The 30th edition of South By Southwest is still going, but it’s over for TheCelebrityCafe.com. I focused on 23-year-old film festival, hitting Austin, Texas for the first five days of the event. SXSW programmers are still juggling between highlighting indie films that will likely never get a wide release and Hollywood movies looking for a unique audience before they go wide.

Richard Linklater, Zoey Deutsch, Blake Jenner; photo by Daniel S Levine

This year’s festival kicked off on March 11 with a screening of Richard Linklater’s new film, Everybody Wants Some!!. Linklater is a giant in the Austin film community, so the festival always welcomes him with open arms whenever he has a new film to show. Last year’s festival felt like it was missing something without him around.

March 12 is when things get really difficult. While you could see Midnight Special or Demolition, both films are getting wide releases from Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, respectively. If you were looking for films that will won’t get big releases (like me), My Blind Brother and War On Everyone were the ones to check out.

The important screenings on March 13 were Mike Birbiglia’s Don’t Think Twice, which still doesn’t have a distributor, and the violently crazy Hardcore Henry, which will be released by STX Entertainment. Seeing that last movie in the Paramount Theater with a huge crowd was amazing.

March 14 was very much a “Seth Rogen Day,” as he showed off the pilot for the new AMC series Preacher. He also presented a work-in-progress print of the raunchy animated comedy Sausage Party. The movie doesn’t open until August, so it was very work-in-progress.

'Preacher' co-director/executive producer Seth Rogen; Photo by Daniel S Levine

My last day was a bit slower, but highlighted by attending Don Cheadle’s conversation session. As it was the last one of the day, there was no rush to get his over within an hour, so the prolific actor was able to go into detail on his career. The night ended at the awards show, which I missed last year. Yes, awards shows can be as boring in person as they are on TV, but it was nice to see the filmmakers behind a couple of the movies I saw get honored.

SXSWesteros; photo by Daniel S Levine

Here’s a full index of my coverage from Texas this year:

Reviews:

  1. Everybody Wants Some!!
  2. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
  3. My Blind Brother
  4. Miss Stevens
  5. Don’t Think Twice
  6. Sausage Party
  7. Hardcore Henry
  8. Tower

Articles:

  1. Red carpet gallery
  2. Jenny Slate, Zoe Kazan and director Sophie Goodhart talk about making My Blind Brother
  3. TBS shows off dark comedy Search Party with Alia Shawkat
  4. Richard Linklater dives into the making of Everybody Wants Some!!