20 Most Anticipated Movies at SXSW 2025 – Rolling Stone

By

David Fear

If the film festival circuit is a little like a family dinner, then SXSW is the unruly cousin who drinks a tad too much, talks a bit louder than the rest during the meal, and serves itself to an extra-large helping of dessert at the end. That’s usually the relative you want to be around, of course — the one that’s the most unpredictable and may make you occasionally wince, but is inevitably the most fun to be around. The long-running event may have gained some respectability over the last few decades among the tastemakers and mucky-mucks. But it has not lost its wild side, and for many moviegoers, that’s the reason they keep making their pilgrimage every March. (Well, that and the queso.)
When the movies & TV portion of the multi-headed Austin, Texas fest kicks off on March 7th, we’ll get the usual mix of genre flicks, microindies and off-the-beaten-path documentaries, as well as the sort of big-name, big-ticket crowd-pleasers (the Anna Kendrick-Blake Lively comedy sequel Another Simple Favor, the Ben Affleck neurodivergent-action-hero sequel The Accountant 2, Seth Rogen meta-Hollywood sitcom The Studio) that play extremely well with the SXSW audiences. We’ve singled out 20 titles that seem like the closest things to sure bets at this year’s festival — from a dark A24 satire involving Big Pharma, unicorns and Jenna Ortega to everything-you’d-ever-want-to-know histories of Curtis Mayfield, the Butthole Surfers and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Longtime listeners of the WTF podcast have heard Marc Maron utter this three-word question a lot — it’s become a bit of a mantra in both his peerless long-form interviews and his hilarious, highly neurotic stand-up sets. Documentarian Steven Feinartz traces Maron’s arc from club comic to podcast pioneer to headlining veteran, with an emphasis on him grieving the loss of his partner, filmmaker Lynn Shelton, and processing his grief through workshopping his 2023 special From Bleak to Dark.
Record producer/filmmaker/professional genre-fucker-upper Steven Bingley-Ellison — better known as Flying Lotus — gives us his riff on a familiar sci-fi storyline: A spaceship crew explores a distant planet, find hostile alien life, shit gets crazy. But if you were lucky (or if you’re less adventurous in your viewing habits, “lucky”) enough to catch the hyphenate’s mind-bending 2017 debut Kuso or his contribution to the horror anthology V/H/S/99, then you know this is going to be anything but a stock Alien rip-off. Baby Driver‘s Eiza González takes on the Ripley role; Aaron Paul, The Raid‘s Iko Uwais and Lotus himself are fellow crew members under attack. Expect faces to melt and/or explode.
Astronaut Sam Walker (Kate Mara, who’s the belle of this year’s SXSW fest with two high-profile features) returns home from a long jaunt among the stars, eager to resume life on Earth with her husband (Gabriel Luna). A military general (Laurence Fishburne) wants to quarantine her for testing first, at which point some things seem to become a little weird around the base — like maybe she might have brought back, we dunno, a visitor or two from her time in space. A long history of watching science fiction movies has taught us that this never ends well.
A strong contender for the narrative feature with the best title at this year’s SXSW, the latest dramedy from filmmaker/micro-indie icon Jay Duplass doubles as his version of a holiday movie, following a socially awkward sad sack (Michael Strassner) who knocks out his front tooth on Christmas Eve. He somehow manages to find a dentist (Liz Larsen) who’s open and can perform emergency oral surgery. Then, thanks to a series of unusual circumstances, he and the good doctor find themselves tooling around downtown Baltimore on a wild goose chase as the city shuts down to celebrate. (We should note that it’s a good year for the Duplass Industrial Complex, as Jay’s sister-in-law Katie Asleton also has a buzz-generating film, Magic Hour, at the fest as well.)
They were the acid-soaked heroes and audio terrorists of the 1980s underground, playing the sort of concerts in which nudity, guns and fire were the rule rather than the exception. Even their name was two parts confrontational, one part giggly adolescent joke. Behold the Butthole Surfers, natives of the great state of Texas and bona fide postpunk, noise-rock legends. Director Tom J. Stern (Freaked) gives Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary’s long-running band the proper music-doc treatment, tracing the Buttholes’ stored history, brief flirtations with the mainstream (those who first saw them on the original Lollapalooza tour have never forgot their dry-iced earfuck of a set), and makes a case for why their one of the most important bands of the Reagan era. We seriously can’t wait to check this out.
Driving through a nature preserve owned by a stinkin’ rich Big Pharma family, a dad (Paul Rudd) and his teen daughter (Jenna Ortega) hit an animal. Once they bring the poor thing to the main estate, everyone discovers it’s… a unicorn. Like, an actual unicorn! Scientists show up to study it, everyone seems stoked that these mythical creatures exist and all is well. Until the dead animal proves to be not-so-dead. And also, it’s extremely angry parents show up looking for their lost kin, and maybe you shouldn’t piss off a Momma Unicorn? Will Poulter, Richard E. Grant, Téa Leoni, Barry‘s Anthony Carrigan and Jessica Hynes are also along for the ride. We totally understand why A24 wanted to premiere this at SXSW. This feels tailor-made for the festival’s raucous crowds.
Subway commuters, beware of bewitching young Jezebels who sidle up to you on 1 train, cooing about taking you back to their place downtown! This is exactly what happens to a prominent businessman (André Holland), who — to his credit — is trying to ignore the siren song of the sultry woman (Kate Mara) relentlessly hitting on him. But there’s something about this encounter that greatly unnerves him, which may have something to do with both a possible curse and, oddly enough, Amiri Baraka’s 1964 play Dutchman. Director Andre Gaines (The One and Only Dick Gregory) fashions a meta-riff on art, life and the politics of race, as well as assembling a to-die-for cast that includes Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zazie Beetz, Aldis Hodge and Lauren E. Banks.
Amy Landecker — you know her as A Serious Man‘s “new freedoms” scene stealer, Sarah Pfefferman in Transparent, and a million other memorable appearances — writes, directs and stars in this story of a recent divorcée who’s ready to start the second act of her life. When she signs up for an acting class and ends up getting hot and heavy with a younger classmate (Nico Hiraga), it feels like her midlife-crisis goals have been achieved. Then the two of them go to a classmate’s wedding, her sobriety and sense of propriety go out the window, and things get messy. Uh-oh. Ken Marino, Simon Helberg, Kiersey Clemons, Missi Pyle, and Landecker’s old Transparent sparring partner Gaby Hoffmann costar.
When Martin Pistorius was 12 years old, he fell into something akin to a coma. When he was 15, the South African boy awoke with virtually no memories, could barely move his head or limbs, and had lost the ability to speak. He was eventually able to journey back to engaging with the world outside of his head, one rough step at a time. Based on Pistorius’s bestselling memoir of the same name, this doc by Rodney Ascher (Room 237, A Glitch in the Matrix) gives the now-grown Martin a visual platform to tell his story, blending narration and lyrical recreations of his struggle to both communicate and escape the prison of his own body.
Meet the Vandergroots, one of the many families happy to call Holland, Michigan — a Midwestern town that takes its Dutch heritage very seriously — home. Still, like most regional hamlets, it has its share of secrets, and Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman) begins to suspect that her husband, Fred (Succession‘s Matthew Macfayden) is involved in the darker side of Holland’s after-hours activities. She begins to snoop around and discovers that her suspicions may not be unfounded. Given that director Mimi Cave’s previous movie was 2022’s rom-com-turned-cannibal-horror opus Fresh, we’re wary of finding out what the guy’s been up to as well. Gael García Bernal costars.
The multi-talented Gabriella Wilson, a.k.a. H.E.R., takes on the daunting task of unpacking the legacy of Curtis Mayfield, the extraordinary songwriter and soul singer who possessed one of pop music’s greatest falsettos, fronted the Impressions, and gifted the world with the Superfly soundtrack. Instead of the standard portrait route, however, she opts instead to intersperse old interview recordings and performance footage in between conversations with Mary J. Blige, Dr. Dre, Tom Morello, and fellow Mayfield fans about his work and impact. Warning: This doc may have you listening to the invaluable 1973 live album Curtis in Chicago in an endless loop for weeks.
In the not-so-distant dystopian future, a golden-voiced farm girl named O’Dessa (Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink) ventures into the big city after her mother death and troubadour father’s priceless guitar is stolen. Once there, she bonds with another singer (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) trapped in a world controlled by cult-like political leader who mesmerizes the populace via a reality TV show — which, y’know, subtle. Regina Hall, The White Lotus/The Last of Us MVP Murray Bartlett and our man Pokey LaFarge costar in what looks like a cross between an Americana pop-opera, a future-shocked social satire and a class-conscious cri de coeur in the key of C#.
We’re huge fans of writer-director Andrew Patterson’s first movie The Vast of Night (2019), which worked a retro “Watch the Skies!” sci-fi scenario and a slow-burn sense of dread to beautiful effect. So we’re anxious to check out his latest, featuring Matthew McConaughey as a pillar of a rural community running a successful honey-making business in Oklahoma. When a ring of honey thieves target his hives, however, it’s up to his former foster-care ward (Angela LookingGlass) to figure out who’s behind the M.I.A. bees. Loving this supporting cast, too: Kurt Russell, Cole Sprouse, Owen Teague, Tony Revolori, and the great Rob Morgan.
Issa Rae produced this two-part docuseries on the way in which Black life has been portrayed in movies and on TV, and how a new generation of Black creatives have taken the reins in terms of representation and telling their own stories. If you’ve ever been curious as to how Shonda Rhimes carved out a space for herself on network TV, or Rae went from an online sensation to making a canon-worthy HBO comedy, or the way in which Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry, Cord Jefferson, Lena Waithe and many others managed to become not just seen but heard in a big way, this is most certainly your must-see jam.
New Zealand-born actor Richard O’Brien was between gigs when he decided to funnel his love of musical theater and science-fiction double features, as well as a live-your-truth attitude about gender and sexuality, into a single, subversive project. The rest is history: an underground sensation in London, a runaway hit in Los Angeles and a midnight movie that continues to play in theaters all over the world every weekend. Prepare to go deep into the phenomenon known as The Rocky Horror Show as it went from gleam in O’Brien’s eye to global sensation, with documentarian (and son of Richard) Linus O’Brien getting key cast members, collaborators and yes, his dear old dad to discuss how they crafted the ultimate cult flick.
Comedian Jillian Bell (Brittany Runs a Marathon) makes her feature directing debut with this story of a high school senior (Abby Flores) who discovers that her long-time crush is suddenly single during their last week at school. She also finds out that the way to seduce him is to master a certain sexual act that… let’s just say it involves simultaneous mutual stimulation. So she does what any enterprising youngster would do, which is hire a stripper (Chloe Fineman) to show her the ropes re: said act. That title doesn’t refer to Bryan Adams song, in other words. Charlie Day, Paula Pell, Natalie Morales, Alex Moffat, Liza Koshy and Nicole Byer all drop by to lend their chops. Filthy comedies play extremely well at SXSW, so we’re sure this will be a one hell of a rowdy premiere.
Mourning the loss of her dog, a woman (Zoë Chao) hightails it to a friend’s house in the countryside to clear her head. Yet when she arrives, she discovers the place is crowded with folks, all of who seem to be highly invested in her emotional state and not the least bit interested in personal boundaries. Even worse: our grieving hero is bit by a tick that’s indigenous to the region. And that’s about the point that things start to get very, very weird. Personally, you had us at “Zoë Chao,” but filmmaker Pete Ohs has also enlisted playwright Jeremy O. Harris, Callie Hernandez, and James Cusati-Moyer’s in the service of what sounds like some unsettling wellness-core horror.
It’s a documentary on a seven-man parkour team, determined to conquer a quartet of near-impossible-to-navigate environments all around the world, directed by… Michael Bay?! No, you have not stumbled upon a blurb written by AI-generated MadLibs — the moviemaker behind Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and the Transformers franchise has fashioned a portrait of the popular parkour collective known as Storror as they try to keep it together and battle personal obstacles on the way to professional glory. Ok, you have our attention.
What better way to distract ourselves from the doom-laden feeling we get when thinking about the world today than a good old-fashioned zombie-apocalypse thriller? Daisy Ridley is a woman searching for her M.I.A. husband after an experimental military weapon accidentally turns Tasmania into a wasteland. Having killed most of the Australian island’s populace, she volunteers for “body retrieval” duty so she can gain access to the contaminated area and see if he survived. Except wouldn’t you know it, all those corpses have a nasty habit of coming back to life and attacking the living. Classic zombie behavior!
There are no shortage of docuseries that unpack tragic, often grisly homicides — and given the local nature of this look at the horrifying tale of four teenagers murdered in a frozen-yogurt shop in Austin, you understand why SXSW was keen to program this. What makes us think this may be a step above what the True Crime Entertainment Industrial Complex typically pumps out, however, is that the episodes are all directed by Margaret Brown, the filmmaker behind such rigorous, intricate docs as The Order of Myths (2008) and Descendant (2022). A good sign, this.We want to hear it. Send us a tip using our anonymous form.Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2025 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-lists/sxsw-2025-most-anticipated-movies-1235259246/