All Cuts Day Updates From The Festival

The 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival kicked off on March 7, in Austin and features 49 world premieres among the premieres. This is the first time that this event has been launched on Thursday.

Boot Riley’s sci-fi comedy I love Boosters was the opening night film, with other highly anticipated films including Searchlight’s Radio Silence sequel Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, New Line’s Samara Weaving-Zazie Beetz horror action comedy They will kill youa musical film directed by John Carney for Lionsgate The Power Ballad starring Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas, a Vince Vaughn gangster picture Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice and Jorma Taccone-trying-to-kill-each-other pictures Over Your Dead Body.

Here’s a compilation of Deadline’s movie reviews from the 33rd anniversary festival, which runs through March 18 in the Texas capital.

Part: The Narrative Spotlight
Directors: Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick
Actors: Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Sosie Bacon, Travis Bacon, Liza Koshy, John Carroll Lynch, Jackie Earle Haley, Andrea Savage, Austin Amelio, Scoot McNairy, Nathaniel Woolsey
Deadline: There is no doubt that the Bacons are having a great time sending this well-traveled genre of music. The premise may sound like a riff, but it works. — Ph

Part: Narrative Feature Contest
Directors: Brea Grant, Ed Dougherty, Chelsea Stardust
Actors: Barbara Crampton, Rob Huebel, Christopher Marquette, Jessika Van, Vinny Thomas, Mercedes Mason, Matt Mercer, Aubrey Shea
Deadline: A clever anthology of horror comics achieves the almost unthinkable: while it delivers the necessary laughs and shocks – never easy to hit, even in the best moments – it works as well in the gig economy as anything made by the British Ken Loach or any other director of the school of social realism. -DW

Part: The Headliner
Director-screenwriter: Boots Riley
Actors: Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylor Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, Demi Moore
Deadline: Boot Riley’s sophomore feature is a surreal, hyperpop love letter to creators living under capitalism that successfully captures the despair of our current dystopia. The camp element is evident throughout the frame. – GG

Part: Documentary Spotlight
Director: Rachel Mason
Deadline: Brother’s Slayer it’s an overdue blessing for the victim of a gruesome, long-unsolved LA murder, a romantic loner whose eerie and prophetic “A Piece of Me” bookends the film, offering a poignant glimpse of a future that might have been but never was. -DW

Part: The Headliner
Director: Jorma Taccone
Actors: Samara Weaving, Jason Segel, Timothy Olyphant, Juliette Lewis, Paul Guilfoyle, Keith Jardine
Deadline: With a lot of fun that feels somehow earned, Jorma Taccone makes a fun, intense comedy, with help from the screen chemistry of Jason Segel and Samara Weaving and a talented cast. – GG

Part: The Narrative Spotlight
Director: John Carney
Actors: Paul Rudd, Nick Jonas, Peter McDonald, Marcella Plunkett, Havana Rose Liu, Jack Reynor
Deadline: Anyway The Power BalladComedic flaws aside, the film has the potential to work as a feel-good date night movie or perhaps a comfortable watch for artists who want to feel important in an overcrowded creative environment. – GG

Part: The Headliner
Director: Vicky Jewson
Actors: Iris Apatow, Lana Condor, Millicent Simmonds, Avantika, Maddie Ziegler, Uma Thurman
Deadline: In Pretty LethalJudahson knows how to walk that line of dark black action, a la John Wick and all of Tarantino’s toxic masculinity style, balanced with nonsensical laughs and an emotionally satisfying sisterhood story. – GG

Part: The Headliner
Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Actors: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Néstor Carbonell, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood
Deadline: This action-packed, blood-soaked sequel is what fans have been waiting for for the past seven years, hoping to pave the way for a trilogy in the sinister world created by Radio Silence. – GG

Part: The Narrative Spotlight
Director-screenwriter: Victoria Strouse
Actors: Hannah Einbinder, Justin Theroux, John Reynolds, Griffin Gluck, Justine Lupe, Greg Kinnear, David Ury, Michelle Johnston, Andrea Pyle
Deadline: Clever, sharply written and directed comedies are a rare bird these days, but Victoria Strouse takes a situation that could easily be passed over the top, cleverly pulls it off and creates some outrageously funny situations. – Ph