10 Can’t-Miss Films at South by Southwest
From Oscar nominee Colman Domingo’s inspiring new drama to Anne Hathaway’s foray into fan fiction
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Between March 8 and 16, Austin will welcome the likes of Jane Fonda, Ibram X. Kendi, and Dwyane Wade for what can only be described as the event version of a multi-hyphenate celebrity: South by Southwest. Founded in 1987 in the Texas capital as a regional music festival, SXSW became an annual national hot spot for film, art, and tech as well, in the decades that followed, hosting conferences where leading voices from across the cultural spectrum gather. This year, attendees—who must purchase $1,000+ tickets if they want to experience the full week of events—can expect speaker presentations, panels, and roundtable conversations ranging from Bachelor Nation’s Rachel Lindsay discussing democracy to Congresswoman Maxine Waters breaking down solutions to homelessness.
Perhaps most anticipated are the world premieres of films and TV series that feature fan favorites telling new stories: Award-season champion Ayo Edebiri dabbles in time travel in the sci-fi dramedy Omni Loop, members of the cast of Euphoria try on horror, at home (in Cuckoo) and abroad (in Immaculate), and Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt go from Barbie and Oppenheimer, respectively, to exes up against an action-packed conspiracy in The Fall Guy. While these are among the buzziest flicks be screened at the 2024 SXSW, the festival features a slate of other projects that set themselves apart for how they explore relationships or communities that haven’t been depicted as such onscreen before. Below, Harper’s Bazaar rounds up the ones to watch for.
Sing Sing
Following his Oscar-nominated performance as civil-rights activist Bayard Rustin in 2023’s Rustin, Colman Domingo takes on yet another demanding role tackling systemic discrimination. This time, he plays John “Divine G” Whitfield (joined by Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, who plays himself) in Sing Sing, a film that centers Whitfield and Maclin’s friendship while incarcerated at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in upstate New York. In prisons, where personal safety is not always guaranteed, many incarcerated people have cited art as a powerful emotional outlet. Founded in 1996, the nonprofit Rehabilitation Through the Arts offers yearlong workshops in theater, creative writing, music, and more to people inside. In Sing Sing, the troupe in one such program puts on a play on the inside. Many of the performers are portrayed by real-life RTA alumni.
Magic City: An American Fantasy
Before he was Mr. Magic, Michael Barney sold ink toner. In 1985, Barney opened a small strip club in Atlanta, with just one dancer. Forty years later, Magic City has become a small empire and a cultural staple for the hip-hop community. Created and led by emerging writer and political commentator Cole Brown, this three-part docuseries explores “Atlanta’s Oval Office” through its celebrity attendees (among them: Drake, Shaq, Rihanna) and features in-depth interviews with women whose experiences working at Magic City challenge stereotypes about what a dancer looks like.
The Idea of You
The era of Anne Hathaway continues with The Idea of You, a romantic-dramedy feature film in which the star plays a 40-year-old single mom who starts a relationship with a 24-year-old boy-band lead singer, after bumping into him while he’s headlining Coachella. (You know, a typical romance.) The movie is based on the 2017 novel of the same name by Robinne Lee—which many speculate is Harry Styles fanfic. Hathaway stars alongside British actor Nicholas Galitzine, best known for his performances in last year’s Bottoms and Red, White & Royal Blue.
Sound and Colour
Knowing the range of Irish actor Alison Oliver—whose characters run the gamut from the demure Frances in Conversations With Friends to Saltburn’s naughty (and bloody) Venetia—this narrative short will run longer in viewers’ brains than just the 14 minutes it’s onscreen. The film hones in on the “comedic quirks and idiosyncrasies” of a family as they navigate a loved one returning home after an attempt to take her own life. Sound and Colour is billed as a comedy, so we can only anticipate a roller coaster of emotions as Oliver’s character experiences her own mental health struggles amid an emotionally repressed environment (but with a funny, Irish twist?).
An Army of Women
Set in SXSW’s hometown of Austin, this documentary feature interweaves the stories of Amy, Marina, and Hanna, three women seeking accountability after their rape cases are dismissed by local police. Following the ensuing federal class-action lawsuit, which includes as plaintiffs 12 other women with similar experiences, this story is about how we must rely on community when facing a criminal legal system that prioritizes a select few. An Army of Women interrogates what it means to “win” in a political landscape that continues to question (and, in Texas) withhold women’s agency over their own bodies.
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Songs From the Hole
This “documentary visual album” is an intimate portrait of the memories of musician James “JJ’88” Jacobs, set to his own original music, most of which he produced while incarcerated alongside abolitionist creative richie reseda, while serving a double-life sentence—as well as look at his imagined future, focused on freedom and healing. JJ’88 cowrote Songs From the Hole with Contessa Gayles, who also serves as the film’s director and one of its three producers (alongside reseda and Emmy-winning filmmaker David Felix Sutcliffe). Gayles met reseda and JJ'88 while directing the 2018 CNN documentary The Feminist on Cellblock Y. Their relationship has since evolved from filmmaker and documentary subjects to creative collaborators.“Songs From the Hole is what happens when someone who would typically be cast as a ‘character’ or ‘subject’ of a documentary film is also a key creative,” JJ’88 says. “Now is the time to hear the artistic voices of those who are directly impacted by violence and incarceration.”
I Don’t Understand You
As the title indicates, this dark comedy is a tale of misapprehensions. With rural Italy as its backdrop, I Don’t Understand You follows Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells as a couple on vacation before adopting their first child. At Variety’s Power of Comedy event at this year’s SXSW, Kroll and Rannells will receive the Comedy Duo Award, in honor of their performances here, as expecting dads who—between intermittent FaceTimes with the child’s biological mother (Amanda Seyfried)—are stranded in a creaky but cozy Italian home with hosts who do not speak English, including Eleonora Romandini, who played Isabella in season two of The White Lotus.
Black Twitter: A People’s History
From the viral spread of hashtags like #uknowurblackwhen to the building of pivotal movements like #OscarsSoWhite, #MeToo, and #BlackLivesMatter, this three-part docuseries underlines Black Twitter’s role in shaping political and popular culture. Known for his work on Insecure, director Prentice Penny refers to this work—based on Jason Parham’s 2021 Wired article “A People’s History of Black Twitter”—as “a love letter” to Black Twitter’s “power and influence.” It received a straight-to-series order from Onyx Collective, the Disney-owned content arm that focuses on “elevating BIPOC creativity.”
Tight
Jessica Barr (director’s assistant on The Summer I Turned Pretty) is known for exploring grief in her own films. Her beautifully shot narrative short Tight centers on loss of identity, as the protagonist struggles to experience sexual pleasure after childbirth and “falls back on an old coping habit.” If this work is anything like her last film, Sophie Jones (which Barr both directed and starred in), it will delicately take the viewer inside the experience of someone working through the wide range of emotions that come as we shift from one stage of life to the next.
I Wish You All the Best
Based on Mason Deaver’s YA novel of the same name, this coming-of-age film follows Ben, a nonbinary teenager who, after being thrown out of their house, moves in with their estranged older sister (played by Alexandra Daddario) and her husband (Cole Sprouse). Tommy Dorfman’s directorial debut juxtaposes gender-nonconforming folks’ daily survival practices in a society that ostracizes them for being themselves against the liberating experience of self-discovery supported by loved ones. Following the senseless death of Nex Benedict—the 16-year-old brutally attacked by three classmates at Owasso High School in Oklahoma last month—and amid the onslaught of anti-trans legislation, stories like I Wish You All the Best are required viewing.