SXSW 2020 Preview
Last year when we went to South by South West for the first time, we were completely taken by it. For nine plus days, all of downtown Austin was taken over with hundreds of thousands of people converging in the name of music, film, and tech. Everywhere you looked you saw something new, something to experience, and something to revel in. Live music on the street everywhere you go, flanked by crowds waiting to see the latest movie premiere all while several dozen Bird scooters litter the sidewalks. The place was alive, and you could feel it.
Coming back this year, we’re just as excited. SXSW is one of America’s most unique festivals, and while it’s not as massive or long as SIFF, there are still hundreds of feature films and shorts out there waiting to be seen. We passed through the schedule, narrowed down a handful that peaked our interest, and wrote about them for you to keep on your radar. Whether it’s a film from talent we know, a film with good buzz, or maybe it just has a good premise, these are the prospects that we find most promising at this year’s SXSW film festival.
Charm City Kings
It’s unusual for a non-biopic documentary to be outright adapted into a narrative but Charm City Kings aims to do just that. It is based on the 2013 documentary 12 O’Clock Boys which was a heartbreaking look at racial and class immobility, at times encapsulating the impressionable minds of youth in lower class upbringings. With a plethora of credited writers including Moonlight’s Barry Jenkins, Charm City Kings takes us inside a Baltimore based dirt-bike gang who frequently meets to drag race down one of the city’s promenades to the chagrin of the local police. In director Angel Manuel Soto's hands, it’s not hard to see an intimate and compelling narrative emerging from its source material and taking the festival circuit by storm.
The Green Knight
Hot off its announcement earlier this week, the late addition of David Lowery’s The Green Knight has us very excited. The director of Old Man and the Gun, Ain’t Them Bodied Saints, and staff favorite A Ghost Story has shown us he has a steadfast lure for compelling narratives. This time around Lowery is taking audiences on the adventure of King Arthur’s nephew, Sir Gawain, as he hunts down the titular Green Knight. Expect a fantasy tale full of myth making, honor, pride, and a little fox companion, along with a cast featuring Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Barry Keoghan, and Ralph Ineson. After all that, it’s hard not to be intrigued.
The Show
In most hands, a movie involving self described “voodoo gangsters, masked adventurers, Depression-era private eyes and violent chiaroscuro women” might seem too overloaded and risky to spend precious film festival time seeing. In Alan Moore’s (Watchmen, Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta) hands, it’s a risk I’m willing to take. While he remains prolific in the comics realm, Moore’s filmography on the silver screen has been more tumultuous. Could this be the project to bridge his critical discrepancy between the two mediums? Relative newcomer director Mitch Jenkins and lead Tom Burke (The Souvenir) are at the helm to deliver just that. Little else is known about The Show at this time as South by Southwest marks its world premiere. But with HBO’s recent successful adaptation of Watchmen, The Show seems poised for attention and hopefully capitalizes on that at the level of Moore’s finest work.
Beastie Boys Story
Spike Jonze hasn’t made a film in a hot minute. Since Her in 2013, he’s been radio silent on the cinematic front, but we’ve been eagerly following his career, eagerly awaiting his return to the big screen. He’s done some stage work, a few commercials, and the occasional music-ad hybrid video, and now, he’s finally back with a ‘live documentary’ on the band that made him famous twenty-some-odd years ago: the Beastie Boys. Featuring band mates Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz, this Apple TV+ doc (presented in IMAX) will tell “an intimate, personal story of their band and 40 years of friendship.” What ‘live documentary’ means is anyone’s best guess, but Jonze has never steered away from the unconventional, and we’ve never been anything short of excited for anything he does.
A Thousand Cuts
The Philippine Drug War has not made consistent international headlines since its start with the inauguration of president Rodrigo Duterte in 2016 but on paper it seems like it should be. In just over three years, estimates as high as 12,000 people have been killed in the supposed name of ridding the country of crime. Duterte himself has called on the public to kill suspected drug addicts and has employ disinformation to combat critics to his policy. It’s a contentious situation to say the least. In the middle of all this chaos, Ramona Diaz made a documentary. A Thousand Cuts touts itself as having exclusive access to members of the press trying to expose the disinformation campaigns of the state, and with the government officials themselves. With topics of drug abuse, criminal justice, and disinformation at the forefront of many national and domestic headlines, A Thousand Cuts promises a new and valuable perspective. Diaz’s past works include the Philippine centric and Sundance Award-Winning Motherland which brought us into the inner workings of the busiest maternity hospital in the world. With a SXSW selection following a Sundance premiere, A Thousand Cuts is in the conversation for must-see documentary of the festival.
Boys State
Government and politics are hard. Adults can barely sort it out, so why not simulate the process with kids? In Boys State, a group of high schooler seniors gather for a week long simulation where they need to build their own state government. As you would expect, tensions run high, and political views cross paths. It’s the sort of political documentary coming out right in the heat of the 2020 election that we feel will point out some harsh truths about our own system we all need to awknowledge. The film premiered at Sundance and won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize, followed by a subsequent selection at New Directors/ New Films. With it’s place in the SXSW lineup, you can bet you’ll find us waiting in line for this one.
I Used to Go Here
Sometimes choosing films at festivals is a gamble. If the film has not premiered yet, the only information to guide you to a particular screening is the announced cast and crew. Here I’m betting on Kris Rey and her intriguing ensemble. Rey, who previously has gone by Kris Swanberg, is no stranger to the film festival circuit with her 2015 feature Results playing at several notable programs around the country. Jemaine Clement (What We Do In the Shadows, Flight of the Concords) and Gillian Jacobs ( Community, Love) are the billed leads bolstered by performances from up and coming Hannah Marks (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, The Amazing Spider-Man), Katie Micucci (When in Rome, The Lego Batman Movie, Don't Think Twice) and Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone. On paper, the combination of all these talents is a standout among the festival. Only time will tell if that talent is transferred to the silver screen.
Nine Days
Nine Days is one of those films with a pitch that catches your eye. It’s about a man named Will who must choose one person to be physically born between five contending souls. They are given nine days to vie for life, otherwise they will fade away into the ether. Another darling of Sundance, first time feature film director Edson Oda directs Zazie Beetz, Bill Skarsgard, Winston Duke, and Benedict Wong in this existential film that proposes deep questions about what it means to experience life in all its multitudes. For such an ambitious proposition, one can’t help but want to watch.
