Overview
Imagine that you could spend an entire week or so at an overseas film festival. If time and money wasn't a concern, and you could put your everyday life on hold, which movie bonanza would you go to? Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Toronto: they're all good choices. If you're after new indie flicks, you're probably already thinking about packing your bags for Sundance.
Of course, Robert Redford's annual Utah event isn't the only early-in-the-year American film festival worth dreaming about. Come March in Texas, there's another fest making movie buffs envious. Since 1987, South by Southwest has proven a launching pad for music and technology — and, from 1994, for indie flicks, too. On the film front, SXSW's 2016 program keeps the good stuff coming with 137 features, including 89 world premieres and 52 efforts by first-time filmmakers.
Alas, here at Concrete Playground we're watching from afar between March 11 to 20, rather than hopping on a plane to Austin. To soothe our jealousy, we've put together a list of the ten films from SXSW we're hoping will come to New Zealand. If we can't go to them, fingers crossed that they can come to us.
DON'T THINK TWICE
If you saw Sleepwalk With Me back in 2012, you're probably a fan of Mike Birbiglia. The comedian's first directorial effort, based on his one-man off-Broadway show and accompanying book of the same name, offered a breezy but insightful look at the problems of relationships, careers and planning for the future. His next film effort sounds just as subtly charming, with an improv troupe at its centre. Birbiglia stars again, joined by Keegan-Michael Key and Gillian Jacobs, should you need any more reasons to get excited.
COLLECTIVE:UNCONSCIOUS
Five filmmakers. Five dreams. Five attempts by the former to make movies out of the latter. Cinema is often called dreamlike, but collective:unconscious takes that description to another level. In stories involving the Grim Reaper hosting a television show and a sports class taking place inside of a volcano, among others, the group of indie directors doesn't just bring their own nocturnal imaginings to their screen. Instead, Lily Baldwin, Frances Bodomo, Daniel Patrick Carbone, Josephine Decker and Lauren Wolkstein attempt to make movies out of each other's unconscious musings.
BEWARE THE SLENDERMAN
You might've heard of the Slenderman. The very thin, very tall creature started popping up online in 2009, and was rumoured to stalk, abduct and generally terrorise and terrify people, particularly children. Slenderman was actually the creation of an online forum user, who created the figure as part of a Photoshop contest. That didn't stop two 12-year-old girls from killing their best friend in the hopes of meeting the faceless man, with documentarian Irene Taylor Brodsky dissecting their story, the impact of the darker side of cyber space, and how an internet meme inspired a murder.
UNDER THE SHADOW
We might've left Under the Shadow off of our Sundance list, but we won't make the same mistake twice. There's a reason that the Farsi-language film from Jordan, Qatar and the United Kingdom is playing a US festival again so soon after its world premiere in January, after all. Compared to The Babadook, Babak Anvari’s feature debut tells of a mother and daughter who begin to suspect that they’ve been targeted by evil spirits. Netflix has the rights to the frightening flick, but this sounds like something that really needs to be seen on the big screen.
MY BLIND BROTHER
Admit it: even the most serious film fans out there can't resist the lure of an impressive cast. Getting a group of great actors together doesn't always pay off, but when it does, it's magic. Here's hoping that's the end result for My Blind Brother, which stars Adam Scott, Nick Kroll and Jenny Slate. Yes, the fact that they've all either starred or popped up on TV sitcom Parks and Recreation is part of their appeal, but they're not the movie's only drawcards. Director Sophie Goodhart might be a first-time feature filmmaker; however she's adapting her own short film of the same name, which screened in competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.
TOWER
Sadly, mass shootings in US schools are a much-too-common occurrence — but it wasn't always this way. In 1966, when an ex-Marine sniper turned University of Texas engineering student started gunning down people from a tower looming over the tertiary institution's campus, no one had ever contemplated the possibility of such horrors occurring at a place dedicated to learning and education. Keith Maitland's documentary explores this bleak chapter in American history, albeit in an unusual fashion. Telling the previously untold stories of the witnesses, heroes and survivors, he not only delves into archival footage, but combines it with surreal, animated recreations.
THE TRUST
Two words: Nicolas Cage. We have more words to share about The Trust than that, of course — but we'd be lying if we didn't confess that the man who can be either the world's best or worst actor, depending on the film, wasn't the main attraction. With Elijah Wood, he plays a cop who stumbles upon a mysterious bank vault. If the combination of Cage and the storyline doesn't pique your curiosity, this might: writer/directors Alex and Ben Brewer are better known for their music video work, including winning an MTV Video Music Award for working with Justin Bieber. Yes, really.
KARAOKE CRAZIES
Karaoke and cinema go hand in hand. Plenty of movies feature everyone's favourite form of amateur singing; however surprisingly few make it their main focus (and yes, we're ignoring Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle Duets for a reason). In Karaoke Crazies, Korean filmmaker Kim Sang-Chan sets his feature in a karaoke bar, lets a serial killer loose, and makes the latter obsessed with the former. If that's not an ingenious idea for a movie, well, we don't know what is.
IN A VALLEY OF VIOLENCE
Ti West has played with satanic panic in The House of the Devil, and toyed with found footage and religious fanaticism in The Sacrament. He also charmed audiences across the ditch when he visited the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2011 to present his haunted hotel effort, The Innkeepers. In his next film, In A Valley of Violence, West swaps scares for revenge and horror for the western genre. Ethan Hawke and John Travolta tag along for the ride, stalking through a small town in the 1890s, and playing a drifter and marshal, respectively.
EVERYBODY WANTS SOME
Okay, okay, so Richard Linklater's latest film — and his first after the awarded and applauded Boyhood — is one of the titles we know for certain will grace cinema screens down under. That doesn't make us any less enthused about Everybody Wants Some, which has the honour of opening SXSW's film lineup, and has been called a spiritual sequel to his 1996 effort Dazed and Confused. Don't expect a sleazy Matthew McConaughey trying to hit on high school girls, this time around. Do expect another wild series of events, this time set over a weekend in college in the '80s.