Long, harrowing road trips, reality competition shows, bubblegum wastelands, multiverse mayhem and the return of Matthew McConaughey are among our crew’s highlights from this year’s SXSW Film Festival.
“I’m… YES! I’m freaking out,” Sunita Mani screamed with excitement upon seeing the Letterboxd mic at the world premiere of Death of a Unicorn. We get her. At the 2025 SXSW Film Festival, the energy was infectious.
Our on-the-ground crew set up shop deep in the heart of Austin for seven-plus days of red carpets, excessive amounts of tacos and more mic jump scares. We got the scoop from The Studio’s Chase Sui Wonders about her inyeon with Past Lives’ Celine Song and Greta Lee; exchanged bad movie-date stories with Drop’s Christopher Landon and Meghann Fahy (more on that next month); and indulged in a Coyote Ugly karaoke session during Fucktoys filmmaker Annapurna Sriram’s Last Four Watched.
Along the way, we snagged a long-anticipated four faves from Letterboxd member Kyle MacLachlan (aka Mr. Brat himself) and celebrated a full-circle moment with Holland director Mimi Cave, whose Fresh stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan provided us with our very first four favorites video, just under three years ago. As always, we love bringing our community into the conversation, so we also made sure to ask everyone from Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega to Nicole Kidman and Gael García Bernal which of their films they think the most Letterboxd have in their four favorites. Keep an eye on our social channels for the latter duo’s guesses!
Through the mercurial Texas weather and bleary, screen-fatigued eyes, a love of connecting over movies sustained us. After all, you never know when an impromptu recommendation from a stranger in a queue might become a new fave deserving of the Letterboxd trifecta in the future: a five-star rewatch with a heart. Festival time constraints aside, some of y’all have already hit the ground running there with SX titles—Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie rewatchers, I see you. After checking out your physical media hauls from the Criterion Mobile Closet parked on Congress Ave (and experiencing temporary memory loss during our own overwhelming visit), we hopped back over to the screening lines to hear more of the most recent watches you honored with that trinity.
Ahead of his meta Apple TV+ comedy The Studio’s March 26 premiere, Seth Rogen spoke ionately to Letterboxd about his wish for the industry to invest in more risk-takers—a welcome reminder that beyond SXSW’s buzzy Headliner section exists a treasure trove of exciting emerging indie voices ready for a bigger platform. On the awards front, Amy Wang’s satirical Slanted took home the Grand Jury Award for the Narrative Feature Competition, while Benjamin Flaherty’s intimate Shuffle won the equivalent for Documentary. And in the inaugural Howl of Fame Award, newcomer Indy received his (non-toxic) flowers for an “unforgettable method performance” as the eponymous Good Boy in Ben Leonberg’s horror told from a dog’s perspective. Messi linkup, when?
With that in mind, here’s our nine best of the fest, an eclectic lineup of never-ending roads, honeybee revenge and golden showers that’s thrillingly more than fifty percent feature debuts.
Contributions from: Annie Lyons, Jenni Kaye and Zachary Lee.
“I’m into some pretty specific shit. It’s niche,” says the mulleted “James Francone” (played by babyface Brandon Flynn) just before getting railed by a bleeding Sadie Scott. And it’s exactly what I’d say when introducing director, actor and writer Annapurna Sriram’s singular and daring feature debut Fucktoys.
Fucktoys stars Sriram as AP, on a fool’s journey to make $1,000 so she can pay her Tarot reader, played by the iconic Big Freedia, to lift the dark curse on her. Her mission has her stripping at high-class coke orgies, getting tanning bed detoxes and spitting on men, a lot. Accompanying her is fresh out of prison Danni, played by Scott, an old friend and maybe new twin flame. They bop around on AP’s moped to French pop music through Trashtown, USA, an expertly crafted late-capitalist bubblegum wasteland. Honestly, it felt like a not-too-distant future for Austin, TX.
The reviews are buzzing with comparisons to John Waters and Gregg Araki, but Sriram’s unique vision still shines through. As does some of the most gorgeous 16mm work I’ve ever seen, courtesy of cinematographer Cory Fraiman-Lott. As Drew puts it, “can’t believe movies can look and sound like this.”
Fucktoys was born from Sriram’s realization that if she wanted to act in creative and imaginative films, she’d have to make them herself, and in doing so hopefully paves the way for more fresh voices to take matters into their own hands. “Ten to twenty years from now, this is the kind of film certain young moviemakers will be inspired by,” writes Bretton. JK
A film that explores the horrors of being stuck on a road that can’t seem to end, director Babak Anvari’s Hallow Road embodies—at least for Staley—the universal truth that “there’s nothing scarier than driving a car.” The “emotionally draining” and “vomit-inducingly tense” chamber piece sees Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys as parents who receive a late-night call from their daughter, Alice (voiced off-screen by Megan McDonnell), who claims she’s hit someone with her car. The two drive off after her, and we spend almost the entirety of the film in the car with the lead duo. Their path is long, reception is spotty and Alice’s increasingly distressed cries of fear unsettle her parents, who begin to realize that their daughter’s story may not be as straightforward as it seems.
Anvari mines the stationary setting for all of its horrors, while the dialogue and score make things feel fresh and exciting when the set-up could have been a one-note gimmick. If the film’s premise seems Locke-coded, Annie reaffirms the comparison and their mutually creative use of limited space. Camargore describes Hallow Road as “an 80 minute-long anxiety attack in the best way possible” while Kendall pulls out all the adjectives you hope to hear for a horror film: “so tense, gripping, atmospheric, and immersive… I didn’t even want to blink and miss a single second.” ZL
Confession time. As someone who grew up watching Project Runway with my mom, has a skin condition on my arms that flares up with stress and now lives in West Hollywood—no, not the trendy part full of gay clubs and Bravo TV filming locations but the markedly less fancy Russian district—I was never not going to be completely taken by Idiotka. But then, filmmaker Nastasya Popov knows exactly who she’s serving with her hilarious, touchingly personal debut about an aspiring designer, her Russian Jewish immigrant family and the fashion competition reality show that could save them from eviction. From the vibrant visuals to the assless chaps reveal, this one’s for the girls and the gays and the glammed up babushkas.
Margarita (Love Lies Bleeding scene-stealer Anna Baryshnikov) undeniably has a voice. But talent alone isn’t enough to satiate the Slay, Serve, Survive production’s insistence on struggle… all under the guise of authenticity, of course. Poking fun at the industry’s commodification of identity, Popov brings the savviness of someone studied in the world of reality television, bolstered by an ace comedic ensemble including Camila Mendes as producer Nicol, Theater Camp’s Owen Thiele as the show’s host, and Julia Fox, Benito Skinner and Saweetie as the judging . (“Eczema representation and Julia Fox this is the greatest movie ever made,” Jaden promises.)
But true to Margarita’s own whimsically maximalist but thrifty style, Idiotka interweaves icy reality camp with genuine warmth from the family drama side of things, especially in Margarita’s connection with her grandma (Galina Jovovich). “One of the best oddball family comedies since Little Miss Sunshine. So much heart. Loved it,” shares MrBoogedy, while Mary exalts, “THIS CAST!!!! Anna, Benny, Julia, Owen… more like the four horsemen of laughing with joy.” I demand a Slay, Serve, Survive three-season order, thanks! AL
Director Alexander Ullom’s existential road trip movie It Ends is the type of clever and chilling debut that announces the arrival of a bold new talent to watch. The film focuses on four friends—played with remarkable pathos and empathy by Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth and Mitchell Cole—discussing post-grad plans before they take a wrong turn while on a forest road. No matter how long they drive or reverse course, they can’t get off the path, and anytime they stop, their car is immediately swarmed by hordes of screaming people. The only option they have is to keep driving, and with no exit in sight, the quad has to contend with the reality that they may be trapped in this purgatory forever.
Coined as “Gen Z slow cinema” by Sasha, Isaac shares that It Ends is “the first [film] I’ve seen that fully understands Gen Z’s post ironic detachment and underlying earnestness.” Michael cites the feature’s technical aspects for contributing to the sense of dread, writing that the “skillful use of a volume led wall” and “a very focused edit” result in a film that’s “suspenseful and skin-crawling, yet full of heart.” Chase heralds Ullom’s picture as being “more than a little scrappy” and also “the discovery of this year’s festival,” that “not only gets better as it goes along but finds a surprising resonance that gets at something truthful about what it means to find meaning in a bleak world where there may be none.” Adulthood, as depicted in the film, is not a destination to endure and accept but a nightmare to avoid. After all, with all the horrors of the world waiting for us, who wants to grow up? ZL
Unless you’re Matt Johnson and have a spare time machine on deck, there’s only so much time during a film festival to soak up as many new movies as possible. But in a festival first for yours truly, I couldn’t resist reshuffling my schedule to rewatch Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, thanks to a) the uproarious late-night premiere that deservedly earned the film the Midnighter Audience Award, b) my eight dozen questions on its behind-the-scenes intricacies, and c) my trepidation that this particular cut won’t screen again anytime soon due to copyright challenges. As Sean summarizes, the scrappy meta comedy “immediately s the ranks with Fury Road and Apocalypse Now of movies I will never understand how they were made.” Did I mention that all this hullabaloo surrounds a guerilla filmmaking riff on Back to the Future?
The premise and cheekily knowing title comes from Johnson and Jay McCarrol’s television show née web series, which see the longtime collaborators play versions of themselves trying to book a gig at Toronto’s beloved Rivoli. (No prior knowledge of the Nirvanna the Band boys is necessary here, though—the jokes that went over my uninitiated head tended to be more simply of the Canadian variety.) Stupid in a smart way with surprising heart about friendship and aging, NtBtStM receives “six stars out of five” from Babylonian, who writes, “This is the happiest I’ve been in a movie theater in my entire life. I can’t laughing this hard at a movie ever.” “This feels punk in the same way that Jackass and Borat did back in 2006. And yet it’s also extremely pop. So it’s basically like the Blink-182 of movies and that is why I loved it,” Chad observes. I’ll see y’all at the CN Tower for round three. AL
Just when I thought the mechanics of multiverse storytelling had run their course, the McManus brothers reminded me that movies have only just scratched the surface of the endless opportunities their tropes offer. The brothers’ other sibling, Michaela, stars in Redux Redux as Irene, a grieving woman who travels through the multiverse to repeatedly kill her daughter’s murderer. By the time we catch up with her at the start of the film, she’s a well-oiled machine running on pure hatred and cheap diner coffee, sharpening her bitterness into coldhearted revenge. The filmmakers’ use of the multiverse subgenre to comment on grief and rage’s transcendence is uniquely harrowing. As Irene murders her daughter’s killer over and over, she learns that her pain is not only cyclical, it’s commonplace and mundane; the multiverse provides a way for her to keep killing repeatedly, never offering her the closure to stop or move on.
Many were taken by the film’s committed and simple execution of its premise, with GoldMaggot says, “If I see another movie this fuckin’ badass in 2025 I don’t know if I can take it.” ZL
It’s difficult to describe a movie like Jack christens it a bee heist movie, a greasy blues musical and a wacky comedy, which is about as good a summary as any. Andrew Patterson returns to feature filmmaking six years after 2019’s acclaimed The Vast of Night, and he brings another sight for sore eyes with him in leading man Matthew McConaughey, playing a beekeeper whose life is pleasantly disrupted by the return of Kateri (Angelina LookingGlass), his foster daughter who’s come back to rural Oklahoma.
Reactions from the film’s premiere describe it as a story that affirms life, even while not shying away from its hardships. Andrew praises it as “busting at the seams with some unknown electricity… inventive and sensitive in the best ways” while Iain shares that it “isn’t afraid to paint its characters in shades of grey and still make them loveable.” Many expressed love for the film’s original songs, with Abby promising “when the soundtrack comes out… I will be unreachable.” There was plenty of praise for McConaughey, and especially LookingGlass, with Julian calling her performance “radiant” and Elioaht describing her role as “an all-timer debut.”
Amziah King is the very definition of a big swing, with Trace describing it as “brazenly defiant of whatever the hell you’re expecting it to be” and saying it’s “not perfect but sometimes the best movies are messes.” If you need the TL;DR, Longish has you covered: “This movie has beekeeping, kind of bluegrass, church potlucks, car chases, either Zack or Cody and murder.” Sign me up for seconds! ZL
Helmed by an entirely trans, nonbinary and queer cast, Siobhan McCarthy’s delightfully subversive debut sounds like a right-wing propagandist nightmare come to life: a pair of cisgender high school boys pretend to be trans women to infiltrate the girls’ locker room, only for one of them to realize she really is trans. But make no mistake—as much as She’s the He satirizes conservative bathroom hysteria, the priority here is trans joy. “Too many emotions to come up with a quippy one-liner review rn. I love this and I love everyone that made it,” Will shares.
“So so so fun and joyful and important,” writes Courtney, adding how the film stands “shoulder-to-shoulder with more mainstream queer coming-of-age stories like Heartstopper and Bottoms (…) wish I had had this movie in high school.” That latter comparison feels particularly apt, given how She’s the He heightens its universe just so and similarly riffs on 2000s teenage comedies, down to the title homage to She’s the Man. An easy add to the coming-of-canon then, according to Riversbp: “My second watch was already a quote-along… clear indication of a perfect teen comedy!”
As Ethan, Misha Osherovich steadies the absurd humor in a stunning, wonderfully empathetic performance, reflecting her evolving layers of self-discovery with palpable hope in their eyes. They share a lively chemistry with Nico Carney’s motormouth horndog Alex, “giving long lost Culkin brother” as he balances zipping through quips with the genuine bond between the two BFFs. Complete with charming animated flourishes and a pitch-perfect The Rocky Horror Picture Show needle drop, the result is “a sleepover high school classic in the making”, as Hunter puts it. Exactly the type of self-assured, low-budget indie that festivals are for, I hope this one makes it far and wide to the audiences who need it most. AL
Winner of the SXSW Grand Jury Prize, Slanted’s squeamish mix of body horror and teenage angst is already inspiring Letterboxd to declare it a cross between The Substance and Mean Girls. Yet director Amy Wang’s film perhaps shares the closest cinematic DNA with Sasha Rainbow’s Grafted, as both movies use the mechanics of body horror to address how society can make us feel not just alienated from ourselves but also foreigners in our own skin.
Shirley Chen stars as Joan Haung, a teenager who, out of desperation to achieve prom queen status, partakes in a trans-racial surgery to become white. Mckenna Grace then plays Joan (she changes her name to Jo Hunt) and in exploring the fallout of Joan’s transition, Wang burrows themes around the pain of cultural erasure and how the warped standards of beauty we inherit from youth can forever haunt us. Cinemaluvr writes of Slanted’s tricky tonal balancing act that it’s “funny as hell but also deeply sad.”
Many reviews point out how the production enhances Wang’s hyperreal world. Nolan encourages viewers to “always be looking in the background, it’s fascinating” with Jordan proudly declaring “visual comedy is so back… babe can we stop at Prayers and Ammo on the way home,” referencing one of the many stores with funky names in Joan’s hometown. Jess puts it best, sharing that Slanted is “a hilarious absurdist satire that gleefully pulls you into the most uncomfortable parts of a radicalized life in America, especially for the most vulnerable and performative age.” ZL
