Studios looked like just another Midwestern warehouse left behind by the economic decline of the 1980s. No one could have guessed what was going on inside – and how it would soon change the sound of music forever. (World Premiere)

“We Are X” (United Kingdom, United States)

Director: Stephen Kijak

X Japan led a hard rock cultural revolution in Japan during the late 80’s. Twenty years after their tragedy-fueled collapse, We Are X tells the story of the most influential band in the world that you’ve never heard of…yet.

SXGLOBAL

A diverse selection of International filmmaking talent, featuring innovative narratives, artful documentaries, premieres, festival favorites and more.

“BODKIN RAS” (Belgium, Netherlands, United Kingdom)

Director/Screenwriter: Kaweh Modiri

The people in Forres don’t work. Between 9 and 5 they dissolve into the pubs, where the light shines as a warm glow in their midst. Then the stranger Bodkin arrives into town. He has come to this remote corner of Europe to hide and lay low. Cast: Sohrab Bayat, Lily Szramko, Eddie Paton, James Macmillan (North American Premiere)

“Dead Slow Ahead” (Spain)

Director: Mauro Herce, Screenwriters: Mauro Herce, Manuel Muñoz

A freighter crosses the ocean. The hypnotic rhythm of its gears reveals the continuous movement of machinery devouring its workers: the last gestures of the old sailors’ trade disappearing under the mechanic pace of 21st century. (U.S. Premiere)

“Ghostland” (Denmark, Germany, Italy, Namibia, Switzerland)

Director: Simon Stadler

For the first time the Ju/Hoansi Bushmen travel through the Kalahari and then right into the heart of Europe. What starts as a look at their fascinating culture becomes an even more fascinating look on our Western lifestyle. (North American Premiere)

“kill me please” (Brazil)

Director: Anita Rocha Da Silveira

After an encounter with death, she will do anything to make sure she’s alive. (U.S. Premiere)

“Papagajka” (Australia, United Kingdom)

Director/Screenwriter: Emma Rozanski

A stranger arrives in Sarajevo and barges into Damir’s reclusive world. Little by little she takes over his life. She absorbs his dreams, until finally she threaten his very existence. Cast: Adnan Omerovic, Susanna Cappellaro, Tina Kerserovic, Sabina Mrgan, Don Guido (World Premiere)

“UIO: Take me for a Ride” (Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico)

Director: Micaela Rueda, Screenwriter: Micaela Rueda

How do you deal with being ‘different‘? Cast: Samanta Caicedo, María Juliana Rángel, Diego Naranjo, Paty Loor, Monserrat Astudillo, Miranda Zepeda, Anne Dominque Correa, Domenica Blanco, Ana Belén Bermeo (World Premiere)

“YARN” (Iceland)

Directors: Una Lorenzen, Thordur Jonsson, Heather Millard, Screenwriters: Krishan Arora, Barbara Kingsolver

International artists and knitters take a simple skein of yarn to create their extraordinary ideas and stories. (World Premiere)

[via Variety]

7 Hidden Gems in the 2016 SXSW Features Lineup

Eric Kohn — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 20:15:00 GMT

Anyone paying attention to the SXSW Film Festival — or, for that matter, the American independent film scene — will recognize plenty of names in this year's lineup. Standup comedian-turned-filmmaker Mike Bibiglia follows his breakout hit "Sleepwalk With Me" with "Don't Think Twice," the story of an improv group facing big changes, with a cast headlined by Keegan-Michael Key. Horror maestro Ti West returns to the festival that first showcased his eerie ghost story "The Innkeepers" with a change of pace, the western "In a Valley of Violence," which stars John Travolta. And Austin's biggest source of pride, director Richard Linklater, opens the festival this year with his "Dazed and Confused" riff "Everybody Wants Some."

READ MORE: Ethan Hawke, Jake Gyllenhaal and More Headline 2016 SXSW Features Lineup

But like the feisty crowd that crams the downtown streets in mid-March, SXSW owes much to the youthful energy of newcomers in its lineup. Here's a look at some of the more promising titles that may not immediately stand out but are just as worthy of anticipation over the next few weeks.

"The Alchemist Cookbook"

Grand Rapids-based filmmaker Joel Potrykus erupted onto the SXSW scene two years ago with his deranged character study "Buzzard," which went on to find international acclaim on the festival circuit and develop a cult appeal. Following his debut "Ape," the movie was another twisted look at a disgruntled young man fed up with society and on the verge of losing his mind. While Potrykus' usual leading man Joshua Burge is moving up in the world (he recently had a bit part in "The Revenant"), Potrykus has remained in Grand Rapids, making movies that are proudly off the beaten path. His new SXSW entry, "The Alchemist Cookbook," has been programmed in the festival's edgy "Visions" section, which sends a message in itself. "It's very different from ‘Buzzard,'" SXSW producer Janet Pierson told Indiewire. "He's a hands-on filmmaker working out of the midwest, and we just love that." The story of a "self-made chemist" who lives in a trailer in the woods dreaming of affluence, "Cookbook" promises a story that's uniquely odd and quite possibly very dark. It may be different, but it still sounds like typical Potrykus.

"Alive and Kicking"

Susan Glatzer may be a relative newcomer on the filmmaking scene, but she's not a fresh face in the industry. For years, Glatzer worked at a variety of film production companies, from Paramount Pictures to now-extinct October Films. Perhaps unsurprisingly given her background, her new documentary (playing in competition at SXSW) has already lined up major financial support from Blumhouse Productions, the horror company that has recently ventured into the non-fiction arena with unorthodox portraits such as HBO's Robert Durst exposé "The Jinx." Glazer's movie promises an insider look at swing dancing through the experiences of people drawn to the hobby as a means of improving their lives. That may not sound like the most exciting hook on its own, but the background on this one suggests a truly original look at an American pastime.

"Before the Sun Explodes"

Debra Eisenstadt has technically been making movies for over a decade, starting with 2001's "Daydream Believer," which won the Grand Jury Prize at Slamdance. But she hasn't directed anything for over five years, and now she returns to the game with a film in the narrative competition of this year's SXSW. The story focuses on a comedian whose wife kicks him out of the house, at which point he develops a peculiar relationship to a woman dealing with a stalker. That mysterious premise could go a lot of different ways, but one source associated with the film has described it as "a feminist take on ‘After Hours,'" which is a pretty good selling point.

"Jean of the Joneses"

Writer-director Stella Meghie's first feature revolves around the troubled Jones family, one of whom dies at the start of the movie, leading the paramedic who answers the 911 call to develop an attraction to the rambunctious Jones family member Jeanie. Apparently, the courtship goes south during the funeral. With "Hit the Floor" star Taylour Paige making her big move into a leading role, "Jean of the Joneses" is poised to offer more than one breakthrough in a dark comedy that seems like just the right fit for the SXSW crowd.

"The Master Cleanse"

SXSW has frequently programmed acclaimed short films from directors who have gone on to make features with similar results. These include early work by last year's grand jury prize winner Trey Edward Shults ("Krisha") and the two-person directing outfit known as the Daniels — Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — who recently won the best director prize at Sundance for their outlandish feature-length debut "Swiss Army Man." Now it's Bobby Miller's turn to transition into features.

A few years back, Miller's SXSW-premiering short "TUB" shocked and amused audiences with its bizarrely unsettling tale of a guy who masturbates in the shower and inadvertently gets it pregnant. (You read that right: The shower gives birth to his baby.) Miller's narrative competition entry "The Master Cleanse" promises a similarly devious plot surrounding a despondent man who embarks on a spiritual retreat and attempts the eponymous cure-all, only to find that it has weirder results than he expected. A weird and potentially shocking character study with a strong vein of black comedy? Sounds like SXSW.

"Little Sister"

Zach Clark has quietly become one of the more exciting voices in the American underground film scene. With the outrageous, kinky B-movie pastiche of "Modern Love is Automatic" and "Vacation!", Clark set the stage for the more dramatically complex "White Reindeer," a wondrous black comedy about a woman dealing with the aftermath of her husband's murder. With narrative spotlight selection "Little Sister," Clark seems to have embarked on another irreverent dramedy about troubled families, with the story of a nun returning to her family. Not much is known about the movie, which co-stars Addison Timlin, Ally Sheedy, Keith Poulson and filmmaker Peter Hedges (in his first acting role). But given Clark's track record, there's no doubting it will deliver something completely different.

"Operator"

Logan Kibens has been developing a steady career as a screenwriter, having participated in the Sundance Screenwriters Lab and worked on a number of HBO shows, including "True Blood" and "The Newsroom." She graduates to the feature-length directing arena this year with "Operator," which is described in the official announcement as "a dark comedy about love, technology and what can't be programmed." More specifically, it focuses on the relationship between a computer programmer and a standup comedian whose romance crumbles when their work lives overlap. With a cast that includes Martin Starr and Nat Faxon, "Operator" sounds like an ideal humorous mixture of contemporary challenges and intimate conundrums that fit right in at SXSW.

WATCH: Joshua Oppenheimer on Reinventing Documentary for Oscar-Nominated 'The Look of Silence' (EXCLUSIVE)

Ryan Lattanzio — Fri, 15 Jan 2016 16:40:00 GMT

Denmark-based director Joshua Oppenheimer first traveled to Indonesia a decade ago to make what would eventually, and at first unknown to him, become a set of two companion docs: "The Act of Killing" and "The Look of Silence," both Oscar-nominated for Best Documentary Feature.

With an artful cinematic eye, Oppenheimer scrutinizes the anti-communist Indonesian purge of 1965 in both films. Where "The Act of Killing" turned to the perpetrators with unanswerable questions, 2014 Venice Grand Jury Prize winner "The Look of Silence" movingly asks one man, the brave Adi whose eyes reflect wells of sadness, to confront the horrifying atrocity that wiped out his brother—and hundreds of thousands of innocent others.

READ MORE: Review: Tragi-Comedy "Act of Killing" Confronts the Killer Inside

In our interview at last year's SXSW, the smoothly phrased filmmaker—who was born in Austin—and MacArthur fellow digs into untangling the many complications of making this extraordinary film, including how he gained the trust of both the killers and victims, how the filmmakers basically had to disguise their identities at every turn, and how the film has caused a sea change in present-day Indonesia.

FilmRise Acquires Home Media Rights to Eight Features, Including Award-Winning Doc 'Peace Officer'

Bryn Gelbart — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 20:21:16 GMT

Read More: Watch: Exclusive 'Peace Officer' Clip Details the Brutal Consequences of SWAT Teams

FilmRise announced today that it has acquired from Gravitas Ventures exclusive North American home media rights to eight films, including "Crazy About Tiffany’s," "Peace Officer" and "Requiem for the American Dream." The five additional titles in the deal are "The Kids Menu," "Raven’s Touch," "Last Man on the Moon," "Why I’m Not on Facebook" and "Band of Robbers."

"Peace Officer," a chilling documentary on the militarization of American police, won the Grand Jury and Audience Awards for Documentary Feature at SXSW in 2015.

"We are delighted to be widening the audience of this exceptional group of films, by releasing them on DVD and Blu-ray," said FilmRise CEO, Danny Fisher regarding the deal. "We look forward to our continued partnership with Gravitas Ventures, who has allotted us to bring into people’s homes a remarkable slate of films thus far."

The films will be released by the distributor on DVD and Blu-ray beginning this winter. Watch the trailer for "Peace Officer" above.

Read More: Tribeca Exclusive: Trailer For Noam Chomsky Documentary 'Requiem For The American Dream'

Zeitgeist Films Acquires Tom Sachs' and Van Neistat's 'A Space Program'

Tarek Shoukri — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 19:26:51 GMT

Zeitgeist Films has announced its acquisition of by Tom Sachs' and Van Neistat's "A Space Program," which premiered earlier this year at South by Southwest.

"A Space Program" is the feature film followup to Sachs' 2012 installation piece "Space Program 2.0: MARS," in which Sachs built his own mission to Mars with his artistic team. The film invites the viewer on an intricate, hand-made journey to Mars that both documents Sachs' artistic methods and seeks answers to some of humankind's most eternal questions.

Zeitgeist Co-Presidents Nancy Gerstman and Emily Russo said. "[We were] completely blown away when we saw Tom’s show at the Park Avenue Armory. 'A Space Program' is a captivating introduction to Sachs’ work for the uninitiated and required viewing for his longtime fans. We are thrilled to have it as part of our catalog."

The film will debut at the new Metrograph Theatre on the Lower East Side in March 2016, with a national rollout set to follow.

Kirsten Dunst Says ‘Midnight Special’ Will Screen At SXSW 2016, Is Co-Writing A Dark Comedy She Plans To Direct

Edward Davis — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 19:02:37 GMT

What’s going on with Jeff Nichols’ John Carpenter-esque “Midnight Special” you ask? Well, after being dated for November of this year, Warner Bros. pushed the film back to March 18, 2016. Some watercooler talk around The Playlist noted its the date this was all of one week ahead of the studio's “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” which doesn’t really give it much time to succeed or pick up an audience because WB will be 100% focused on their mega-franchise — easily their most important film of 2016.

However, we may have found an answer to WB’s release date reasoning for dropping "Midnight Special" in March. Kirsten Dunst, one of the co-stars in Nichols’ film, is currently promoting season two of “Fargo,” and she revealed on a recent Nerdist podcast that she will be in Austin, Texas with the film in March (fast forward to the last two minutes of the podcast). The SXSW Film Festival runs from March 11-19, so if it makes its world premiere in Austin just a few days before its March 18th release, well, that makes perfect sense. SXSW is very indie/genre friendly, which is exactly what Nichols’ sci-fi-ish is. The director also lives in Austin, so it all just feels very much like a natural fit.

READ MORE: Jeff Nichols' Sci-Fi 'Midnight Special' Pushed Back To March 2016

The official announcement won’t come until 2016, probably sometime in February after the buzz around Sundance has quieted. However, Dunst also said she’ll likely be in Park City, but for a completely different reason.

The actress revealed that she is currently co-writing a 1950s-set screenplay based on a book (of which she will not reveal the title) that she hopes to make her feature-length directorial debut. Dunst has already directed two shorts, one that starred Winona Ryder called “Welcome” from 2007, and “Bastard” in 2010. Dunst wouldn’t reveal details on the book but suggested it wasn’t a piece of fiction or traditional narrative she was adapting.

“It’s based on a book, but… it really could make it any way you [wanted],” she teased. “It’s the kind of book that — it could be so, so didactic and bad or you could really make a life of something [from it]. So you really need to make your own scenes up.”

“It’s a book that most women have read,” she continued. “I’m approaching it in a funny way. It’s going to be a dark comedy and I already have my actress — I’ve wanted to direct for a long time.” It sort of sounds like some kind of guide, manual or how-to book, but who knows really.

The “Fargo” actress says she’s still looking for financing, so she or her producers will likely go to Sundance to work on that. Dunst says the project is still in its “early days,” so in the meantime, we’ll just have to keep patient for “Midnight Special.”

Here's How The 'God Bless The Child' Filmmakers Pushed The Limits of Narrative

Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck — Fri, 07 Aug 2015 19:37:36 GMT

READ MORE: Attention, Filmmakers: Get Your Short Film Made with This Short Film Production Grant of Up to $20,000

As an artist and a filmmaker, it isn't always easy to negotiate a relationship between the two forms. Of course, filmmaking is a form of art; but when we talk specifically about studio art and how it applies to filmmaking, the relationship becomes more complicated.
My formal education has had a major influence on my work. For my undergraduate degree, I went to film school at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB), which was almost a trade school in the sense that it placed a great deal of emphasis on learning the formal aspects of filmmaking. In contrast, the graduate program in fine arts that I attended at the University of California, Berkeley, focused predominantly on conceptual art.

Together, a formal and conceptual education has enabled me to understand how to make a movie while also thinking critically about the medium. I make mostly narrative work with my collaborator Robert Machoian. When we screen our work at film festivals, we are oftentimes placed in the experimental section of the program. At SXSW this year, our film "God Bless The Child" was screened in the "Visions" section. When our work is displayed in an art gallery, however, it is perceived as commercial and square. In other words, we are not weird enough to be artists and not commercial enough to be filmmakers. I like the fact that our work embodies a contradiction.

It is always difficult to "make art," no matter the type of budget. Robert and I work on the lowest of budgets. Although challenging, low budget projects have their fair share of benefits. One such benefit is that it usually forces us to not only accept imperfections, but to also find beauty in them because we are making films about everyday people and life. What we are after artistically is to capture the rawness, the messiness and the imperfections of human existence. Even with a bigger budget, we would probably make films that look just as unfiltered and real.

I think this is how our backgrounds as artists (Robert is also a photographer) come into play because even though we have the technical skills, we see the films from a non-filmmaking perspective.
Throughout pre-production for "God Bless the Child," Robert and I talked about how we wanted the film to feel like a mixtape, which helped shape the way we approached shooting each scene as self-contained, with its own beginning, middle and end. This approach provided us with the opportunity to induce an emotional response through the juxtaposition of scenes -- similar to the ordering of the tracks on a mixtape.

Case and point: A scene depicting two boys engaged in a boxing match that ends with one of them injured and crying, is followed by a scene in which a baby boy is being sung to whilst being bathed. The placement of these scenes side-by-side generates an interesting emotional response that is not evident in either scene on its own.

Our hope with this approach was to focus the audience on a specific moment rather than allowing them to become captivated by an overarching narrative. There is, in fact, a narrative that runs through the film, but we wanted it to exist in the background and only come around when needed.

By freeing the apparatus of cinema from the burden of narrative, we were able to invest our time in each individual scene. We always try to step back from the fundamentals of filmmaking to take in the whole canvas because, after all, we're making art.

Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck directed, with his longtime filmmaking partner, Robert Machoian, the narrative feature "God Bless the Child" (SXSW 2015), which opens Friday at IFP's Made In NY Media Center, plays at the Regent in LA on 8/13 and is available on iTunes and other VOD platforms 8/18. Produced by Laura Heberton and Robert John Thomas and distributed by Revolver Entertainment.

Listen: Women and Hollywood Podcast #13: 'I Believe in Unicorns' Writer-Director Leah Meyerhoff

Melissa Silverstein — Fri, 29 May 2015 17:34:21 GMT

Leah Meyerhoff's directorial debut, "I Believe in Unicorns" finds a young girl, Davina (Natalia Dyer), on a road trip to "anywhere but here" with her older and increasingly moody boyfriend (Peter Vack). In the well-received coming-of-age tale, which debuted at SXSW, Davina flees her cramped life with her MS-afflicted mother (played by Meyerhoff's own mother Toni), but discovers that an open future, especially saddled with an unstable guy, isn't quite what she dreamed of.

Women and Hollywood spoke with Meyerhoff about being on the film-festival circuit for the past year, the challenges and rewards of working with a 16-year-old performer (Dyer, who has received rave reviews for her performance) and founding Film Fatales, the female filmmaking support/networking group.

Listen on iTunes or SoundCloud below.

How the Safdies Made Verité Drug Drama 'Heaven Knows What' with a Real-Life Ex-Junkie

Ryan Lattanzio — Wed, 27 May 2015 19:55:00 GMT

Josh and Ben Safdie burrow into "Panic in Needle Park" territory with their raw-nerved heroin addiction drama "Heaven Knows What." Star Arielle Holmes lived this life, and wrote a book, "Mad Love in New York City," about her experiences kicking it on the streets of New York as a homeless drug fiend after the Safdies found her and put her in front of a camera for the very first time.

"That's her life we recreated," Josh Safdie said of star Holmes, whose memoir is the basis for the film's script. Now she has signed with an agency. "She's doing another film right now, which is very beautiful."

Caleb Landry Jones, the only professional actor here, also anchors this suffocatingly powerful work as her on-and-off and also drug-addicted boyfriend Ilya, a stringy-haired transient who is barely tolerating the needy Harley's (Holmes) excesses, from her toxic infatuation with him to her scratchy need to get high. This hairsplitting, tense, invasive but never exploitative junkie docudrama, which RADiUS picked up after its rapturous Venice premiere, shadows the nervy Harley — whose movements very closely mirror Holmes' own — as she trawls the mean streets for a fix, a favor, or a place to crash.

The Safdies, with cinematographer Sean Price Williams (who has closely captured faces on gritty 16mm for the indie likes of Alex Ross Perry and Kentucker Audley), all but smash their camera up against the actors, a cast of street kids and former drug-doers including Buddy Duress, whom Josh Safdie calls "the soul of the film" and who has the air of young Pacino. Duress, who plays a streetwise dope pusher, was arrested 12 hours after filming wrapped and, according to Safdie, just got out of prison. His parole officer wouldn't let him come to Texas, where "Heaven Knows What" screened at the South by Southwest Film Festival.

READ MORE: Junkie Drama "Heaven Knows What" Is Convincing as Hell

Josh Safdie, whose brother and co-writer/director Ben was not in town, chatted with SXSW Film Festival audience members following a screening, which he introduced via voiceover from backstage: "Beware the power of the mind." "Heaven Knows What" opens May 29.

On why "love is a drug":

"Getting high is a very interesting concept. We're not romanticizing heroin use at all. I find it to be a boring drug, but it's so subjectively romantic. We all want to get high in our way, we all have our own ways of getting high. That was part of my attraction to Arielle in the first place, her resilience and dedication to constantly hustle life for happiness. Love, I think, is the greatest drug we have. It's the only socially accepted drug. We all know somebody who falls in love or is going through a breakup and is acting extremely irrational, incredibly moronic and dumb and beautiful yet it's excused. 'Oh, they're in love.' It's beautiful but what is that? Love is a drug."

On how the Safdies found Arielle Holmes and the film's nonprofessional cast.

Producer Sebastian Bear McClard chimed: "Josh and I had spent about two years undercover on one block in New York City, Double D, the Diamond District on 47th between 5th and 6th, where we were trying to infiltrate another subculture of New York [for a documentary], diamond dealers, so we were very much playing other characters. We were leaving work one day and this beautiful office girl was also going into the subway with us and she caught Josh's eye. He said, 'Oh my god, look at her.' I said, 'Go talk to her.' We followed her down to the subway platform and Josh gracefully introduced himself and took a picture and their platonic romance started from there and he discovered that she was not who she seemed to be, and she discovered that Josh was also not who he seemed to be."

Safdie continued: "I was pretending to be a Rolex hustler and in the Diamond District, there are a lot of very tough Russian showroom managers who don't speak a lot of English and only respond to money. She looked like one of them. I didn't even think she spoke English when I met her. But a week later when we began our big friendship, she was dressed very differently. She was saying, 'I live in Chinatown' but she couldn't place it and then she said, 'I'm homeless' and she was kind of telling me about this kid Ilya like I knew him. Very cult-like mentality. Any type of personal propaganda, I'm into.

I started a friendship with her, got her a job and then she flaked on the job three months into our friendship. Her phone disconnected. I just thought, 'This is what happens, people come and go through people's lives.' Then she phoned me from a pay-phone and was like 'Hey Josh, it's Arielle.' I said, 'What the fuck happened to you? I got you this job. I thought you were responsible. I told everyone you were responsible. You made me look like an asshole; you look like an asshole.' She said 'Alright, alright, I'm sorry, I just got out of the hospital. I killed myself. I tried to kill myself.' I was like 'Oh man, let's meet up.'

READ MORE: How a Rikers Island Inmate Became a Star at the New York Film Festival

"We started talking and I said 'I hope you're not going to see this kid Ilya anymore' and strangely enough the real Ilya, which Caleb Landry Jones' character is based on, was street-casted by our casting director 10 years before I saw Arielle, who was his girlfriend. So there is some strange shit going on in the cosmos if I'm going to be gravitationally pulled toward this girl and our casting director was pulled toward this boy, whose hero is Diogenes and who lives on the street because that's where you think. I became really deep in this social circle and started hanging out with these people as friends without the intention to make a movie, and the deeper I got the more distant the other project became-- the Diamond District film-- and eventually a friend in LA basically said, 'What are you doing worrying about this Diamond District film? This is the star right here.'

And that's when I asked [Arielle] to start writing about her life and when she started writing, I really saw the film because her writing is so resilient, so unique, so beautiful, so immediate and when I say unique I mean unaffected. She dropped out of high school at 15, learned how to read and write by stealing textbooks from NYU dormitory garbage cans and she wrote her entire book standing at an Apple store for nine hours at a time without glasses. So she's standing six inches from the screen and she got banned from the Apple store, so I gave her my laptop. Then I got a phone call from McDonald's, because I have my phone number on my laptop. She was with a bunch of her friends and someone was like 'That's a stolen computer.' So I called her and was like 'Who has my computer right now?' She's like, 'I do.' I said 'Well someone thinks you stole it.' And she said 'Fuck them.'"

On riffing on Jerry Schatzberg's "Panic in Needle Park":

I saw an Al Pacino quality in Buddy Duress. Jerry is a fan of some of the other movies I've made and I was adamant about getting his blessing on this movie because "Panic" takes place in the same zip code as our film on the Upper West Side, where people are more liberal and more inclined to give people money. He said, 'Hey you have my complete blessing. My only recommendation is don't hire any real junkies.' I said, 'Okay, we're making a different film.'

On filming guerrilla style with "non-actors":

"A lot of our close-ups were shot two blocks away with lenses that are used for safari photography which made it very confining to some of these first-time actors. I don't like to say non-actors because that means they're not an actor, when really this is just their first time acting. Believe it or not, Caleb who is our most veteran actor, became kind of unwieldy and tough to photograph and act with — and did a beautiful job — whereas somebody like Buddy became super professional. 'I need my mark! I need my countdown! I need my 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 or else I'm not doing my scene!'

We did a lot of rehearsals. Sometimes we shot a scene four or five times throughout shooting. When you're shooting a super long lens through pedestrians — all the exterior stuff we never blocked out, all the interior stuff was locked down with corporations, if you're from White Castle I love you — you're talking about six feet of movement. It's very confining. You look at Hollywood film and you have five inches of movement, but you're forgetting about the hundreds of different people who can come in and out of our shot, which made our DP's job very hard. We would do a lot of war scouting, we felt like social terrorists. We did a lot of single camera and two camera stuff as well.

"The beautiful thing about some of these first-time actors is that if they're coming from a street background, their lives are very performative as they are. Living on the street, hustling, you're constantly enacting a personality, cheating and deceiving, and for them, doing a scene was like a luxury. The consequences are a bad review, not a knife in your back."

'Krisha' Cannes Video Diary, Part 1: Arriving to the Festival As a First-Time Filmmaker

Shipra Harbola Gupta — Mon, 18 May 2015 22:28:37 GMT

READ MORE: SXSW Review: 'Krisha' is an Extraordinary Portrait of Addiction and Family Strife

First-time feature filmmaker Trey Edward Shults is taking the global film scene by storm with his microbudget drama, "Krisha," which screens in the prestigious Critics' Week program this week at the Cannes Film Festival. Since it marks Shults' first film and his first time at Cannes, Indiewire asked him to keep a video diary of his experiences at the festival, the first of which can be seen at the top of this page.

Written and directed by Shults, "Krisha" is more than just another drama about addiction. What sets the film apart is the casting of Shults' own family members in a story that draws inspiration from an amalgamation of separate, real life experiences. The drama, which had little to no buzz around it going into its premiere at the SXSW Film Festival earlier this year, virtually came out of nowhere, garnering widespread critical praise and ultimately nabbing the festival's top jury prize and the audience award. Fast-forward several weeks to the end of April and "Krisha" got accepted into Cannes. And just today, A24 announced that it has not only acquired the distribution rights to "Krisha," but also signed on to produce and distribute Shults' second film, "It Comes at Night."

Unreal, right?

Stay tuned for more from Shults as the week continues.

READ MORE: The Story Behind 'Krisha,' the Family Affair That Rocked SXSW

Sally Field's 'Hello, My Name is Doris' Lands 2015 SXSW Film Fest's Biggest Deal

Inkoo Kang — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 17:00:00 GMT

A third Oscar statuette might be headed Sally Field's way when her Sundance hit "Hello, My Name is Doris" is released by its domestic distributor, Roadside Attractions.

Roadside is set to acquire Field's comedy for $1.75 million, making it the biggest deal to come out of this year's SXSW Film Festival. The film will be released internationally by Sony.

"Doris" centers on a 70-year-old woman (the 68-year-old Field) who develops an obsessive crush on a much-younger colleague (Max Greenfield from TV's "New Girl").

Roadside Attraction’s co-president Howard Cohen commented, “Sally Field creates a totally original character. We think the film will work for both the older audience and a hip, young audience. It’s so great to see Sally with a full-blown leading role, and you remember how much she is a beloved national treasure film actress as well as a two-time best actress Oscar winner.”

Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until 2016 to watch "Doris."

READ NEXT: Quote of the Day: Sally Field: "They Don't Write Roles for Women of Age and Women of Color"

[via Variety]

Paul Feig on 'Ghostbusters,' Sexist Backlash and Carving Out Great Roles for Women (Watch 'Spy' Trailer)

Ryan Lattanzio — Tue, 31 Mar 2015 16:00:00 GMT

Melissa McCarthy and Rose Byrne are hilarious in the Bond spoof "Spy," the latest female-driven comedy from sharp writer/director Paul Feig, who brought us the strongly women-oriented box office hits "Bridesmaids" and "The Heat." The film played huge for the Paramount Theatre crowd at last night's SXSW world premiere, where McCarthy came briefly onstage to introduce the film before shuttling off to catch a flight to shoot another movie. (Watch the "Spy" trailer below.)

With its broad humor and long and muddled action scenes, this is one of Feig's more ambivalently directed efforts. But as always, he's a daffy and deft writer of female dialogue, giving McCarthy (as dowdy CIA agent Susan Cooper) and Byrne (as a prim, terrorist affiliate of the CIA's arch nemesis) many uproarious moments to chew on. Jason Statham brings comic machismo as a childishly sulky agent gone rogue. The audience ate it all up, with laughs drowning much of the dialogue.

"Spy" is an earnest comedy about funny women doing funny, slapstick things—and Feig will take that formula to make his first franchise restart with Sony's "Ghostbusters." When announced earlier this year, the reboot starring Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon sparked misogynistic vitriol across the internet, with many fanboys complaining that Feig was defiling their "sacred cow," as he puts it. The 1984 original was directed and produced by Ivan Reitman— who produces Feig's film—and starred Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd. and Harold Ramis as eccentric New York ghost catchers.

Feig sat down with TOH at SXSW to talk about his plans for the film, the future of women's roles in film, why TV is a better place for them, and why he isn't trying to reinvent the "Ghostbusters" wheel but, rather, wants to up the scares and the laughs for a new generation.

Fox opens "Spy" on June 5, 2015. Sony projects a July 22, 2016 release date for the new "Ghostbusters."

READ MORE: The Cast of "Ghostbusters" Reboot Chosen

What's great about working with women?

They're just so many funny women I know and I don't see them getting the roles they deserve. I love working with women. I'm more comfortable working with women sometimes just in the comedic sense because I understand the female sense of humor more because it's less aggressive. I've always hung out with the girls ever since I was a kid. When you're bullied by guys, either your friends are sensitive other guys or you hang out with the girls.

That was my group of friends, and it just sort of carried forward, watching things going. There are funny women I know, they're in this movie but they're not being allowed to be funny. They're playing the mean girlfriend. And you're going, "Well that's not fair." I just have a better take on the feminine point-of-view and there are all these funny women who need to be working. It worked out great. I don't really want to do anything else. Somebody said to me, "Aren't you afraid of being pigeonholed?" Would you ever say that to a director who works with men? Would you go to Scorsese and say, "You shouldn't keep working with guys." It's ridiculous.

Were you already picking up on this dearth of good female roles when you were young and growing up on movies like "Ghostbusters"?

Kind of but at the same time, it wasn't as bad back then. I grew up on old black-and-white movies, Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, Barbara Stanwyck, these strong female roles, so it was never noticeable until we started getting into the '80s and '90s watching comedy, going, "Wow this has become such a boys' club!" For no other reason than that it's just a guy's take on the world.

To most guys, women start out as mom who breaks up a good time and then it's the girlfriend who doesn't want you hanging out with your friends every night, wants you to be around. And then the wife who puts the kibosh on you going out. All these male comedies felt like they were that version of "here comes the lady to break up the good time" and they never expanded beyond that and the "heart of gold" best friend character who Cecily Strong does so well on SNL now, the girl from the romantic comedy. It's true, it's spot-on because that's how women are portrayed in a lot of these things.

Do you feel guilty that you, a man, have to step in and provide these roles for women?

I do feel weird about it. Selfishly, I loved it. I'm thrilled that I get to do this because I love doing it but there should be more women directors because the imbalance is just too great right now and there's no real reason for it. I'm slowly getting to a position where I can possibly hire directors so I want to try to get as many female directors working as I can but the whole industry as a whole needs to catch up. The goal for me was not to be the only guy who gets to do female-led comedies. I'm happy I get to but the excuse for Hollywood shouldn't be, "Oh that's what he does, and so he's the only one who can do it." That's silly.

You were very vocal on this issue when "The Heat" came out. Has there been any advancement at all?

Somebody pointed out to me that there are five comedies coming out this summer that have female leads. That's pretty cool. If it's starting to move, that's great. I just want to make sure the projects are really good because Hollywood will look for any excuse to go "Well, we tried it and it didn't work." Please make those movies work. You can't expect people to go see movies that don't work. No matter what the cause is. I'm not going to go see something for a cause if I'm not going to be entertained.

You also worked quite heavily in television before you came to film. What was different about that world for women?

TV has always been way better for female roles. First there's the perception that a lot of women watch television but, I don't know, tons of women see movies so that doesn't even hold up. But for some reason the TV space is more open to it because, I think, with TV you're just trying to get somebody to tune to your channel. With movies, you're trying to get somebody up out of their house, into their car, pulling money out of their wallet and sitting down in the theater. That's a big hurdle, so I think that's why movies are so aimed, in general, at 15-year-old boys because they're the ones who will get up to go see stuff -- and I'm only going by Hollywood's logic, I don't know if I buy into it. TV has been more open to [women] because it feels like the stakes are lower somehow. I don't know, I'm talking out of my ass on some of this stuff.

What sparked "Ghostbusters"? Did you set out to subvert this formula we're talking about of the "comedy boys' club"?

No, not at all. People think I did. There were plenty of angry tweets to me that thought I did. It was purely a creative decision. I'd been contacted starting last year when I was in production on "Spy." I was getting calls from Sony, Ivan Reitman called, they wanted to do a sequel and I was so flattered because I love the franchise so much and wanted it to come back. I just couldn't figure out how to do a sequel 25 years later where two of the original cast members weren't even going to be in it. I'd read the original scripts that had been written to try and do it -- some of my favorite comedy writers wrote those scripts, and they were really good scripts -- but something felt off. The math was off.

So I kept saying no and then finally had lunch with Amy Pascal and she was just like, "Why doesn't anybody want to do this movie? None of you comedy directors want to do this!" I went on this whole thing, this is a sacred cow, this thing we all grew up with and thought, "I don't know how to do it." But there's this great franchise sitting there, this great idea of funny people battling the paranormal. That's an awesome canvas to paint on. So I thought, if I had to do it, what would I do? The most obvious things are the last things you think about. And I thought, if I made them all women, then I know how to do that. I get excited about that. I can see the comedy and the fun in that. But are they their daughters? What's their thing? I want to see them develop the technology and I want to see the world confront ghosts for the first time and I thought, "Let's just reboot it."

It was as simple as that. It was no more evil than that and there was all this feeling of this evil plotting, I've had things come at me like "We're so tired of this PC bullshit." This isn't PC! There's all these funny women; I'm trying to figure out how to get more women's ensembles together and get more of these people working and here it is. That's it.

What was some of the worst sexist vitriol that you received?

Jesus, there's so much. Just put in my address and look at the things that are addressed to me any day. The worst of it was always "Women can't be 'Ghostbusters'!" This flat statement of "this can't happen." I always try to find the germ of logic and, look, for a lot of guys -- I was in my early 20s when I first saw it and I thought it was groundbreaking comedy -- who saw it when they were seven, eight, nine, they kind of grew up playing it so I think to them it's much more a way of life, like a religion.

Well, what does that say about them?

No comment on that [laughs]. It does become a bit of a religion for people, like "Star Wars." All of our favorite movies are religious icons to us, I try to be sensitive to that and so, guys, I get that but I'm not going to destroy those first two movies. I can't. I almost feel like it would possibly hurt them more if I did it as a direct sequel because it would almost back-poison the well. If you don't like what I end up doing, you can say, "Well that was the new one. Fuck that. We have these other ones." You can only do what inspires you and what you think will be fun and what you know how to do for an audience to make them laugh and have a good time. My intentions are nothing but pure.

What stage are you in now?

We start shooting June 15 so we're still punching up the script, doing heavy prep of designing all our effects and our ghosts and nailing down what we're going to shoot. It's fast approaching.

This is the first time you're working in visual effects. What can we expect? In what ways are you going to reinvent the wheel or not this time around?

I love the original ones so I want to do enough nods to it that the fans go "Oh, okay they're aware of it! That's fun that they're twisting this and that!" But I also want to make it so that a new generation can make it their own too. We'll make references but blow past them and go toward our own thing; I want to keep the same tone and style but I want it to be even scarier just because I think with the way we can do stuff now, we can really have fun with making it creepier. Comedy and scares go really well together. The original was very scary and if you look at it now, you still have that, but there's a chance to go even further with it.

So you're not doing camp.

No! As in "Spy," the more real you play everything, the more fun it is. It's funny people reacting in a real way and funny people in peril is always a funny equation.

SXSW Film Head Janet Pierson Puts Her Stamp on the Austin Festival

Kim Voynar — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 17:00:00 GMT

In 2009, Janet Pierson took over the South by Southwest Film Festival from longtime fest head Matt Dentler, stepping boldly into her new role -- but not without a little trepidation. Dentler, after all, was one of indie film’s favorite sons, and under his watch, SXSW Film had grown from a small regional fest into a force to be reckoned with. Pierson’s career in independent film had begun three decades earlier, when the then-20-year-old, fresh out of the San Francisco Art Institute after starting college at 16 because she was “anxious to grow up,” was tapped to take over the Canyon Cinema Co-op.

Pierson was well-regarded in the industry, but by 2009 she was at a crux, frustrated that she’d been living and working in the shadow of her husband, indie-film producer John Pierson. Successfully running SXSW Film without John getting involved would allow Pierson to feel she had a career identity of her own, something she desperately needed as she turned 50 and her children were aging out of the nest. First, though, she had to build her own reputation as head of the fest and brand it in her own way. In 2015, near the end of the seventh year of her tenure as the head of SXSW Film, Pierson finally has enough breathing room in her schedule for a chat outside the Austin Convention Center, where she’s waiting to lead a Q&A after a screening.

When I meet her outside the Vimeo Theater, she’s engaged in an animated conversation with another staffer. Seven years later, Pierson looks much as she did coming into the job: Black shirt, black slacks, sneakers. Like Dentler before her, Pierson is forever running to and fro around the festival to introduce films, lead Q&As, and put out the inevitable fires. But whereas the 2009 Pierson was a bit cautious, choosing her words with care, the 2015 Pierson has an air of self-confidence and contentment, albeit tinged with just a hint of well-earned exhaustion. The fest is going fantastically, she tells mebetween bites of a gourmet grilled cheese from one of the nearby food trucks that circle the convention center like a wagon train, feeding the hungry masses. All around us, fest attendees bustle to and fro or eat their own lunch at one of the picnic tables. It’s busy at the convention center, but like a well-run kitchen at a restaurant, there’s a flow and grace to it all that bespeaks months of organization leading up to the fest.

“I keep pinching myself. Usually we’re very proud of the work we do, but there’s always a bunch of fires, stuff to do. But this year, it’s all gone really smoothly,” Pierson says. “My first year I was lucky; it went really well. I was terrified. I didn’t know if I could repeat it. Then the second year went really well, too, and I was more terrified. But then I hit year five and it was still good, and then we got past that to the sixth year and we were still going strong. So this year... I’m finally confident.”

I ask Pierson about what changes the fest has seen during her tenure. “There’ve been incremental improvements every year, and each year we get a tiny bit more help on the staff front. That makes a huge difference,” she explains. “The switch to DCP, that was a huge change, too. When Gabe [Van Amburgh] came in, he was the head projectionist at one of the Alamos, and he’d run our projection crew as a volunteer for a long time. We were able to hire him, which was great.... He was the one who took us into the future. Last year, it was maybe half the films. This year, it’s 100 percent.”

Addressing some of the quality issues surrounding DCP that cropped up at last year’s fest, Pierson notes that this year, they were able to change providers and those problems have gone away. Another positive change in the organization of the fest, she notes, was the addition of a seasonal staff member -- a former volunteer-crew chief -- who comes on board in January to be the liaison between the crew chiefs and staff. “That’s made a big difference, too,” Pierson adds. Another seasonal staffer comes on around the same time to manage the gargantuan, ever-shifting schedule as the programming staff makes decisions. “It sounds like a small thing, but it’s just huge in terms of logistics and everything getting done.”

I remind Pierson of our conversation seven years earlier as she stepped into her role and ask her how long it took for her to feel like SXSW was finally “her” fest. “Matt and I are very good friends. We’ve always been very close, and one of the reasons I ended up with this job is that we were always talking about what he did, because I thought it was very interesting. But it was kind of... a little strained in that first year. Awkward. But at the fest in 2009 I saw him and I said to him, it’s like this is our child and we’re divorced, but we’ll always share this. And he said no, after this festival, it’s yours. I’ll never forget that moment.”

I ask Pierson about the fairly recent shift to adding episodic and television programming to the fest, and the experienced programmer gleams out through the show-week tiredness. “Look, when I started working here 'The Wire,' 'Friday Night Lights,' 'The Sopranos,' -- those things already existed. And what did me and my friends talk about? Those shows. So right away, I started thinking about how to incorporate it. But I’m still seeing films that I love, you know? I wanted to incorporate TV earlier, but it was hard to figure out logistically. Then we had 'Girls'; it took Lena [Dunham] knocking it down from the inside, but then people were lining up to participate! So then again, the question for us became, ‘What is the selection criteria?’ It’s not like anything is taking over, though. We have a balance. It just becomes a part of the whole.”

We talk about the programming process of screening the thousands of films submitted to the fest to whittle them down to 150 or so final selections and whether she can tell by 20 minutes in whether a film is engaging enough to consider for the fest. “I watch a lot of complete films. I’m not as quick as some programmers are about that.... But there’s such a crush of films, and it’s true that the fest itself is such a competitive environment. If you can’t engage your audience in 20 minutes, then your film maybe just isn’t right for this festival. They have to be able to stand out. So I may consider changing that for the future.”

While SXSW Film finally feels like “her” fest now, Pierson notes that, structurally, while the fest overall has grown since she came on board, she really hasn’t changed much about how Dentler set things up. “Matt did a great job. He built SXSW into an internationally recognized fest,” she notes. “He was the one who set the balance of having both DIY and studio fare, and we’ve kept that, too.”

The itself job did take its toll on her marriage for a while, she muses -- the hours, the schedule, the effect on their dynamic. She and John came through it stronger than ever, though, she says, and are in a really good place now. “You’ve got the work that you do and the life that you have. And it’s just intense to keep it all together.” She shrugs philosophically. “But it’s been great.” I tell her she looks self-confident and content. “I am,” she says. “I got this job when I was 50, I’m 57 now. It’s been really enormously rewarding, and I feel really grateful. There were so many years when I was insecure about my place in the world. I’m not insecure anymore.”

5 Reasons Why Brian Wilson Biopic 'Love & Mercy' Deserves an Awards Push

Ryan Lattanzio — Wed, 25 Mar 2015 18:58:51 GMT

The Brian Wilson biopic "Love and Mercy" is as wily and loose-limbed as the man himself, a dreamy and delirious ode to the troubled genius behind The Beach Boys.

Director Bill Pohlad and writers Michael A. Lerner and Oren Moverman twist the genre by paralleling Wilson's disorderly heyday with his eventual nervous breakdown and subsequent Stockholm syndrome-like relationship with the dubious Dr. Eugene Landy. Paul Dano plays the spacey, slowly frittering '60s Wilson — as he was just starting to go solo and dip his toes in the world of orchestral pop — while Cusack plays 1980s Wilson, who was suffering creatively and wrestling with paranoid schizophrenia. Dano and Cusack's beautiful performances draw you into Wilson's inner world with the support of Elizabeth Banks as Melinda Ledbetter, the sparky Cadillac saleswoman who steps into his life to save it (and went on to become his current wife).

1. It's no ordinary biopic. A handful of critics were in raptures over the film's Toronto premiere last Fall with The Hollywood Reporter calling it "a deeply satisfying pop biopic whose subject's bifurcated creative life lends itself to an unconventional structure." The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday named "Love and Mercy" her favorite film of the fest. Variety called it "a vibrant cure for the common musical biopic" (it helps that the film contains many beloved Wilson tunes). When the film opens this Summer, critics should continue to admire the film's unconventionality and form-busting structure. Even at its melodramatic turns, and there are a few involving Paul Giamatti's showiest performance yet as grubby sad sack Dr. Landy, "Love and Mercy" manages to be moving and tender and true to the story of Brian Wilson, who endorses the film and came along for its recent SXSW showings.

READ MORE: The 10 Best Films I Saw at SXSW

2. Paul Dano and John Cusack deliver career-topping performances. Critically adored and hardworking, Cusack has never been Oscar-nominated, despite numerous accolades for indies "Being John Malkovich" and "High Fidelity." As the elder Brian Wilson, Cusack is utterly heartbreaking. Dano, terrifically deranged in "There Will Be Blood" and "Prisoners," also shines as young and troubled Wilson, gaining a bit of a paunch for the role and tapping into his soft side.

3. The film makes a dramatic star of Elizabeth Banks. Emmy-nominated twice for her guest role on "30 Rock," Banks has made her name in comedy. Here she shows off her dramatic chops as Wilson's sweet-faced love interest. Yes, she gets to wear a lot of fabulous outfits, but the script gives her plenty more to do as she becomes the catalyst in rescuing Wilson from himself and from his psychiatrist's abusive care. "Love and Mercy" ends up being as much about her and the bumpy origins of her marriage to Wilson as it is about him.

4. Bill Pohlad, who directs his first feature in 25 years, produced critical and audience successes "The Tree of Life," "12 Years a Slave" and more. Pohlad helmed the film "Old Explorers" in 1990 but since then has stuck to financing and producing, yielding such prestigious Oscar nominees and winners as "The Tree of Life," "12 Years a Slave," "Brokeback Mountain," "Wild" and "Into the Wild," as well as Robert Altman's farewell film "A Prairie Home Companion."

"Love and Mercy"'s gently unspooling editing takes cues from Terrence Malick, who accompanied the film's SXSW premiere. Pohlad also produced the warmly received Richard Gere starrer "Time Out of Mind," directed by "Love and Mercy" co-writer Oren Moverman and coming from IFC later this year.

READ MORE: Richard Gere Faces Good Year as "Time Out of Mind" Yields Tributes

5. The film could boost Roadside's awards profile. Roadside Attractions has awards season marketing chops (see "Winter's Bone," "Biutiful," "Albert Nobbs" and documentary feature win "The Cove") but only scored a lonely Sound Editing Oscar-nomination for well-reviewed 2013 Robert Redford festival hit "All Is Lost," which despite Redford's protestations, did as well as anyone could have expected given its solo sailing protagonist.

READ MORE: Anatomy of a Release: Roadside Attractions' Redford Starrer "All Is Lost"

This year, there were inklings of hope that Hilary Swank could crack the Best Actress five for Roadside and Saban Films' "The Homesman." Alas, despite some fervent critics, no dice. However, Roadside pickup "Dear White People" did score kudos at the 2015 Independent Spirits and 2014 Sundance Film Festival as well as the box office. But, disappointingly this year, Canadian Xavier Dolan's tough sit "Mommy" didn't make the foreign Oscar shortlist.

READ MORE: Roadside Attractions Acquires "Stonewall"

While "Love and Mercy"'s June 5 opening does not portend an obvious awards candidate, an early release did not hurt Fox Searchlight's Oscar contender "The Grand Budapest Hotel" last year. Other Roadside films could wind up in the awards discussion, including critics' fave "'71," from hot director Yann Demange, an historical drama with rising star Jack O'Connell. Coming down the pike are Ian McKellen starrer "Mr. Holmes" from awakening co-distributor Miramax, and Roadside's just-announced pickup "Stonewall," Roland Emmerich's telling of the 1969 Stonewall Riots that busted open the door for gay rights.

SXSW: Critics Select the Best Movies of the 2015 Festival

Steve Greene — Wed, 25 Mar 2015 14:48:52 GMT

"Krisha," the film that made its presence known at last week's SXSW festival awards, also made an impression on critics. As we usually do at the close of major film festivals, we asked the members of our Criticwire Network who made it to SXSW 2015 to give us their favorite films and performances from their trip to Austin.

SEE THE RESULTS: SXSW Film Festival 2015 Critics Poll

Trey Edward Shults' tale of a woman ingratiating herself with her estranged family finished in the top three in five different categories, including top marks for Best First Feature and Krisha Fairchild's Lead Performance.

The other two films that appeared on a significant number of ballots come from the sci-fi ranks: Alex Garland's artificial intelligence drama "Ex Machina," making its North American premiere, and Benjamin Dickinson's "Creative Control," a thriller that's "at once otherwordly and familiar," according to Eric Kohn's review. "Ex Machina" was the overall leader in the Best Narrative Feature category, with Garland and Dickinson sharing first place in the Best Director category.

On the Documentary side, the awarded films fared equally well, with Scott Christopherson and Brad Barber's Grand Jury Winner "Peace Officer" edging out Alex Gibney's "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine" for first place.

Some notable names headlined the Best Lead Performance category, with Katie Holmes' turn as half of the central psychiatric hospital romance in "Mania Days" finishing behind only Fairchild, while Sally Field in "Hello, My Name is Doris" followed closely behind. (If you're curious to hear more about Field's experience on the film, be sure to check out Nigel Smith's interview with her here.) The top picks for Best Supporting Performance were similarly star-studded, with top finishers Oscar Isaac ("Ex Machina"), Elizabeth Banks ("Love & Mercy") and Jason Statham ("Spy").

"Krisha" also took the top slot on the Best Ensemble list, but Josh Lawson's sexually charged "The Little Death" tied for second. The film made its first appearance in the U.S., debuting at TIFF last year. Garland, no stranger to well-received sci-fi scripts, took first place in Best Screenplay for his work on "Ex Machina." Despite being shown a work-in-progress screening, critics took to Judd Apatow's "Trainwreck," giving high marks for both the screenplay and Amy Schumer's lead work.

And speaking of "Trainwreck," one ballot featured a Best Supporting Performance vote for an unprofessional actor named LeBron James. Looking for more surprises? You can see the full results, with links to every critic's individual ballot, here.

For more from the Network, be sure to visit the homepages for the Criticwire blog and grades central.

READ MORE: The 2015 Indiewire SXSW Bible

The 10 Best Films I Saw at SXSW

Ryan Lattanzio — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 20:00:12 GMT

As a SXSW virgin who'd been to Austin before for Fantastic Fest, I had a blast feasting on the manic energy of this city. When South by Southwest comes to town, it's like Austin has rattled its cages and let the monkeys loose in the best way. For seven days, it was nothing but movie-watching, taco-eating, party-hopping, standing-and-eating and, because there are no press screenings, hurry-up-and-waiting. Rowdy fetes are held almost every night across the city's many dark and irresistible dives. I stayed downtown, smack dab in the middle of things, which made for a more chaotically immersive stay than my first Sundance earlier this year, where I met a far more punishing climate. But like Sundance, or any of the best film festivals, the city is abuzz each night with the kind of lively movie chatter you can't get anywhere else.

As always, SXSW programs a fair share of titles from the festival circuit, from Cannes and Venice to Sundance. For every slot, when you catch up on a buzzy fest film, you may miss a world premiere or competition title. Rumors abound, for example, that award-winning Indiewire fave, the standout sci-fi "Creative Control," may end up at this year's Cannes, whose director Thierry Fremaux was trawling the Austin lineup for potential candidates.

READ MORE: SXSW Wrap and Winners: Distributors, Pay Attention to These Films

Many SXSW rookies, including "Krisha" Grand Jury Prize winner Trey Edward Shults, have their fingers crossed as they sift through distribution offers. Seeing as last year's Grand Jury winner "Fort Tilden" only just got picked up by Orion Releasing, it remains to be seen how effective a launchpad SXSW 2015 will be.

Without further ado, here are the best films I saw at the festival this year:

1. "Creative Control" (SXSW premiere)
This deliciously inventive sci-fi comedy imagines what tech-addled millennials will look like in near-future New York. Writer/director Benjamin Dickinson also stars as an advertising hotshot whose company teams with an augmented reality startup on a new prototype that's something like Google Glass on amphetamines: you can record and edit basically everything you see and do, and he ends up using the technology to create his dream, albeit holographic, sexual partner.

By night, he's swilling pills and loading up on scotch and womanizing, unbeknownst to his yoga instructor girlfriend (Nora Zehetner). This fast-gabbing SXSW premiere was shot in silvery black-and-white by Adam Newport-Berra, who nods to "Manhattan" (explicitly in several scenes) as much as Dickinson seems to be conjuring a talkier but equally misanthropic Antonioni, whose films are also about the glass (both real and imagined) between us all that blocks our ability to connect. "Creative Control" is currently seeking US distribution.

2. "Heaven Knows What" (Venice premiere)
The Safdie brothers assembled a cast of non-actors, including the film's brave star Arielle Holmes, off the mean streets of New York for this raw-nerved verité drama of love and heroin addiction spiraling out of control that burrows into "Panic in Needle Park" territory. Caleb Landry Jones, the only professional actor here, anchors this suffocatingly powerful work as Harley's (Holmes) on-and-off and also drug-addicted boyfriend Ilya, a stringy-haired transient who is barely tolerating the needy Harley's (Holmes) excesses, from her toxic infatuation with him to her scratchy need to get high. This hairsplitting, tense, invasive but never exploitative junkie docudrama, which RADiUS picked up after its rapturous Venice premiere, shadows the nervy Harley — whose movements very closely mirror Holmes' own — as she trawls the mean streets for a fix, a favor, or a place to crash.

RADiUS will open the film later this year. No release date has been set.

READ MORE: How the Safdies Made "Heaven Knows What" with a Real-Life Ex-Junkie

3. "Love and Mercy" (TIFF 2014 premiere)
This Brian Wilson biopic is as wily and loose-limbed as the man himself, a dreamy and delirious ode to the troubled genius behind The Beach Boys. "12 Years a Slave" and 'Tree of Life" producer Bill Pohlad has made a dazzling directorial debut that busts all the conventions of the movie biography, focusing on both Wilson's disorderly heyday and his late-career nervous breakdown and subsequent entrapment by the notorious Dr. Eugene Landy. Paul Dano plays the spacey, quietly fraying '60s Wilson — who was just starting to go solo to dip his toes in the world of orchestral pop — while Cusack plays Wilson in the mid-1980s, when the creatively bankrupt musician's moods ran the gamut from catatonia to jumpy anxiousness. And you fall in love with Elizabeth Banks as never before as Melinda Ledbetter, the strong woman who comes to his rescue.

Roadside Attractions opens the film June 5, 2015.

4. "The Look of Silence" (Venice premiere)
Denmark-based director Joshua Oppenheimer joins the ranks of truth-seekers Albert Maysles and Werner Herzog with this companion to "The Act of Killing." Oppenheimer artfully turns to the victims of the 1965 Indonesian killing machine that wiped out thousands of innocent people, including the brother of Adi, who movingly asks the perpetrators: "Why?" Unlike so many documentaries today — artless and/or po-facing — Oppenheimer is actually directing, and you can feel his voice guiding us through the messy leftovers of human atrocity. This tremendous film won SXSW's Audience Award for documentary.

Drafthouse Films releases on July 17, 2015.

WATCH: Joshua Oppenheimer on Reinventing Documentary for "The Look of Silence"

5. "Lost River" (Cannes premiere)
Why is David Lynch our only reference point for weirdness? At Cannes 2014, critics were quick to tear Ryan Gosling's directorial debut to shreds upon first blush. This darkly thrilling fairytale ride is weird indeed, but Gosling is after more than just that. Christina Hendricks is oddly cast, but affecting, as a desperately broke single mom who takes a gig at a freaky underground club where men act out their baser instincts. Iain De Caestecker plays her oldest son, Bones, a teenager who wants to escape this shitty, broken-down town. Cinematographer Benoît Debie shot all of Gaspar Noe's movies and is the best thing about "Lost River," crafting dazzling, lurid, pop-colored images that plant this film firmly in a dream space.

Warner Bros. releases day-and-date in theaters and on VOD April 10 in NY and LA.

6. "Krisha" (SXSW premiere)
Like a rookie version of "A Woman Under the Influence" without the laughs, "Krisha" is a dangerously serious family drama that spans the course of a Thanksgiving Day, as the title character—a painkiller-addicted ex-alcoholic right on the edge of the wagon—reunites with her estranged, leery relatives for the first time in years. Writer/director Trey Edward Shults casts his own relatives, shooting in nine days, and it's a bit of a stunt. But his focused direction does yield some breakout performances, including Shults' aunt Krisha Fairchild in the leading role. She's not quite Gena Rowlands but fans of Cassavetes' unhinged blond bombshell will enjoy how Fairchild dramatically juggles showboating, tenderness and rock-bottom sadness.

Currently seeking distribution.

7. "Tab Hunter: Confidential" (SXSW premiere)
If you don't know Tab Hunter, a svelte Hollywood hunk who got his screen start in 1950s war pictures, no problem. Jeffrey Schwarz's latest documentary tribute un-closets Hunter for a new generation of fans. And god, was he gorgeous. The film chronicles his meteoric movie career and how he managed to remain (mostly) secretly gay the entire time, carrying on affairs with athletes and actors including the elusive Anthony Perkins, at whom the film takes a good long look, while maintaining ambiguous relationships with women such as Natalie Wood for the public eye.

A distribution deal is imminent for Schwarz, who directed impassioned LGBT docs "I Am Divine" and "Vito."

8. "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine" (SXSW premiere)
Described as "a renegade, but legit," "a study in contrasts," "a monk among priests," "maniacal" and "a rebel," Steve Jobs is sketched in contradictory terms by human documentary factory Alex Gibney. This bracing film at first seduces you with the charms of the man, and then guts you with what a tricky riddle he was, an at-times sociopathic mogul who flew close to the Sun, touched it and never quite fell as he should have. You're left feeling as troubled about the titular man in the machine as you are its director, and that's a great thing.

"The Man in the Machine" was predictably picked up by Magnolia, which has distributed seven Gibney flicks, for 2015 release.

READ MORE: Alex Gibney Doesn't Pander to Steve Jobs in His Unsparing New Doc

9. "6 Years" (SXSW premiere)
Though at points skewing too closely toward melodrama, writer/director Hannah Fidell's tale of young love going sour contains bitter, relatable truths and knockout performances from Taissa Farmiga and Ben Rosenfield. It's no small wonder that Netflix picked up global rights to this film from producer Mark Duplass, who along with his brother Jay Duplass inked a four-picture deal with the streaming company. "6 Years" has universal appeal in spades, two lovely lead performances and a whole lot of truth. (My review is here.)

Netflix will release "6 Years" later this year.

10. "The Automatic Hate" (SXSW premiere)
Director Justin Lerner ("Girlfriend") pitches his second feature, this low-key but effectively eerie family drama, as "The Celebration" meets "The Long Goodbye." He lures us into an unstable world of fucked-up, broken families with the bait-and-switch of a thriller before upending everything by dropping in an incest plot. Davis' (Joseph Cross) curiosity about his many long lost blond (very Hitchcockian that way) cousins leads him down this road, and toward the most explosively uncomfortable dinner party scene ever.

"The Automatic Hate" is currently seeking US distribution.

Ryan Lattanzio is a staff writer for TOH at Indiewire. Follow him on Twitter.

SXSW 2015 Roundup: Field, Schumer, and Garcia Gave Austin Fest "More Girl Power Than Ever"

Laura Berger — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 19:00:00 GMT

As the sun sets on this year's SXSW, the time has come to reflect on some of the biggest stories -- and winners -- to come out of the film festival, which Variety claimed "had more girl power than ever."

When SXSW announced the lineup for the 2015 edition of the Austin fest, we were disappointed by the lack of female filmmakers chosen to showcase their work -- only 19% of the titles screened were directed or co-directed by women. Still, our coverage of the festival -- including interviews with the directors of "Mavis" (Jessica Edwards), "Honeytrap" (Rebecca Johnson), and "The Invitation" (Karyn Kusama) -- was a testament to the fact that the few women who were invited to the table arrived with incredibly interesting and varied projects.

If you're wondering when you'll be able to see the female-helmed docs and narratives screened at the festival, you may be disappointed to learn that not much information has been revealed yet. We do know that Hannah Fidell's atmospheric tale of young love, "Six Years," has been sold to Netflix. What's next for the writer-director? In an interview with Women and Hollywood, Fidell shared that she's in the midst of writing a comedy about two men on a road trip. She explained, "Even though this will come off sounding a little ridiculous since both [my previous feature] 'A Teacher' and '6 Years' are relationship dramas, I wish more movies by women weren’t love stories. I look to this film as an inspiration to try and get out of my storytelling comfort zone."

We're hoping that more news of acquisitions will come through soon, but keep in mind that last year's SXSW grand-jury prize winner for best narrative film, "Fort Tilden," didn't get a distribution deal until last week. The slacker comedy, co-written and co-directed by Sarah Violet-Bliss, will be distributed by Orion Releasing and released theatrically and on VOD this August.

Highlights from this year's festival include the female-centric "Spy," which is being heralded as Melissa McCarthy's best role to date, with Variety calling the comic actress a "one-woman powerhouse." Sally Field's stunning performance in "Hello, My Name is Doris," her first leading role in almost 20 years, is earning the actress Oscar buzz. Amy Schumer's vehicle "Trainwreck," which the Comedy Central star wrote, was a resounding success with audiences and critics. And we were super inspired by Ava DuVernay's keynote speech at the festival, where the "Selma" director advised, "If your dream only includes you, it's too small."

Here are the female award winners of SXSW 2015:

Feature Film Jury Awards

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE COMPETITION

Special Jury Recognition for Directing: "A Woman Like Me"
Directors: Alex Sichel, Elizabeth Giamatti - Read Women and Hollywood's interview with Sichel and Giamatti

Short Film Jury Awards

NARRATIVE SHORTS

Special Jury Recognition:"Share"
Director: Pippa Bianco

DOCUMENTARY SHORTS

Winner:"Boxeadora"
Director: Meg Smaker

MIDNIGHT SHORTS

Winner: "Kiss Kiss Fingerbang"
Director: Gillian Wallace Horvat

TEXAS HIGH SCHOOL SHORTS

Winner:"It's A Thing"
Directors: Meredith Morran, Sage McCommas

SXSW Special Awards

SXSW Gamechanger Award
Winner: Yvonne Kerékgyártó, "Free Entry"

Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship
Presented to: Anna Gustavi

Audience Award Winners

DOCUMENTARY SPOTLIGHT
Winner:"A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story"
Director: Sarah Hirsh Bordo -- Read Women and Hollywood's interview with Sarah Hirsh Bordo.

SXGLOBAL
Winner:"Kings of Nowhere"
Director: Betzabé García -- Read Women and Hollywood's interview with García.

[via Variety, Thompson on Hollywood, Variety, and SXSW]