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The 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival has unveiled its coveted Audience Award winners.

After IndieWire announced the festival’s Jury Awards, with Amy Wang’s “Slanted” taking the top Narrative Feature Award, the Audience Awards have been totaled. “The Accountant 2” starring Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal has won the Headliner section, with “Fantasy Life” getting the Narrative Feature Competition vote. (Amanda Peet also previously won the Special Jury Award for her performance in “Fantasy Life.”)

Jay Duplass’ “The Baltimorons” received the Audience Award for the Narrative Spotlight section. Documentaries “Remaining Native” and “Luv Ya, Bum!” were also recognized in the Documentary Feature Competition and Documentary Spotlight categories, respectively. Rodney Ascher’s “Ghost Boy” was also a winners in the Visions category.

Audience Award winners were certified by Maxwell Locke & Ritter Llp.

“Our deepest thanks to the filmmakers, audiences, and volunteers who made this year’s SXSW Film & TV Festival exceptional,...

Ben Affleck starrer The Accountant 2, Amanda Peet comedy Fantasy Life, and Remaining Native have won the Headliner and narrative feature and documentary 2025 SXSW audience awards.

Jay Duplass’s comedy The Baltimorons won the Narrative Spotlight section, and Sam Wainwright’s Luv Ya, Bum! Took Documentary Spotlight honours, while Matt Johnson’s Blackberry follow-up Nirvanna The Band The Show was the audience favourite from Midnighter.

The 32nd edition of the festival announced its juried winners last week and screened 114 features including 93 world premieres, three international premieres, three North American premieres, four US premieres, 11 Texas premieres, and 57 shorts. The festival ran March 7-15 in Austin,...

SXSW on Monday said that Matthew Shear’s Fantasy Life, Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal’s reteam The Accountant 2 and Paige Bethmann’s documentary Remaining Native were among the big winners of the 32nd annual festival’s Audience Awards.

The news of the honors across the Austin fest’s competition, narrative, documentary, shorts, TV and Xr Experience sidebars comes after the 2025 edition revealed its juried awards last week, with honors going to Amy Wang‘s thriller Slanted for Best Narrative Feature among others.

Fantasy Life, Shear’s feature writing and directorial debut, won the marquee Narrative Feature Audience Award. It stars Shear as a man who suffers a panic attack and stumbles into a job babysitting his psychiatrist’s three granddaughters, where he begins to fall for the girls’ mother, played by Amanda Peet. Peet earlier won a special jury prize for acting.

The Headliners section audience prize went to The Accountant 2,...

SXSW organizers on Monday announced the Audience Award winners for the festival’s recently wrapped 31st edition.

The list includes Tracie Laymon’s dramedy Bob Trevino Likes It, which prevailed in Narrative Feature Competition, and the action thriller Monkey Man marking Dev Patel’s directorial debut, which dominated the Headliner section. Other notable winners included A24’s Sing Sing starring Colman Domingo, which won out in Festival Favorite, and Kyle Hausmann-Stokes’ dark veteran dramedy My Dead Friend Zoe, starring Sonequa Martin-Green, Natalie Morales and Ed Harris, which won in Narrative Spotlight.

“We are beyond grateful to all our filmmakers, audiences, and volunteers for creating one of the most exciting SXSW Film & TV Festivals ever,” said Claudette Godfrey, VP Film & TV. “We knew our audiences would flip for our program filled with explosive studio films, surprising indie dramas and comedies, riveting TV, powerful documentaries, gripping gems from around the world, and groundbreaking Xr,...

Dev Patel’s Monkey Man has won the SXSW Headliner audience award and Bob Trevino Likes It directed by Tracie Laymon has earned the Narrative Feature Competition Prize.

Patel has garnered strong reviews for his feature directing debut in which he stars as a Mumbai underground boxer out to avenge his mother’s death. Universal holds worldwide rights and will distribute in the US and UK on April 5.

Bob Trevino Likes It stars John Leguizamo and Barbie Ferreira ahs enjoyed a successful SXSW after it won the Narrative Feature Competition juried award announced last week.

It tells of a woman...

March fest announces multiple competition sections.

SXSW announced on Wednesday that Netflix series 3 Body Problem from Game Of Thrones co-creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss is the festival’s opening night TV premiere, while Universal’s action comedy The Fall Guy with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt is the centrepiece screening.

Top brass at the Austin, Texas, festival (March 8-16) also unveiled feature and short competitions and Midnighters and Global sections, as well as select titles from other categories and Xr Experience for the 31st edition.

Headliners selections include world premieres of Pamela Adlon’s Babes starring Ilana Glazer,...

Heartless Bastards, the roots-rock band led by Erika Wennerstrom, recently announced their new album: A Beautiful Life is the follow-up to 2015’s Restless Ones and will be released September 10th.

Now based in Austin, Wennerstrom enlisted players like Okkervil River guitarist Lauren Gurgiolo and My Morning Jacket keyboardist Bo Koster for this edition of the rotating Heartless Bastards lineup. The result is a sound that leans more indie-rock than Americana, but is informed by a hefty dose of soul. “How Low,” the album’s first single, is a satisfying summer...

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) kicks off its 16th annual Doc Fortnight on Thursday, a 10-day festival that includes 20 feature-length non-fiction films and 10 documentary shorts. This year’s lineup includes four world premieres and a number of North American and U.S. premieres.

Read More: 2017 New Directors/New Films Announces Full Lineup, Including ‘Patti Cake$,’ ‘Beach Rats,’ ‘Menashe’ and More

The festival is far from the only major North American showcase for non-fiction cinema. Festivals ranging from Hot Docs to True/False have played key roles in the expanding documentary festival circuit. However, Doc Fortnight has maintained its own niche on the scene, by aiming to expose undiscovered stories and filmmakers, screening a range of documentaries from around the world and capturing the ways in which artists are pushing the boundaries of non-fiction filmmaking.

“It’s not an industry festival, there aren’t awards, and distributors aren’t all coming looking to buy,...

With the ongoing discussions about Donald Trump wanting to construct a wall between Mexico and the Unites States, Sam Wainwright Douglas’ latest documentary, “Through the Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film,” is more relevant than ever.

The film follows Postcommodity, an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martinez and Kade L. Twist, who put land art in a tribal context. The group bring together a community to construct the Repellent Fence, a two-mile long ephemeral monument “stitching” together the Us and Mexico. The documentary shows how in 2015 they were helped by people on both sides of the border to install a series of 26 huge inflatable spheres emblazoned with an insignia known as the “open eye” that has existed in Indigenous cultures from South America to Canada for thousands of years.

Read More: ‘Midsummer in Newtown’ Exclusive Clip: Documentary Explores a Shakespearean Production In The Aftermath of Sandy Hook...

The announcement was made at the Discovery Channel’s Reception which also celebrated the world premiere of Discovery Impact’s “Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman” by Susan Froemke and John Hoffman and honored Sundance Institute’s The New Climate.“Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman” by Susan Froemke and John Hoffman

John Hoffman, Executive Vice President of Documentaries and Specials, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and Science Channel, announced filmmaker Laura Nix (“The Yes Men are Revolting”) as the second Sundance Institute | Discovery Impact Fellow at Discovery Channel’s 2017 Sundance Film Festival reception.

“Laura has established herself as an exciting voice in the documentary film world by telling stories of people working to change the way we think about our environment,” says Hoffman. “Her innovative work chronicling the crusades of ‘The Yes Men’ was thoroughly enjoyable, and we are thrilled to support her as she continues on with other films, including her current project on teenage...

Greg Kwedar’s Transpecos won the Narrative feature competition audience award and Keith Maitland’s Tower the documentary prize on Saturday night.

In the Headliners programme, Jean-Marc Vallée won for Demolition and Matthew Newton claimed the Narrative Spotlight award for From Nowhere.

The Documentary Spotlight audience award went to Mr. Gaga by Tomer Heymann, while the Visions and Midnighters categories were won by Caito Ortiz for Jules And Dolores and Shinsuke Sato for I Am a Hero, respectively.

The Episodic audience winner was Vice Principals by Jody Hill, David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, and the 24 Beats Per Second prize went to Honky Tonk Heaven: Legend Of The Broken Spokeby Brenda Greene Mitchell and Sam Wainwright Douglas.

Ghostland by Simon Stadler prevailed in the Sxglobal category and the festival Favorites award went to Gleason by Clay Tweel.

SXSW ran from March 11-20 and screened 143 features. For the full list of juried winners click here.

 

Heading into a three-day holiday weekend, it's fairly quiet in terms of blockbuster releases (it won't be a surprise if Guardians Of The Galaxy continues to top the box-office chart despite recent newcomers), but Austin has plenty of specialty screenings to catch your attention. 

Austin Film Society is screening Roger Corman's bizarre postapocalyptic 1971 film Gas-s-s-s screening tonight and again on Sunday afternoon in 35mm at the Marchesa. On Wednesday night, Afs will also be offering a preview screening of No No: A Dockumentary (Caitlin's review) with director Jeffrey Radice, producer Mike Blizzard and editor Sam Wainwright Douglas in attendance. The film, which premiered at SXSW earlier this year, tells the story of how Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter while on LSD in the 1970s. It's expected to open at Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar next weekend and will also be available on VOD. We also get a new Essential Cinema series,...

Thank You A Lot is an Austin, Texas film through and through, from its setting (if you know Austin, you'll see lots of familiar sites) to its music-centric focus on a variety of musical styles (classic country, indie rock and hip-hop) to its cast (featuring locals such as Andy Langer, Sam Wainwright Douglas and Zell Miller III). But while Matt Muir's directorial feature film debut can be labeled an "Austin film," its central themes, of dreams, failures, family, art and commerce, are universal. Jack Hand (Blake DeLong) is a struggling talent agent at Intrepid Management. He's not struggling because he's bad at his job or doesn't care about his clients but because he's having a hard time buying into the plastic corporate culture that his boss (Michael D. Conway) exudes, which leaves him on the outs with his boss and co-workers. It doesn't help that not too long ago...

The Rural Studio is a program through Auburn University started by the late architect Samuel Mockbee. Architecture students live and work in rural, empoverished communities of Alabama, designing and building community projects and homes for some residents using donated and recycled materials.

The Austin Film Society is hosting a special screening Tuesday, Jan. 14 of Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio to raise funds for the Rural Studio on the 20th anniversary of its founding. [tickets] The film, directed by Austinite Sam Wainwright Douglas, peers into parts of Mockbee's biography while showing progress on a 2002 Rural Studios housing project for "Music Man."

Interview subjects in the documentary include academic figures (Ut Austin's Stephen Ross among them) who praise Mockbee's program for offering in-field learning. There are only a couple of dissenting voices -- a reluctant Alabama resident who says the Rural Studio has done nothing to help...

Directors: Bob Ray, Spencer Parsons, Rusty Kelley, Berndt Mader, Amy Grappell, Karen Skloss, Duane Graves, Justin Meeks, Paul Gordon, Johnny Stranger, David Zellner, Nathan Zellner, Jay Duplass, John Bryant, Sam Wainwright Douglas, Ben Steinbauer, Elisabeth Sikes, Mike Dolan, Geoff Marslett, Bradley Beesley, Bob Byington, Clay Liford, Carlyn Hudson, Miguel Alvarez, Scott Meyers, Pj Raval, Chris Eska Writers: Bob Ray, Spencer Parsons, Rusty Kelley, Berndt Mader, Amy Grappell, Karen Skloss, Duane Graves, Justin Meeks, Paul Gordon, Johnny Stranger, David Zellner, Nathan Zellner, Jay Duplass, John Bryant, Sam Wainwright Douglas, Ben Steinbauer, Elisabeth Sikes, Mike Dolan, Geoff Marslett, Bradley Beesley, Bob Byington, Clay Liford, Carlyn Hudson, Miguel Alvarez, Scott Meyers, Pj Raval, Chris Eska Starring: Bob Ray, Chris Doubek, Maggie Lea, Hilah Johnson, Robert Lambert, Leslie Naugle, John Wesley Coleman, Kelli Bland, Justin Meeks, Jonny Mars, Ashley Spillers, Jen Tracy Duplass, Jay Duplass, Chris Trew, Sam Wainwright Douglas, Anna Margaret Hollyman, Luke Savisky,...

In celebration of Slacker's 20th anniversary, local filmmakers are re-creating scenes from the Richard Linklater movie for Slacker 2011, a fundraising project benefitting the Texas Filmmakers Production Fund (Tfpf). The trailer is now available. As we await the August 31 premiere, we're chatting with some of the filmmakers participating in one or more of the short films that will comprise the project.

Today's interview is with Sam Wainwright Douglas, documentarian and director of Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio, as well as The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose. He also acted in 2010's The Happy Poet.

Slackerwood: Which scene from the film did you reshoot?

Sam Douglas: I shot Scene 12, known as the mechanic scene. It's the one where the conspiracy buff annoys the guy working on his car, the mechanic's buddy shows up, they talk cars, they head to the junkyard, swipe some auto parts,...

Without Richard Linklater's slice of life film [1] Slacker, the independent film boom of the 1990s might not have happened. Unlike almost anything American audiences had seen before, it inspired a generation of filmmakers to go out and make their own movies. Kevin Smith often credits seeing the film at the Angelika Film Center in New York as his inspiration to make Clerks, the film's success gave Linklater the ability to make Dazed and Confused and so much more. First released in 1991, Slacker celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and the Austin Film Society and the Alamo Drafthouse are teaming up for a remake. In typical Austin and Drafthouse style, though, isn't a by the book remake. There aren't any big special effects or A-list actors. Instead, 23 Austin filmmakers will reshoot scenes using the same dialogue and locations from the original film and string them together as a meta-homage. Read...

Richard Linklater made a splash back in 1991 with his independent low budget film Slacker. The film was unique in its structure and seemingly plotless film, following a single day in the life of an ensemble of mostly twenty-something youths in Austin, Texas. The film followed various characters and scenes, never staying with one character or conversation for more than a few minutes before picking up someone else in the scene and following them. A similar idea was also explored at around the same time in a film called Twenty Bucks, that well followed a 20 dollar bill around for a day.

Now two decades later, the Austin Film Society and The Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas are teaming up with 23 Austin filmmakers to remake Richard Linklater’s critically acclaimed movie to celebrate the film’s 20th anniversary. According to the Austin Film Society [via The Playlist] “Each scene will be recreated, using the original dialogue and...

The Austin Film Society and The Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas are getting 23 Austin filmmakers to remake Richard Linklater's acclaimed 1991 film Slacker in order to celebrate the film's 20th anniversary. According to the Austin Film Society [via The Playlist] "Each scene will be recreated, using the original dialogue and locations (whenever possible), and individual scenes will then be compiled to create the remake, presenting the city’s changing face while showcasing some of its most exciting talent." The production is currently accepting donations to the project, which is set to premiere on August 31st. Hit the jump to check out a list of the participating filmmakers and click here to donate. I'm usually not interested in remakes, but this seems like a really cool project and I'll be curious to see how it plays out. Here's a list of the filmmakers and teams involved in Slacker 2011: Miguel Alvarez Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas Afs Film...

The Austin Film Society and The Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas are excited to announce that 23 of the most celebrated Austin filmmakers will remake vignettes from Afs Founder & Artistic Director Richard Linklater’s seminal film Slacker. This homage project was conceived by The Alamo Drafthouse team to celebrate Slacker’s 20th anniversary year by bringing the film community together to honor one of Texas’ best homegrown films. Afs came aboard with a stellar group of filmmakers and a Kickstarter-like campaign to raise an additional $60,000 toward the 2011 Texas Filmmakers Production Fund (accepting applications until June 1).

Each scene will be recreated, using the original dialogue and locations (whenever possible), and individual scenes will then be compiled to create the remake, presenting the city’s changing face while showcasing some of its most exciting talent.

Participating Filmmakers & Teams: Miguel Alvarez, Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas, Afs Film Club, Bradley Beesley, John Bryant, Bob Byington, Mike Dolan, Sam Wainwright Douglas,...

Director: Paul Gordon Writer: Paul Gordon Starring: Paul Gordon, Jonny Mars, Chris Doubek, Liz Fisher, Amy Myers Martin, Amy Myers Martin, Ricardo Lerma, Sam Wainwright Douglas, Carlos Trevino Bill (Paul Gordon) is looking for a job. He has the bright idea to borrow the very small amount of cash that his bank is willing to loan to him in order to buy a hot dog cart and convert it into a health food cart. At least in the beginning, Bill plans on this being a one-man operation. He will prepare the organic and mostly vegetarian sandwiches himself as well as man the food cart. After finding a prime location – beside a hike and bike trail (at what some may recognize as Austin’s Lady Bird Lake) – crowded with people enjoying the outdoors, doing healthy things like walking, running and biking; Bill quickly discovers that most people, no matter how healthy purport to be,...

A new documentary profiles the late Samuel Mockbee, founder of Auburn University's Rural Studio--which taught students by building houses in rural Alabama.

If you're reading this from Austin, make sure to check out the premier of Sam Wainwright Douglas's Citizen Architect, a documentary of Samuel Mockbee's revolutionary Rural Studio design program in Hale County, Alabama. Mockbee, who died in 2001, started Rural Studio at Auburn University in 1993 with fellow architecture professor Dennis K. Ruth. The idea was, and is, to teach architecture by doing architecture--designing and building houses in rural Alabama.

These days, so-called "design-build" programs are common in architecture schools (Yale's has been going on for 40 years), but Rural Studio is the most aggressive in its philosophy--it is the architecture school, not just a required class. With groups like Architecture for Humanity and Project H becoming so popular, it's important to remember where it all started.

(Above: 2008's $20,000 Loft House in Greensboro.

Scheduled for a March 2010 release…

Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio is a documentary film on the late architect Samuel Mockbee and the radical educational design/build program known as the Rural Studio.

Hale County, Al is home to some of the most destitute and impoverished (black) communities in the United States of America. It is also home to Samuel Mockbee and Auburn University’s Rural Studio, one of the most prolific and inspirational design-build outreach programs ever established. Citizen Architect is a documentary film chronicling the late Samuel Mockbee, artist, architect, teacher, community organizer and caregiver to poverty-stricken Hale County residents.

Directed by Sam Wainwright Douglas.

Trailer below:...

The 2010 SXSW Film Festival will take place March 12-20 in Austin, Texas. Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio Director: Sam Wainwright Douglas In Alabama, Samuel Mockbee’s radical design/build program brought architecture to the rural poor and a new set of ethics to architecture. His legacy has inspired a generation of architects dedicated to design for social good. (World Premiere) For The Sake Of The Song: The Story of Anderson Fair Director: Bruce Bryant A devoted community of artists, volunteers and patrons transforms a politically subversive little coffee house and restaurant into a unique American music institution… a small place [...]...

Not all of the great film festivals are outside of the U.S. Even if you can’t book a ticket to Cannes or Berlin, you should be able to afford a flight out to Austin, Texas for SXSW, which is a festival for not only movies, but music and video games as well. Like the years before, the line-up for the 2010 SXSW Film Festival is the goods. Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass will open up the fest and then there will be other great-looking films throughout including The Duplass Brothers’ Cyrus, SNL’s hard-r adaptation of MacGruber, Tim Blake Nelson’s Leaves of Grass, and Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways, just to name a few. If you’re going to this year’s SXSW, let me know so I can steal your identity and go in your place.

The 2010 SXSW Film Festival will run from March 12-20. Check out the...

Less than a week worth of recovering from the Sundance Film Festival, and we are already looking forward to our next, big film fest coverage. That would be the South by Southwest Film Festival held annually in Austin, Texas. Last year, Scott and I brought you all kinds of coverage from the Lone Star State, and this year doesn’t look to be much different.

With that, the announcement came last night of the feature films that will be playing at the SXSW Film Festival. Previous announcement were already made about films like Cold Weather, Electra Luxx, Hubble 3D, Lemmy, Saturday Night, and The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights making their debut. Kick-ass was recently announced as the opening night film, as well.

Among the other films being presented this year are some Sundance darlings, a few, highly anticipated premieres, and MacGruber.

Check out the full list...

Late yesterday the SXSW Fim Festival, which runs from March 12-20 in Austin, TX, announced the full lineup of films that will be screening at this year’s event. And baby, it’s quite a list. Mixing big name films with intimate indie gems, the sheer number of films and the vast array of talented filmmakers is sure to be a hit with attendees and critics alike.

This lineup includes premieres of studio films such as Universal’s MacGruber, Lionsgate’s teen superhero actioneer Kick-Ass and smaller films like Tim Blake Nelson’s Leaves of Grass, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs, Michel Gondry’s The Thorn in the Heart and Steven Soderbergh’s And Everything Is Going Fine. With so many films to watch, it will be very difficult to find time to seem them all during the events nine days. But hell, we’re going to try.

For more on...