Hello from Austin!

This year’s SXSW Film & TV Festival is extra star-studded and jam-packed with exciting titles. This is due, in large part, to the fest not coinciding with the Oscars, as it has for the past few years. As always, SXSW is chock-a-block with screenings—an adventurous and inexhaustible attendee has 111 films and 17 series to choose from—and some very big stars and a ton of intriguing filmmakers and TV creators are on hand to showcase their work.

One of the stars calling Austin home for the next few days is one who calls it home, period, and that’s Texas native Matthew McConaughey, who recently released a very clever campaign about the need for Texas stories to have a Texas backdrop (the state has the chance to create a tax incentive that rivals Georgia and other competitive states), teaming up with Woody Harrelson to riff off their True Detective characters and chemistry, with a little help from Dennis Quaid, Renée Zelwegger, and Billy Bob Thornton. McConaughey is joined by Nicole Kidman, Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, Ben Affleck, Kurt Russell, Laurence Fishburne, Blake Lively, Anna Kendrick, Issa Rae, Ramy Youssef, Jacob Elordi, Kate Mara, André Holland, Zazie Beetz, Sadie Sink, Daisy Ridley, David Oyelowo, Annaleigh Ashford, Dennis Quaid and Jenna Ortega. So yeah, the lineup of stars is massive.

The films and series these stars are here to promote, and the huge offering of indies, documentaries, comedies, horror films, and more makes this year’s festival especially exciting. Here is a brief, non-comprehensive list of some of the premieres we’re tracking.

Another Simple Favor 

Director Paul Feig reunites with Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively in this follow up to their 2018 collaboration, which followed a widowed single mother named Stephanie (Kendrick) and her very non-conventional bestie, Emily (Lively) and the dark secrets Stephanie uncovers about Emily’s past. That film ended (spoiler alert) with Stephanie in jail for double homicide, so it’ll be interesting to find out how in the sequel, Emily is not only out of jail, but she’s marrying a successful Italian businessman in Capri, and Stephanie’s headed to her wedding.

The Age of Disclosure

Dan Farah’s documentary comes at the right time for UFO enthusiasts—sorry, they’re now called UAP, for unexplained aerial phenomena—considering the weirdness that was the recent New Jersey drone situation and the revelation that U.S. Air Force pilots had, on camera, experienced run-ins with aerial phenomena they couldn’t classify or understand. Farah’s doc features 34 senior U.S. Government insiders, including figures in the intelligence and military communities, who claim there’s been an 80-year cover-up of the existence of non-human intelligent life and a space race between powerful nations to reverse-engineer uncovered technology from these beings. Freaked out yet? Same. Can’t wait.

The Baltimorons

The Duplass brothers’ career started here in Austin twenty years ago, when their film The Puffy Chair ushered in a new era of barebones filmmaking that captures the can-do spirit of the fest. Now, Jay Duplass is back with Baltimorons, his solo feature directorial debut that’s centered on a Christmas Eve mishap that strands newly sober Cliff (Michael Strassner) and his [checks notes] emergency dentist Didi as they adventure through Baltimore.

Clown in a Cornfield

Eli Craig’s adaptation of Adam Cesare’s novel definitely has the top title of the fest. But folks are very, very excited for Clown in a Cornfield for much more than its direct, Snakes on a Plane-level name. Craig’s film follows a young girl (Katie Douglas) and her stepdad (Aaron Abrams) after they move to a small town to try and start over. They do start over, inside a living nightmare, when Frendo the clown arrives. The film comes from the production company behind Smile, and it aims to be the horror movie that captures this year’s festival dark heart.

Death of a Unicorn 

Writer/director Alex Scharfman’s Death of a Unicorn has all the makings of a hit—it’s got an insane but perfect premise (it’s right there in the title), a crazy good cast that includes Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Anthony Carrigan, Richard E. Grant, Téa Leoni, and Will Poulter, and it comes from A24, the powerhouse studio behind too many hits to mention. The gist is Rudd and Ortega are Elliot and Ridley, a father and daughter duo who accidentally run over a unicorn while driving to a weekend retreat hosted by Elliot’s billionaire boss, Odell (Grant.) The unicorn then becomes an object of fascination to Odell, who wants to exploit whatever magic the it possesses for his own benefit. Yes please.

Drop

After breaking out in The White Lotus season two, Megan Fahy stars in Christopher Landon’s thriller as a widowed mother named Violet whose first date in years takes a terrifying turn. While dining with her date at a fancy restaurant, Violet starts getting a series of increasingly unhinged and terrifying drops to her phone, which give her instructions on what to do, and any noncompliance means they’ll kill her daughter. Dark. Landon works with horror super-producer Jason Blum and Michael Bay on what should be a thrill ride.

The Dutchman

Andre Gaines updates Amiri Baraka’s 1964 play in his adaptation The Dutchman, starring André Holland as Clay, a 45-year-old businessman riding the New York subway when he meets the younger Lula (Kate Mara), who has designs on him that could unsettle his entire life. In Baraka’s play, Clay is a young Black man seduced and taunted by Lula, an older white woman, but Gaines has not only flipped their ages, he’s expanded their worlds, which now includes Clay’s wife Kaya (Zazie Beetz) and their couples counselor, Dr. Amiri (Stephen McKinely Henderson) to complicate Baraka’s original play in ways minor and major.

Happy Face

CBS Studios’ drama is inspired by a true story, a twisted one at that. Happy Face is centered on the relationship between Keith Hunter Jesperson (Dennis Quaid), known as the Happy Face Killer, and his daughter Melissa (Annaleigh Ashford), who haven’t spoken since he went to prison for killing eight women. Decades later, Melissa finally faces her father to try and exonerate a man who is on death row for a crime she’s convinced her father committed. The series comes from Good Fight‘s team of Robert and Michelle King and Jennifer Cacicio.

Holland

Nicole Kidman stars as Nancy Vandergroot, a woman living the perfect Midwestern life in Holland, Michigan, when she begins to suspect her husband, Fred (Matthew MacFadyen) is hiding something terrible. Enlisting the help of her colleague, Dave (Gael García Bernal), Nancy and Dave start to unpack what’s really going on in their perfect little town. Mimi Cave directs from a script by Andrew Sodroski, which topped the Black List more than a decade ago.

The Rivals of Amziah King

Matthew McConaughey stars as the titular Amziah King in this thriller set in rural Oklahoma, a bluegrass musician and honey-processor who reunites with his foster daughter (newcomer Angelina LookingGlass) and invites her into the family business. Although processing honey sounds bucolic and peaceful, Amziah has fierce rivals who aren’t messing around. They’re joined by Kurt Russell, Cole Sprouse, and Jake Horowitz, in a film directed by Andrew Patterson, the director of the incredible sci-fi thriller The Vast of the Night. 

The Studio

Apple TV+’s The Studio is one of the buzziest TV series coming to Austin, and it’s easy to see why. Series co-creator Seth Rogen plays Matt Remick, a green film executive whose love for the movies is pitted against his job to make them profitable, which requires him to say yes to films that he feels are trash and no to movies that have a heart. The cast includes Catherine O’Hara, Kathryn Hahn, Ike Barinholtz, and Chase Sui Wonders, and includes guest stars like Martin Scorsese (!) and Steve Buscemi playing themselves. For movie buffs and those who like to poke fun at Hollywood while gobbling up all that it creates, The Studio looks irresistible.

Featured image: Seth Rogen in “The Studio,” Courtesy Apple TV+. André Holland and Kata Mara in “The Dutchman.” Courtesy UTA Group. Megan Fahy in “Drop.” Courtesy Universal Pictures.

This article was first published on The Credits