SXSW2026 With Fantastic Genre Taking Center Stage

This year, the South by Southwest festival (SXSW), held annually in March in Austin, has proven to be a major player in the U.S. film festival landscape, now ranking on a par with the legendary Sundance and even above the iconic Tribeca Film Festival in New York. What's more, at this year's edition, fantastic genre filmmaking was the protagonist across all of the festival's sections, and not just in the popular Midnighters section, with more than thirty films that, in one way or another, addressed this genre.

In any event, some of these productions were deluxe premieres of films set to be released in the U.S. soon, both in theaters and on streaming platforms. This is the case with Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, by BenDavid Grabinski, a wild, blood-soaked action movie in its final act starring a brilliant Vince Vaughn, soon to arrive on Hulu, or Over Your Dead Body, by Jorma Taccone, a remake of The Trip, directed by Tommy Wirkola and starring Samara Weaving, the scream queen of the moment (who also presented Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come at the festival) and that will soon be available on Prime Video, the platform that already presented Pretty Lethal, by Vicky Jewson, featuring ballet dancers facing a lethal situation in a fast-paced female survival movie.

Two productions were especially acclaimed by Austin’s boisterous audience, including the hilarious They Will Kill You, directed by Kirill Sokolov and produced by Andy Muschietti, a female-led “The Raid” set in a New York building that feels like it came straight out of Argento’s "Three Mothers" trilogy, teeming with indestructible demons. Meanwhile, Ben Wheatley's Normal was one of the favorites thanks to its explosive blend of Coen Brothers-style filmmaking (the shadow of Fargo is explicit) and an outburst of violence featuring Yakuza, citizens armed to the teeth, and a peculiar sheriff masterfully portrayed by Bob Odenkirk. There was also soon-to-be-released horror like the superb Hokum, the latest work from Damian McCarthy, a director who dazzled audiences in Sitges with his previous films such as Caveat and Oddity. It’s also worth noting that SXSW served as the starting point for the U.S. release of Obsession, the magnificent film directed by Curry Barker that was a huge hit at last year’s Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, with Focus Features going all out to make it one of the big surprises on North American screens this spring.

And there was much more, films that we aren't going to comment on or assess here, as they will be under consideration for our 2026 Festival; however, we must highlight the historic conversation between Steven Spielberg and podcaster Sean Fennessey (The Big Picture), during which the legendary filmmaker spoke about aliens, his influences, and, in general, his vision of cinema, as well as the current state of the Hollywood industry. And to round out the festival’s parallel activities, we were able to attend a passionate concert by Robert Rodriguez and his friends at Troublemaker Studios, related to the director’s best-known films such as Desperado and, above all, From Dusk Till Dawn (which is celebrating its 30th anniversary), as well as his musical contribution to Kill Bill, now that “The Whole Bloody Affair”—the single-film version—has hit theaters.