2023 South by Southwest (SXSW) Film & TV Festival
For the first time since 2022, this year’s South by Southwest Film & Television Festival does not overlap with the Oscars — which seems to have given SXSW curators a richer field to pull from, as the 2025 lineup has no shortage of buzzy titles and stars. Running from March 7-15, the festival will present 111 movies and 17 series (plus short films, music videos and XR experiences) featuring the likes of Blake Lively, Anna Kendrick, Seth Rogen, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jacob Elordi, Ben Affleck, Nicole Kidman, Matthew McConaughey, Issa Rae, Jenna Ortega, Daveed Diggs and more.
The festival will open with “Another Simple Favor,” the sequel to the 2018 comedic thriller “A Simple Favor,” once again starring Lively and Kendrick and directed by Paul Feig. The new film is set in Capri, Italy, where Stephanie (Kendrick) and Emily (Lively) travel for Emily’s wedding to a rich Italian businessman; as the logline reveals, “murder and betrayal” ensue. Andrew Rannells, Bashir Salahuddin, Henry Golding, Elizabeth Perkins, Michele Morrone, Alex Newell and Allison Janney costar.
Rogen’s upcoming Apple TV+ series “The Studio” will be the opening night TV premiere. As well as co-creating with Evan Goldberg, Rogen stars as the new chief of an “embattled” studio in an era where “movies struggle to stay alive and relevant.” The cast also includes Catherine O’Hara, Ike Barinholtz, Chase Sui Wonders and Kathryn Hahn — with plenty of celebrity cameos.
The closing night film will be the post-Korean War romance “On Swift Horses,” starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Will Poulter as Muriel and Lee, a couple living in San Diego whose lives are changed after Lee’s charismatic brother Julius (Jacob Elordi) arrives. Daniel Minahan directed the film from a screenplay by Bryce Kass, based on the novel by Shannon Pufahl; Diego Calva and Sasha Calle costar. (The movie first premiered at the 2024 Toronto Film Festival; SXSW will be its U.S. debut.)
SXSW’s vice president of film and television Claudette Godfrey says the rest of the year’s lineup — which includes 90 world premiere films — was curated by prioritizing “filmmakers who make bold statements, push boundaries, spark important conversations and challenge our perspectives in ways we never expected.”
One of those filmmakers is Gavin O’Connor, director of the 2016 thriller “The Accountant.” With Affleck, Jon Bernthal and J.K. Simmons returning, sequel “The Accountant 2” is set as a headliner, this time following autistic CPA Christian Wolff (Affleck) who must team up with his estranged brother, Brax (Bernthal), after someone close to him is killed by unknown assassins.
Thrillers dominate the headliner list, as is typical at SXSW. Electronic hip-hop producer Flying Lotus is bringing his directorial effort “Ash,” a sci-fi piece starring Eiza González as a woman on another planet whose space station crew is killed and Aaron Paul as the rescuer she isn’t sure she should trust. A24, always a significant presence at SXSW, returns to the festival with “Death of a Unicorn,” a horror comedy in which Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega witness the event its title describes. The Paramount Theater will also host glitzy premieres for “Drop,” a Blumhouse horror pic about a widowed mother (Meghann Fahy) on a date gone wrong, and “Holland,” described as a “twisted tale” about a teacher (Kidman) living with her husband in Holland, Michigan when she and her colleague begin to sense a secret in their midst. Matthew Macfadyen, Jude Hill and Gael García Bernal also star.
SXSW has curated a high-profile selection of documentaries across multiple sections. Michael Bay makes his nonfiction debut with “We Are Storror,” about a parkour collective made up of seven childhood friends, and singer-actor H.E.R. directs her first-ever film, fittingly “The Makings of Curtis Mayfield,” about the influential singer-songwriter. “Are We Good?” witnesses Marc Maron as he mourns his late partner, filmmaker Lynn Shelton. Several more docs focus on the entertainment industry: “Forever We Are Young” explores the intense, global fan community surrounding K-Pop group BTS, while “Make It Look Real” gives a step-by-step look at the work of intimacy coordinator Claire Warden and “Seen and Heard” from executive producer Issa Rae highlights the Golden Age of Black TV.
There are multiple documentaries about artificial intelligence: “Assembly,” following artist Rashaad Newsome as he attempts to use AI “to transform a former military facility into a Black queer utopia”; “Deepfaking Sam Altman,” in which “Telemarketers” co-creator Adam Bhala Lough comedically answers questions about the emerging technology; and more in the short film and XR programs. Other doc highlights include “The Python Hunt,” a look at a Florida government-funded python removal contest in the Everglades, and “Take No Prisoners,” Vanity Fair’s first-ever feature length film, which delves into the secretive, high-stakes world of hostage rescues.
TV offerings besides “The Studio” include “#1 Happy Family USA,” Amazon Prime Video’s adult animated comedy from Ramy Youssef about a Muslim American family dealing with suspicious neighbors during the time immediately following 9/11. There’s also “Government Cheese,” Apple TV+’s surrealist family comedy starring David Oyelowo, and “Happy Face,” a Paramount+ series starring Dennis Quaid as the infamous ‘90s serial killer who drew smiles on the letters he wrote to the world after his crimes.
Among the notable stars coming to Austin this year is Kate Mara, who appears in three separate projects. Two are in the narrative spotlight section: “The Astronaut,” a sci-film also featuring Laurence Fishburne and Gabriel Luna, and “The Dutchman,” the story of a Black businessman (André Holland) “drawn into a psychological game of cat and mouse with a mysterious white woman.” Mara also acts in “Friendship,” a Tim Robinson-led dark comedy that premiered at Toronto in 2024 and joins SXSW in the festival favorites section.
Twenty years after “The Puffy Chair” premiered at SXSW and launched the careers of brothers Jay and Mark Duplass as darlings of indie cinema, Jay comes back to Austin as the writer-director of “The Baltimorons” in the narrative spotlight section. The section also features projects led by Kelly Marie Tran (“Forge”), Sadie Sink (“O’Dessa”), Zoey Deutch (“The Threesome”), Zoë Chao (“The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick”) and Daisy Ridley (“We Bury The Dead”).
Throughout the lineup are several projects with eyebrow-raising, head-tilting, and even jaw-dropping premises, in true SXSW fashion — this is the festival that launched the historic awards campaign of “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” after all. Take “Slanted,” a narrative feature competitor following a Chinese American teen who has surgery to become white in hopes of being named prom queen, for example. There’s also “Age of Disclosure,” a doc from Dan Farah that must be seen to be believed, as it features “34 senior members of the U.S. Senate, House, military and intelligence community — revealing a cover-up of the existence of non-human intelligent life and a secret war to reverse engineer technology of non-human origin.” And what other festival could host the world premiere of “Fucktoys,” described as a “raucous odyssey” about a “wanton minx” who “quests hard across a dreamy landscape of smut, filth and psychics, hustling to lift a curse that has been fucking her shit up”?
With some selections, their titles alone are enough to determine their SXSW-ness. Look no further than Austin music doc “Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt.”
Variety parent company PMC owns a majority stake in SXSW.
See the full lineup below.
HEADLINERS
The Accountant 2
Director: Gavin O’Connor; Screenwriter: Bill Dubuque; Cast: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Daniella Pineda, Allison Robertson, J.K. Simmons (World Premiere)
Another Simple Favor (OPENING NIGHT)
Director: Paul Feig; Screenwriters: Jessica Sharzer, Laeta Kalogridis; Cast: Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Andrew Rannells, Bashir Salahuddin, Elizabeth Perkins, Michele Morrone, Alex Newell, Henry Golding, Allison Janney (World Premiere)
Ash
Director: Flying Lotus; Screenwriter: Jonni Remmler; Cast: Eiza González, Aaron Paul, Flying Lotus, Iko Uwais, Kate Elliott, Beulah Koale (World Premiere)
Death of a Unicorn
Director/Screenwriter: Alex Scharfman; Cast: Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Will Poulter, Téa Leoni, Richard E. Grant, Anthony Carrigan, Sunita Mani, Jessica Hynes (World Premiere)
Drop
Director: Christopher Landon; Screenwriters: Jillian Jacobs, Chris Roach; Cast: Meghann Fahy, Brandon Sklenar, Violett Beane, Jacob Robinson, Ed Weeks (World Premiere)
Holland
Director: Mimi Cave; Screenwriter: Andrew Sodroski; Cast: Nicole Kidman, Matthew Macfadyen, Jude Hill, Gael García Bernal (World Premiere)
NARRATIVE FEATURE COMPETITION
Bunny
Director: Ben Jacobson; Screen