The braintrusts that have presided over SXSW since nearly its inception have always smiled on the festival for its contrasts. It’s a fest where south meets west, and music meets film, meets technology, meets comedy, meets plain ol’ innovation. And in no other year has that felt more like a lived-in ethos than 2026, which saw everything happening everywhere and all at once (heh).

With the film, TV, music, activation, and cornucopia of other moments all occurring simultaneously in Austin, it was a whirlwind that can nearly overwhelm. Yet the Den of Geek team was there for almost all of it, covering what we can, and bringing it to you in this handy, dandy round-up.

Movies

The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist

At the turn of the century, the world was excited by the prospect of new technology. The internet was a shiny toy, the dot com bubble hadn’t burst, and the iPod (never mind the iPhone) was still a glint in Steve Jobs’ eye. Filmmaker Daniel Kwan and technology ethicist Tristan Harris remember those days as a bit like a lost kingdom. After all, the world it has wrought has very little good cheer left in the public for new tech, especially with the AI revolution that is now commencing.

“With social media, we were not great stewards of that technology and how it rolled out,” Harris observes in the Den of Geek studio. “We created the most anxious and depressed generation of our lifetime, even though some of the people who were building it—the people who started Instagram, they were my dorm mates at Stanford—they didn’t intend for that to happen.” Which raises the question of why should folks have any confidence that many of the same companies and technology leaders will do better with the far more powerful prospect of artificial intelligence.

That conundrum is something which both men are confronting in the new Daniel Roher documentary, The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, which Kwan is also a producer on. As the title suggests, the film examines both the most pessimistic and rosiest predictions for AI’s future, and everything in between. All possibilities are running rampant in Silicon Valley while billion-dollar companies dash madly toward being the first to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Yet the film also interrogates what tools can be put in place to create better stewards in the next generation. As Oscar-winner Kwan notes, “I think Big Tech has broken our social contract that we have as a society with technology. They have used our world as a playground to basically consolidate more power and more resources. The technology that they’re building—even though a lot of the architects and the technicians building this stuff, they have the greatest intentions and the greatest ideals of what this technology can do—the fact that it is being deployed within this current system, within this current incentive structure, it is taking a neutral technology and turning it into an extractive one.” – David Crow

Amazing Live Sea Monkeys

As the large, colorful gates open to Yolanda Signorelli’s Maryland estate, she’s without electricity, feeding woodland creatures tiny crackers – an unexpectedly intimate introduction to the woman at the center of The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys. Directed by Mark Becker and Aaron Schock, the documentary uses the nostalgia of comic books and the ‘60s to showcase an oddly complex legal saga and the history of the beloved “instant life” toy while uncovering lesser-known details about its creator, Harold von Braunhut. At its core is a David-and-Goliath-style battle between Signorelli, often called the “mother of Sea-Monkeys,” and Big Time Toys, which began licensing and distributing the product in 2007.

Through interviews with Signorelli, her lawyer, journalists, former collaborators, and illustrators behind the brand’s imagery, the film tells the story while keeping the people behind it at the center. Signorelli’s love for animals and the sea monkeys shine through all aspects of the film; Schock even told us that revealing the “sea monkey secret formula” was always a concern of Signorelli while filming. Throughout the documentary, Becker and Schock never shy away from examining von Braunhut’s various controversies in vivid detail. At the same time, the filmmakers didn’t want to lump Signorelli and her passion into the worst of what her former husband had done. It was complex, captivating, and perfectly fit for a SXSW premiere. – Darcie Zudell

American Dollhouse

John Valley doesn’t want to reinvent cinema with his movie, American Dollhouse. The story of a struggling woman named Sarah (Hailley Laurèn), who inherits her childhood home only to be beset by unstable neighbor Kelly (Kelsey Pribilski), follows in the tradition of horror greats, including Psycho, Peeping Tom, and Black Christmas. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have bigger things on its mind.

“I’m obsessed with how a slasher can be minimalist, but yet a container for huge, modern ideas,” Valley tells Den of Geek. “I stuck to the conventions and tropes, and kept telling the cast that it’s just a meat and potatoes slasher film, but we also tried to find some new, modern life in it.”

Part of that work fell on Pribilski, who had to embody an adult who has reverted to a childlike state in frightening ways. “I thought about how an eight-year-old acts. They’re a little bit animated because we as adults have learned to contain our emotions,” Pribilski reveals. “It was about knowing when to go bigger. We had to choose very carefully the moments for me to go into ‘grizzly bear’ mode, as John would call it.”

As Pribilski got to play big moments, it fell on her co-star Laurèn to keep things grounded in reality. “Sarah is a full person, and it was important to me that, when she makes a decision, it doesn’t come out of nowhere,” she says. That approach makes Sarah a formidable opponent, even for a killer as strange as Kelly. “Sarah’s a loyal fighter, for herself and the people she loves. She’s not going to just go down.”

Thanks to the work of Pribilski and Lauren, American Dollhouse adds a great new killer and final girl to the slasher tradition. – Joe George

Black Zombie

In a pop culture saturated with zombie shows like The Walking Dead and The Last of Us, many have forgotten the roots of Z-culture. Writer-director Maya Annik Bedward is not one of them. Right down to the title of Black Zombie conjuring the racist shadow of the nearly century-old Hollywood film White Zombie (1932), Bedward’s haunting documentary looks at more than a hundred years of appropriation, reinvention, and evolution of a concept that’s rooted in the vast sweep of African diaspora, and the Black Haitian experience of revolution in particular.

“In Haiti, everyone knows about the zombie, and in Haiti, stories of zombies and zombification are regularly talked about,” says Bedward. “It’s adjacent to vodou, but it’s not an everyday practice. Zombification is these stories of ‘I saw zombies in the field,’ and very connected to these ideas of enslavement.” These are the roots which inspired the white fiction that in turn gave the world their beloved modern flesh-easters. Black Zombie observes, critiques, and even at times celebrates this transition—within limits as the othered monster has increasingly become a symbol for tearing down sinister systems. Or just a fear of the status quo breaking… – DC

Brian 

Multiple castmates in Will Ropp’s directorial debut, Brian, were student body presidents in high school; a connection they didn’t make until SXSW. Ben Wang, who plays the titular character running for student body president to impress his crush, says he drew from his own awkward quirks when portraying the role. Edi Patterson and Randall Park play Wang’s parents, who care a little too much that their son finally made a friend. William H. Macy, who plays Brian’s therapist, talks Brian through his various panic attacks and struggles with mental health that cause him to lose roles in drama club, freak out his classmates, and annoy his friends. Meanwhile, his cool English teacher, portrayed by Natalie Morales, just wants to help Brian develop his party platform without indulging his inappropriate attraction to her. 

It’s a coming of age movie about mental health and the messy aspects of high school, but even more than that, the script by Mike Scollins is effortlessly funny in a way that will have you quoting Patterson’s and Park’s one-liners long after the first watch. Speaking of Patterson and Park, they got to have a lot of fun improvising during some dining room table scenes. Brian’s a good time, but one that will yank its audiences’ right back to high school in a visceral and emotional way.  – DZ 

Chasing Summer

Directed by Josephine Decker and written by leading lady, Iliza Shlesinger, Chasing Summer is a romantic comedy that is sexy, realistic, and overwhelmingly nostalgic. 

Jamie (Shlesinger) returns to her Texas hometown after a breakup, shocked to find that while the small hamlet may look the same, the people within it have changed. She picks up her old job at the roller rink, now owned by her sister (Cassidy Freeman), and meets Harper (Lola Tung), her young co-worker. Harper convinces Jamie to attend a party, where she meets a much younger Colby (Garrett Wareing). The two pursue a questionable fling while Jamie rekindles relationships with old high school classmates, including her ex-boyfriend, Chase (Tom Welling). The rest of the story is a sticky recreation of summer love that invokes the refreshing feeling of stepping into AC.

At times predictable, the film also has moments of shock, including a soap-opera-level reveal that will leave middle-aged women everywhere swooning. It is a retrospective on summers of days past, and the inevitability of moving on. It’s conventional, easy, and delivers the promise of a classic romcom. – Alexandra Hopkins

Crash Land 

What happens when a group of amateur stuntmen try to make a “real movie” so they can prove their worth to a town that hates them? Crash Land, directed by Dempsey Bryk, answers that very question. 

“It came out of COVID,” Bryk says. “I was stuck with my brother and my entire family… living behind the couches in the living room, as you do, and I was watching this Jackass marathon on loop and the idea blossomed out of there.” The film evokes classics of the genre – think Napoleon Dynamite, Superbad, and Bottle Rocket – against a Canadian backdrop of charming chaos. 

“There was a process of trying to make it not like anything else after being so inspired your entire life by the things you love, and then you have to try to find your own voice,” Bryk says. 

As Crash Land follows this group of boys becoming men one wipeout at a time, it simultaneously tells another coming of age story. The spirit behind Crash Land is the much more successful story of Dempsey Bryk and his brother Billy, who plays the emotional catalyst of the movie. Through his influence, the characters crash and land in a world that is fun, endearing, and unexpectedly touching. – Sophia Rooksberry 

Drag

Horror movies often tend to revolve around similar, oftentimes outlandish, concepts: A deranged killer, a disturbing monster, a haunted setting. But Drag, the debut feature film from Raviv Ullman and Greg Yagolnitzer, finds a scary story in an everyday, all-too-human problem. Yes, it’s a movie that’s really about the terrifying specter of lower back pain. 

The film stars Lizzy Caplan and Lucy DeVito as a pair of frequently-at-odds siblings who find themselves in increasing trouble during a house robbery gone wrong. When one of the pair throws their back out mid-heist, the other must help her escape by dragging her from the house’s upstairs bathroom down to the waiting car. Painfully uncomfortable (and often downright grisly) acts of body horror ensue, with plenty of gross-out details in full close-up even as they discover that the man they’ve come to rob is not everything he appears to be. – Lacy Baugher

Drift 

SXSW needs an Action Documentary screening section solely for Drift to exist in. Described by director Deon Taylor as a real life Catch Me If You Can, the documentary stars real-life action hero Isaac Wright as he recounts his career going to unprecedented heights for his art.

“The documentary is a lot more than just my artwork,” Wright says. “It has to do with my life and what I feel like my artwork really represents and a full portrait of what I think the goal of life is.” 

Under the artist name Drift, he climbs to the very top of the country’s tallest buildings capturing the most breathtaking and adrenaline-spiking photos, slowly working toward his dream of summiting the Empire State Building. 

“We went to the Instagram and these beautiful photos are just so captivating that it’s really overwhelming, and wondering why the hell he’s up there and what he’s doing was my initial reaction,” Roxanne Avent Taylor, the film’s producer, says. 

The documentary answers those questions in an exploration of the human spirit, as the occasional illegality of Drift’s climbs resulted in a multi-year battle with law enforcement across multiple states. 

“I believed that everyone could connect to the human story based on the fact that we’ve all been through something,” Taylor says. “We’ve all been misrepresented or someone has tried to tear down your character in some way.” 

On its surface, Drift is an action thriller come to life. At its core, Drift is a tear-jearking testament to a freedom that only the birds and the film’s namesake have experienced. – SR

Family Movie

When watching Family Movie, a chipper-oddball indie directed by Kevin Bacon and starring Kevin Bacon, as well as wife Kyra Sedgwick, daughter Sosie Bacon, and son Travis Bacon, one gets the sense that this is not what a real family flick with the Bacons would look like. At least you’d hope so! But given how mirthful this splatter-comedy is when their fictional doppelgängers are forced to deal with a murderer on the set of their horror movie-within-a-horror movie, you nonetheless feel like you’re sitting across from the gang during a lively game night.

“I think the movie definitely reflects on all our personalities individually and how we relate to each other,” Travis explains. “There’s definitely some little moments like that, but we’re still acting.”

Kevin later adds that screenwriter Dan Beers was able to collect some surprisingly accurate depictions of interpersonal dynamics after interviewing them each separately. Says the director: “When we got the first draft of the script, we were like, ‘Holy shit, how did you know that?!’ And it’s not like it’s pieces of dirt… it’s just ways of being.” – DC

Forbidden Fruits

A title like Forbidden Fruits suggests a heavy drama, thick with Biblical overtones and meditations on the nature of sin. Yet, one look at the new movie starring Lili Reinhart as the leader of a witch cult of mall girls promises the exact opposite, presenting itself as a spunky horror comedy.

However, according to director Meredith Alloway, religion weighs heavily on the story. “I love the idea that women are told that we’re quite literally the origin of evil and sin,” Alloway tells Den of Geek, a theme that goes all the way to the source material, the play “Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die” by Lily Houghton, who cowrote the screenplay with Alloway. 

Alloway continues, “When I read the play, I see all these women reclaiming that. Witchcraft and being in a coven are ways to make that narrative ours. I think when women get together and set an intention, whether it’s magic or literally just talking at a sleepover, that is really powerful.”

As Apple, Reinhart gathers a team of women to join her coven, including Lola Tung as Pumpkin, Victoria Pedretti as Cherry, and Alexandra Shipp as Fig,” all characters who are more than they initially appear. 

“No one’s playing a stereotype,” says Pedretti. “There are a lot of cues that might lead you to misjudge these women before you get to know them. Each character ends up surprising the audience with their humanity.”

“I think we all play very complex human individuals who just so happen to be born in a female body in this lifetime, who are trying to navigate the structures of our world,” adds Shipp.

In other words, the characters are richer and more complicated than one might think, just like Forbidden Fruits itself. – JG

The Fox 

Ever wanted to get in bed with a fox voiced by Olivia Colman? Well, Jai Courtney got to in Dario Russo’s The Fox, a magical realism comedy about what happens when people try to change themselves for their partners. Emily Browning reluctantly agrees to marry Courtney’s character, Nick, while secretly having an affair with her boss (Damon Herriman), who is also cheating on his wife (Claudia Doumit). In an effort to win their partner back, Nick listens to a fox he was moments away from killing in the woods, leading all the characters down a hole where they literally lose themselves. 

Russo directed, wrote, and scored The Fox, so naturally he had a very specific vision for the fantasy and comedy elements of the film. Russo says he finds it really annoying when characters in films deliver an over-exaggerated reaction to talking animals, so in this universe, talking foxes are the least out-of-the-ordinary thing. Though they didn’t really act alongside Colman, Doumit and Browning were obsessed with her narration; Browning says she listened to a recording of Colman’s voice acting over and over again on a run one time. The film is as ambitious as it is mystical, but it never loses its ability to make fun of the chaos and camp of it all. – DZ

He Bled Neon

With all its neon lights and gleeful indulgence of vice, Las Vegas has always made for a popular movie setting. Still, Vegas-native and He Bled Neon producer Nate Bolotin felt there was a certain kind of movie that Sin City had not yet played host to. 

“Twenty years ago, my step brother and best friend passed away. I got a text message from a mutual friend, just like how it happens in the movie actually, and had to go back and bury him and reconnect with the people that I had lost touch with. Someone came up to me at the funeral and said ‘hey, I think there’s some foul player here’ but we never went too deep. Fifteen years later or so it just clicked: we haven’t seen a Vegas revenge noir thriller in a world outside the Vegas strip.”

True to Bolotin’s real life experiences, He Bled Neon picks up with successful businessman Ethan (Joe Cole) receiving the fateful text and returning home to Las Vegas where he reconnects with his old crew (which includes characters played by Marshawn Lynch, Rita Ora, and Ismael Cruz Cordova) and begins to unpack the mystery of his brother Darren’s (Paul Wesley) death.

He Bled Neon aces the set-up, largely thanks to the colorful sensibilities of director Drew Kirsch and electronic soundscapes of composers Joe Trapanese and DJ Zhu. Once the revenge plot moves into the desert and grimy environs outside the strip, however, the film loses its distinctive sense of place and settles into a disappointingly conventional crime story. – Alec Bojalad

Hokum

Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy became a SXSW Midnighter hero when 2024’s Oddity took home the festival’s Audience Award. Now he’s returned to Austin with some extra star power in tow. The horror auteur’s next spooky effort, Hokum, stars Severance’s Adam Scott as Ohm Bauman, an American novelist who absconds to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes and finish his latest book. Of course, it just so happens that this particular inn contains a honeymoon suite that is said to be haunted by an ancient witch…

Speaking of hauntings, Hokum’s first act is haunted by a weak characterization of Scott’s Ohm, whose lifetime of unaddressed grief has apparently manifested itself as a need to be a real dick. Once the movie gives way to the charismatic actor’s charm and McCarthy begins to flex his horror muscles, the back half blossoms into a pleasingly macabre experience. It’s also quite dark. Literally. 

“It’s dark in the film, and it was literally dark when we were in there making it,” Scott told Den of Geek. “It was pretty clear that this was going to be unsettling. As an actor, since your control is limited, you never know really how something is going to turn out at the end of the day. Having so much faith in Damian and seeing all the components they put together on set, I knew there was a chance that this could work.”  And indeed Hokum does work. – AB

I Love Boosters

Three projects into his burgeoning film career, it’s fair to say that Boots Riley has developed a house style. For a lesser creative, that level of one-note fixation might begin to grow stale. Thankfully, the marriage of the surreal with leftist politics is a note that this rapper, songwriter, and record-producer-turned-filmmaker knows how to play quite well. And he continues to do so in I Love Boosters.

Keke Palmer stars as Corvette, an aspiring fashion designer who ekes out a living as a “booster,” pinching high-end textiles and selling them to her neighborhood at a discount. Together with her friends Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige), Corvette sets her booster sights on high-end fashion entrepreneur Christie Smith (Demi Moore) to close the fashion gap between the haves and have-nots.

Like Sorry to Bother You before it, I Love Boosters’ premise is merely a jumping off point for all the vivid imagery and offbeat twists to come. The movie that a ticket-buyer expects to see at minute 0 is very much not the movie they experience by minute 60 or so. Unlike Sorry to Bother You, however, Boosters’ absurdist twist isn’t a completely out-of-left-field human-animal hybrid situation but a far more mundane science fiction tool that we won’t spoil. Despite the relatively conventional sci-fi trappings of its back half, I Love Boosters feels satisfyingly anarchic and bizarre all the way through. – AB

Imposters 

The idea of changelings, body snatchers, or other false creatures that are somehow swapped into existing families without any of their members being the wiser is nightmare fuel from time immemorial. Imposters takes this idea and runs with it, crafting a story that wrestles with ideas of parenthood, commitment, and fear. 

The film stars Jessica Rothe and Charlie Barnett as Paul and Marie, a couple forced to contend with any parent’s worst nightmare when their baby mysteriously disappears. While everyone is convinced the resident Town Creep is responsible, Marie’s not so sure, and when she turns to the mysterious Orson (Bates Wilder) for help, he sends her to a mysterious cave in the woods. But the child Marie brings back from the forest may not be the son she lost.

A genre-bending film that’s full of the sort of twists even seasoned moviegoers will likely not see coming, that explores the all-too-human pain of love and loss through a filter that’s covered with no small amount of blood. – LB

Kill Me

At first glance, Kill Me seems to ask the question, “What if Charlie Kelly woke up in a bathtub of his own blood?” But with a deeply emotional and revelatory performance from Charlie Day, the horror-dramedy becomes so much more. Sure, our main character, Jimmy, lives in a dingy apartment a la Charlie and Frank, and his frenetic energy while trying to solve his own murder attempt harkens back to a Pepe Silvia obsession… but that’s not a bad thing. The audience is immediately comforted by the familiarity of Day’s impeccable comedic timing right before adjusting to the sobering reality that his character has a history of trying to take his own life—making him the perfect choice to carry the emotional weight of this film. 

Jimmy meets his match in Allison Williams’ 911 operator, Margot. She grounds both him and a film that turns into an unlikely whodunit. Williams has also become something of a scream queen over the last decade (starring in Get Out, M3GAN, The Perfection), but pure horror this film is not. Similarly to Day, she brings the authenticity and depth needed to be Jimmy’s “straight man” as she navigates the hijinks of solving a maybe-murder while healing from her own trauma. 

It’s a feat to address subject matter as serious as suicide while ensuring the audience knows they’re allowed to laugh—and a lot for that matter. Director Peter Warren tactfully displays both ends of the spectrum that people with mental illness can experience: the dramatics of suicide attempts but also the mundanity of ordering the same meal every day for months. In his own words, “Depression and mental illness are incredibly dangerous but can also be dumb and annoying. It’s like stepping on a rake a million times in your head.” – Britt Migs

Lainey Wilson: Keepin’ Country Cool

Amy Scott is the director behind Counting Crows: Have You Seen Me Lately? and Sheryl, proving an affinity for documentary storytelling about some of the music industry’s most iconic names. Now, she is bringing the story of modern country idol Lainey Wilson to Netflix.

Lainey Wilson: Keepin’ Country Cool is set to premiere globally on April 22. It follows the country star on her ascent to major stardom while traveling the country on the “Country’s Cool Again Tour” in 2024. 

“After a while, it was apparent that we weren’t chasing the tour, we were chasing Lainey,” Scott says. “Her life is all over the place. Her life is not a straight line, so we just tried to hold onto that mechanical bull ride.” 

While being jostled around the country and holding on for dear life, Scott and her team discovered the heart of Wilson’s music and her musical persona. Not only are her powerful vocals and charisma emblematic of industry titans like Dolly Parton, but her compassion and grit are what give her music, and this documentary, their spirit. 

“Vulnerablilty can come in many different flavors,” Scott says. “It can be vulnerability about struggles, but vulnerability also is when you can be funny and have a really unguarded, self-deprecating nature, and we realized early on that (Lainey) is really, really funny.”

Throughout the documentary, Wilson is seen constantly songwriting when she isn’t rehearsing or performing. She has spent her career banking songs for upcoming records, using her determination and open heart as fodder for the future of her skyrocketing career; Scott’s latest project delivers all of these details in a way that is careful, exciting, and, of course, incredibly cool. – SR

Leviticus

The land down under has long been a reliable source of uniquely upsetting films, from Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) to Lake Mungo (2008), but Australian horror has enjoyed a renaissance as of late, thanks to hits such as The Babadook (2014) and Talk to Me (2022). 

Director Adrian Chiarella continues that tradition with his debut, Leviticus, which stars Joe Bird of Talk to Me and Stacy Clausen as two gay teens forced to participate in a conversion ritual by a fundamentalist pastor. The ritual releases a malevolent entity that takes the form of the person the victim most desires, which, for the boys, is one another.

“When I started thinking about things that were personal to me as a gay man, I knew that homophobia was something that I wanted to tackle in a film,” Chiarella tells Den of Geek. “There’s a clue in the word: homophobia is a fear. So I started digging deeper into what that might look like through the lens of this genre.”

The stars of Leviticus followed Chiarella’s lead by playing the reality of their characters’ plight. “I think that horror films are, in a way, dramas with horror elements because the emotions are so real and raw,” observes Bird. “It’s not like I was filming a horror film in one scene and a romance film in others. These were just real, natural people going through this experience.”

Chiarella adds, “I knew the horror element wouldn’t work unless you were really invested in the connection between these two lead characters.” To that end, he sent Bird and Clausen out on various field trips to build their characters. Those trips included visits to the country because, like any other good piece of Australian horror, the terror in Leviticus comes from the landscape. – JG

Mam

Part of the appeal of film festivals like SXSW is the chance for audiences to take in both mid-budget blockbusters bound for big theaters and the indie-est indies that ever indie-d. Projects like Over Your Dead Body and I Love Boosters occupy the former space on 2026’s SXSW roster. Mam is very much part of the latter. 

Directed by Nan Feix, Mam is an unabashed love letter to Vietnamese cuisine, New York’s Chinatown, and love itself. It’s also a novel blend of fictional narrative and documentary. While Mam is fully scripted, it recounts the real life story of chef Jerald Head as he moves to New York from Texas and tries to make it in the culinary world. Playing Head and his wife and business partner Nhung Dao Head are Head and Nhung themselves, who now own and operate Mắm on Forsyth Street. 

Shot in a scant 16 days (usually after a shift at the restaurant, Head revealed in a post-screen Q&A), Mam wears its lowkey indie status on its sleeve. The rough-around-the-edge film is unlikely to have a second life outside of Austin. But for 81 pleasant minutes, it made festival-goers in Alamo Drafthouse’s auditorium 5 very, very hungry. – AB

Manhood

What is likely to earn points as the most unusual and eyebrow-raising documentary at this year’s festival (or perhaps almost any other) is Daniel Lombroso’s Manhood, a sober look at the growing popularity of “male enhancement” cosmetic procedures (read: penis enlargement). It’s a subject ripe for ridicule or late night comedy, and yet the film takes a clinical lens that flits between aloof and sympathetic, depending on the interviewee. All are part of a larger line, though, of dudes willing to sell their house or risk their mortgages to increase their girth.

Astutely setting the film primarily in the Dallas and Miami areas of the South, Lombroso pulls at a thread from a previous documentary—his depressingly prescient study of the then fringe elements of the alt-right in the Atlantic’s White Noise (2020)—to draw a link between the manosphere culture of supplemental pills and Joe Rogan-like podcasts, and a lot of the guys desperate to add a few inches at any cost. Yet there’s perhaps a bit more empathy for the younger and more vulnerable parties who get taken for a ride and permanently disfigured by grifters with white coats and needles stuffed with filler.

The film could draw a stronger link in its thesis between the modern culture that its title obviously evokes and the guys on the table, but it finds both pathos and condemnation to varying degrees for alleged “medical” predators, and the type of souls who end up thinking they need to have this procedure done. One wishes to spend more time with the partners who often shrug they don’t even care. – DC

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice

Writer-director BenDavid Grabinski might have been too young to make movies in the ‘90s, but he was definitely watching them. And nowadays he appears to be determined to bring a flavor of them back, complete with a hard-swaggering, high-concept genre exercise starring Vince Vaughn at his most confident. A movie about gangsters, parties, and time travel, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is a bit like if Swingers, Go, and Back to the Future had a half-forgotten love child who we’re now only meeting as an adult. And that’s meant as a compliment.

As the title suggests, this is a love triangle served in four parts after gangster Nick (Vaughn) time travels about half a year into the past in order to stop his slightly younger self (also Vaughn) from murdering their best friend Mike (James Marsden) for the affair he’s carrying on with Nick’s unhappy wife, Alice (Eiza González). It’s a gonzo premise that is treated with just enough seriousness to give meat to the idea of considering second chances—whether through the magic of a proverbial “undo” button,  or where you’d even want to hit it to fix a bad mistake. As González notes in our studio, “I always connect with moving forward. I think there’s something beautiful about the chaos. Some of the craziest, most beautiful things that happened in my life have come from real terrible circumstances and bad moments”

Still, in its heart, this movie is all about the vibes, as indicated by its structure being based around the “PARTY,” “AFTERPARTY,” and “AFTER-AFTER-AFTERPARTY” which its main quartet crashes while trading barbs in a screenplay with more wisecracks than there are bullets. And trust us, this movie has a whole lotta bullets. It’s bravado and muscular mischief and suggests Grabinski is one to watch. – DC

My Brother’s Killer

This documentary solves a murder case gone cold. My Brother’s Killer, directed by Rachel Mason, traces the 36 years since the brutal murder of 25-year-old William “Billy London” Arnold Newton in West Hollywood. 

This film captures the violence, trauma, and grief gay men experienced during the AIDS epidemic, as well as their resilience. Through archival material and dozens of interviews with those connected to the case, including her own mother, Mason uncovers shocking information.

“It was a terribly violent time and I think that’s another undocumented part of gay history,” Mason says. “Sadly, it is hard to always focus on the negativity and sadness, and the resilience of gay culture is the most amazing thing. In the sea of death, you also have this vibrancy, and I really wanted to showcase that. It doesn’t always have to be dark, the fight can be joyful in a strange way.”

Billy was an adult filmmaker, poet, and illustrative artist—he was also deeply loved by the people around him, a feeling evident throughout the documentary. This documentary is more than a true crime film, it showcases the struggle of representation and provides recognition and closure for those involved. – AH

Normal

Full disclosure: We were not able to actually see director Ben Wheatley and screenwriter Derek Kolstad’s new action movie starring Bob Odenkirk—the deceptively titled Normal—in Austin. However, we were able to speak with all three men, who have described the movie as a kind of inversion of High Noon. In that classic Western, Gary Cooper stood alone as a sheriff willing to face up bad men while all the people who loved him turned their backs in fear.

“It’s ultimately taking those themes, the sense and the appeal, and wrapping it around small-town Americana,” Kolstad observes about their new film. But it’s also doing so in a modern context with the America of today, setting the stage for an action spectacle apropos of the scribe behind John Wick.

For his part, director Wheatley appreciates that he has brought a British sensibility to the proceedings, saying, “An outsider’s perspective is always interesting. Not to say it’s better than worse from any other point-of-view, but I think there’s a long history of people coming from the outside to film the States and to see it with different eyes.” It also might be befitting of the neo-Western. While genre icon John Wayne famously detested High Noon back in the day, refusing to believe a small town wouldn’t support a good man in need, Normal’s viewers might be much more open to the idea. As Odenkirk quips, “He should meet some small towns.”

Over Your Dead Body

When it comes to filmmaking, the concept of “escalation” can be just as important as acting, scripting, or even turning the damn cameras on in the first place. Few movies at the 2026 SXSW Film Festival understand the importance of raising the stakes better than action comedy thriller Over Your Dead Body. 

Based on the 2021 Norwegian film The Trip and directed by The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone, all Over Your Dead Body knows how to do is escalate. Things start relatively simple with husband and wife Dan and Lisa (Shrinking’s Jason Segel and Ready or Not’s Samara Weaving) repairing to a remote cabin upstate to save their dying marriage… and also to kill each other. Dan and Lisa’s murderous plans are complicated by a cascade of interlopers and extenuating circumstances, leading to mass amounts of blood, gore, and perhaps even some rekindled romance. 

Over Your Dead Body’s commitment to ratcheting absurdity means that its first act runs a bit dry. But once two prison escapees (Timothy Olyphant, Keith Jardine) and their guard conspirator (Juliette Lewis) enter the narrative, the movie really gets rolling and never looks back. And like any good partnership, Segel and Weaving excel in dabbling in the other’s home turf of horror and comedy, respectively. 

“I’m just so proud to have made a remake that I feel like has teeth,” Taccone says. “It’s dark, it’s fucked up, and it’s more gory than the original, weirdly. It has its own tone, and I just feel very proud that we could make something that I like equally to the original.” – AB

Pizza Movie

In a shameless throwback to the stoner comedies of the 2000s, Pizza Movie is the type of slouched and underachieving good time that is destined to best be seen in a crowded theater or even rowdier dorm room. Which isn’t to say it’s dumb. Writers-directors Nick Kocher and Brian McEllhaney take some boldly clever swings in their high-concept (ahem) where a couple of college screw-ups (Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone) indulge in an experimental drug they find in their dorm room. However, the thing has such potent magical properties, it not only gets them high but causes them to break the space-time continuum with time-loops and fourth-wall breaks. They’re like a pair of blitzed Punxsutawney co-eds.

The only cure? Pizza, of course, which is down in the lobby if they can get down there in time—or face severe consequences. It’s a deliberately, heavily-baked concept, which Kocher describes as based on a true story. “In college, we had the idea. Everyone’s ordered food when they’re not fully sober and it’s difficult.” You can say that again, dude. – DC

Power Ballad

It is said that success is the child of many fathers while failure is an orphan. But that doesn’t mean every papa gets the credit they deserve, particularly in fields as competitive (and lucrative) as songwriting. Such is the appealing conceit of John Carney’s latest bittersweet laugher that looks into the music business with as much affection as there is contempt. They, in fact, walk hand-in-hand when Paul Rudd’s washed up wedding singer Rick meets Nick Jonas’ former boy band heartthrob searching for reinvention, Danny. The two jam and jive during a joyous night over drinks in Ireland, including when Rick shows a few of the pieces he’s working on, particularly a poignant ballad that’s only missing a bridge.

Six months later, the song has it, as does Danny who’s introduced it to the world as an instant sensation—and as a piece of musical magic he wrote solo. A bit of a music industry “Book of Job,” where Rudd’s hurt and aggrieved Rick must deal with the eye-rolls and second-guessing of nearly everyone in his life, from his bandmates to even his wife and daughter. There’s a lot of humor in the scenario, but plenty of pathos as Rudd gives one of the finest performances of his career. He’s a man losing his sanity and his even-keel, to the point where he must travel from the Emerald Isle to the City of Angels. – DC

Pretty Lethal

The loftiness of chasing perfection, and the physical demand of what many consider the highest performing art, has always made ballet a compelling subject for filmmakers. Storytellers often wish to track the psychic or physiological toll of achieving révérence—or at least contrasting it with gonzo, blood-splattered spectacle. Pretty Lethal attempts both in a daffy B-crowdpleaser that essentially Die Hards five prima ballerinas when they’re trapped in an eastern European den of iniquity run by a vamping Uma Thurman. 

The movie gets a lot of mileage out of its balletic heroines being decidedly not John McClane (or Ana de Armas in a John Wick movie, for that matter). Instead, they nervously use their on pointe routine to “Waltz of the Flowers” for a blood-soaked defense in a bar involving knives, shattered wine bottles, and knives in the slippers. Says star Maddie Ziegler, “We sort of came up with a style we’re calling ballet-fu, which was really fun. Because we referenced if you put a bunch of feral cats in a box, that was what we were doing to survive. But I think we used our strengths to our advantage,” complete by combining the input of stunt coordinators and ballet choreographers. Grace is harmony. – DC

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

In an age of so-called “elevated” and sober-minded horror cinema, it is a blessing from Mr. Le Bail that we have Radio Silence ready to turn up the gore and fun. The filmmaking collective behind Ready or Not, Abigail, and the best Scream movies made in this century return to their own blood-red haunts and splash new buckets of crimson in the delightfully sinister Ready or Not 2. Like its predecessor, this is a grinning romp suffused with eat-the-rich gallows humor as we revisit the Bride in the splattered dress (Samara Weaving) mere moments after she parted brutally with her groom for good. (He was in the process of trying to sacrifice her to Satan. As apparently one does in country estates.)

Unfortunately for Grace, there are plenty of other Devil-worshipping billionaires out there. It turns out to be a blessing for the audience, though, as she inevitably slaughters them alongside sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) during a new hide-and-seek game at a country club that looks suspiciously like Mar-a-Lago. As director Gillett acknowledges, “All of the institutions that we engage with, if you follow them fall enough, you’re probably going to find some form of corruption.”

The movie doesn’t quite reach the same highs as the first movie since we know the punchline this time, but the climax at an elite Satanic altar is every bit as giddy as the combustible billionaires last time, and Samara Weaving still knows how to deliver a killing parting shot. – DC

The Saviors

Filmmakers don’t get to choose whether their films will be “timely” or not. Movies take a long time to make and time itself, as you might have noticed, has a tendency to Inexorably March On. Rarely has there ever been a better case study of that phenomenon than the unusually (and completely accidentally) timely comedy thriller The Saviors. 

Adam Scott and Danielle Deadwyler star as Sean and Kim, a couple in a failing marriage who look to supplement their income by renting their shed to Amir and Jahan – a brother and sister from an undisclosed Middle Eastern nation played by Theo Rossi and Nazanin Boniadi. While Amir and Jahan seem nice, they’re also suspiciously interested in the president of the United States’ whereabouts and appear to be building some sort of dangerous device. But this can’t be what Sean and Kim think it is, right? They’re not bigots and this isn’t a mediocre season of 24… right?

Due to a confluence of events like a pandemic, two Hollywood work stoppages, and the general improbability of getting a movie produced at all, The Saviors took 10 years to make from conception to premiere. And in that 10 years, the world shifted away from Obama-era progressive optimism to a more overt return to Islamophobia with the United States even entering war with Iran just two weeks before the film’s premiere.  

“You know, there was a period in those 10 years when I thought the world had changed a bit, and maybe we should focus on a different project,” director and co-writer Kevin Hamedani says. “And then the world changed again, and suddenly The Saviors is even more timely, unfortunately.”

The Saviors’ incidental resonance to current events only enhances what is already a compelling narrative. Scott and Deadwyler shine as two ostensibly progressive individuals who need answers but don’t want to seem like Bradley Whitford’s “I’d have voted for Obama a third time if I could” character in Get Out. Hamedani and the script deftly guide the audience through those choppy waters, always leaving enough breadcrumbs so that the viewer doesn’t fully feel like Bradley Whitford either. The end result is a nifty little thriller that feels like The ‘Burbs for the Airbnb age. – AB

Seekers of Infinite Love

Though Seekers of Infinite Love may one day be a cult comedy, right now it’s literally a comedy about a cult… but also about family

Hannah Einbinder (Hacks), John Reynolds (Search Party), and Griffin Gluck (American Vandal) star as a trio of siblings who must rescue their sister from the clutches of the Peoples Temple-esque the Seekers of Infinite Love. Helping them on their mission is ex cult member-turned-cult deprogrammer Rick (Justin Theroux) and his wardrobe of tactical vests. 

According to writer/director Victoria Strouse, Seekers’ cult angle emerged unexpectedly late in the writing process of the script, which was featured on 2008’s Black List.

“I’m utterly fascinated by siblings and I think some of the complexities in sibling relationships, [it] kind of ends up talking so much about all human relationships,” she says. “As I was working on it, I became really interested in cults, this idea of a secondary but corrupt family.”

That fascination with family shines through with Einbinder, Reynolds, and Gluck evoking a believably agitated sibling unit, if not a believably genetic one with their diverse mix of heights and hair colors. While the end result could have used a little more cult whackiness to fully live up to its comedic potential, it’s hard to be disappointed with time spent on a road trip to oblivion with four very funny actors. – AB 

See You When I See You

Before 2025’s SXSW title The Baltimorons, indie filmmaking titan Jay Duplass had not directed a movie since 2012’s The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, opting to help shepherd other storytellers’ visions alongside his brother and producing partner Mark Duplass. But when fellow producing family Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon brought the script for See You When I See You his way, he knew he had to get behind the camera once again. “It just felt big and scary and like I couldn’t say no,” he says. 

It’s easy to see why the project appealed to Duplass. Written by comedian Adam Cayton-Holland, and based on his memoir Tragedy Plus Time, See You When I See You is an intensely personal story about Cayton-Holland’s PTSD following the death of his sister by suicide. Cooper Raiff (director and star of Cha Cha Real Smooth) steps in as the film’s Cayton-Holland analogue, Aaron, and does marvelous work unpacking the young man’s confused journey through grief.

Outside of some creative visual choices representing Aaron’s struggle to reclaim happy memories of his sister, See You When I See You doesn’t have much new to say about the grieving process. Ultimately though, that’s a feature, not a bug, as the rhythms of pain should resonate with anyone who has experienced real tragedy. Even if those experiences involve significantly less Third-Eye Blind and Sum 41 than Aaron’s. – AB

Sender

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever been sent in the mail? The answer to that question can range from the mundane—a gardening hat you didn’t order—to the truly bizarre. Actor David Dastmalchian, for one, tells us he was mailed dirty underwear more than once by an anonymous…. fan? “It was accompanied by a really bizarre letter,” the actor grimaces.

That’s obviously immediately creepy, yet writer-director Russell Goldman’s Sender takes an initially more innocuous stance before turning the screws. And according to Goldman, this too is based on real-life. “[Folks will] send you cheap objects that are related, most likely, to your search history online and any cookies or data can take from what you’re looking like. They send it to your home so they can write reviews in your name that are five stars, so those products can then get a boost on the algorithms.”

Sender takes that conceit to its most ominous, Hitchockian extreme when Britt Lower’s Julia receives a mysterious package from an even more mysterious, and threatening, source. – DC

Sinner Supper Club

Described as a “gay mumblecore ghost story” directors of Sinner Supper Club, Daisy Rosato and Nora Kaye, deliver exactly what is promised. Shot on an iPhone within six days and rooted in improvisation, the film is a scrappy documentation of a NYC-based friend group on the fritz during a heat wave. 

Gathered in a small apartment for Genevieve’s (Genevieve Simon) “eviction funeral,” tensions arise amidst the group over things big and small. On top of navigating their shared-traumatic experience, the death of a best friend, nothing seems to go right — a melted ice cream cake, the power going out, and worst of all, an uninvited partner is brought to the gathering. The night culminates in an unexpected, yet restorative, paranormal experience. 

Sinner Supper Club explores the surrealness of grief from an intrinsically queer perspective. It delivers comedic beats and moments of grief with the fluidity of a high-budget film. While there are moments of hesitance from the actors, the ensemble cast delivers a performance where you feel dropped in the middle of their hangout. – AH

They Will Kill You

The idea for They Will Kill You blossomed after director Kirill Sokolov stayed in an eerie hotel that he believed to be inhabited by a cult of old women. The fictionalized and much gorier version stars Zazie Beetz as the new housekeeper at a decadent hotel with a history of mysterious disappearances. As Sokolov brings her violent journey through the mysterious building to the big screen, the company explores countless genres, from mystery to slapstick to fantasy. 

“Kirill was always reminding us that yes, there’s action, and yes, there’s comedy, but also, at least for me, the most important thing was the truth at the moment,” Myha’la, who plays Beetz’s sister, says. “Then, if it feels truthful and honest and real to me and us in this moment, the comedy is going to come in the edit.” 

The highlight of the movie is the performances from actors like Patricia Arquette, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, and the aforementioned sister duo. They expertly balance multiple styles and tropes, giving the movie an edge in an arguably oversaturated genre.  

“It is genre-defying because it is a love story about two sisters, and that’s really at the core of everything, and then you mix in the brilliant Kung Fu and gore and martial arts and heroism,” Felton says. “It’s a unique blend. I don’t think a film has ever been made quite like this.” – SR 

Time and Water

“The future we were warned about is no longer distant, it is here.” This is the message that Oscar-nominated director Sara Dosa shares in her newest documentary Time and Water. Through archival material and the writings of Icelandic author, Andri Snær Magnason, Dosa puts together an expansive story focused on generational memory and humanity’s relationship with nature. 

Centered on Magnason’s own family ties, Time and Water captures the vast existence of Icelandic glaciers and the tremendous loss felt by the author as he witnesses the disappearance of these titans, and the passing of his grandparents. The audience is transported through the passing of time and experiences the indelible impression humans make on the world and people around them.  

“There is something radical about love, especially in a time that is so polarizing,” Dosa says. “Wherever we can center love and joy amid the doom and the apocalyptic stories abound, I think it could inspire hope…I think it can give a sense of a light in the dark to keep people working toward the change that we so badly need.” 

Time and Water is a stark wake-up call, not only to protect the planet we call home, but to cherish our time with loved ones. The future is now, and Dosa captures the course we took to get here. – AH

Wishful Thinking

It sometimes feels impossible to be happy—even with someone you love—when there’s so much bad news in the world. So imagine the pressure Julia and Charlie (Maya Hawke and Lewis Pullman) are under in Wishful Thinking, a supremely clever and wholesome romantic comedy where the fate of Portland, Oregon, if not the world, rests on the straining romance of two young people at a crossroads in their life. As it slowly dawns on them, when things are good in their domestic life, Julia is suddenly up for a promotion at work, and Charlie’s crypto investments are skyrocketing. When they’re unhappy with each other, literal earthquakes can occur.

It’s a shrewd use of magical realism to entertain wish fulfillment—like literally getting rich off crypto after a particularly sexy date night—but also comment on the pressures we put on each other in the modern world, particularly for those who are as socially entangled and plugged in as the film’s Gen-Z antiheroes. It’s an indie rom-com about the challenge of early adult romances, complete with a big swing ending. But it finds an innovative way to engage these elements, especially when Hawke and Pullman are simpatico—and perhaps even more so when they’re not. – DC

Woodstockers

We were delighted to welcome film and TV mainstay Corbin Bernsen back to the Den of Geek Studio at SXSW to chat about his indie TV pilot, Woodstockers. This time, Bernsen–who is the showrunner, writer, and star– was joined by his son, Oliver, who directed the pilot episode (he also had a feature-length directorial debut, Bagworm, play at the festival).

The delightfully funny dramedy puts the audience in the headspace of an aging hippie confronting life, death, and a bygone era and its legacy set against scenic upstate New York. Our conversation was introspective as the Bernsen’s grappled with deep conversations on set, Corbin’s own career journey, which launched during that period in 1967, and their excitement for independent filmmaking in the television space. Their commitment to the form paid off: Woodstockers took home an Audience award. Now that’s Flower Power. – Chris Longo

Television

Are We Still Married?

Indie TV pilot Are We Still Married? stars Dustin Milligan as Jack, a husband who has been turned into a vampire via a bite from a mysterious bat, and Taylor Misiak as Laura, his wife who isn’t sure whether we should let him back in the house. While that is undoubtedly a bold genre concept, the inspiration for the story came from a real life experience for writer/director Kit Steinkellner (who also created the Facebook Watch series Sorry For Your Loss).

“My husband did get bit by a bat,” she tells Den of Geek. “It was that kind of crazy thing that doesn’t happen except when it does. He got a rabies shot and was OK. I don’t know how you process trauma in your marriage but comedic bits are our go-to. So we just started cracking vampire jokes. At a certain point, he was like ‘but if I were a vampire, you would let me back in the house, right?’ I paused and he didn’t like that pause.”

Through the safety of her closed kitchen window, Laura peppers Jack with questions about vampirism that he doesn’t have the answers to (the bat didn’t exactly explain all the rules of this whole thing). Steinkellner and the actors make beautiful work of the premise, both having fun with the genre silliness of it all while also delving into the pathos of a loving marriage interrupted by a truly unforeseeable calamity. Coming in at just 15 minutes long, Are We Still Married? serves as a compelling proof of concept for whatever direction, and medium, Steinkellner wants to take the story from here.

“I did write a feature inspired by this that was on this past year’s Blacklist. At the same time, in having this conversation with South by, a part of the independent pilot requirement is to submit a series bible. I’ve actually not done this with other ideas before but I have pretty thoroughly explored both options. Ultimately I just want to keep telling this story.” – AB

The Audacity

Have you ever wondered where the wunderkind techbros of Silicon Valley get the audacity? Thankfully so has Jonathan Glatzer, a former writer on Succession and Better Call Saul and now the creator and showrunner of AMC’s fittingly named The Audacity. 

“For years, I thought of audacity as a kind of superpower that we all have, but few of us actually employ because it involves crashing through norms of behavior. Most of us are not bulls in China shops, but in Silicon Valley, it is kind of regarded as an attribute. There’s a lot of broken dishes around there, but that’s what they like: move fast and break things,” he says.

Through its first three episodes, The Audacity doesn’t move fast, but it does break some things. Billy Magnussen (a compelling character actor probably best known for Game Night and Made For Love) steps into the megalomaniacal shoes of Hypergnosis CEO Duncan Park. Eager to prove that he’s much more than the product of some well-timed good luck, Duncan leverages his relationship with his therapist Joanne Felder to gain some (flagrantly illegal) advantages over his competition. 

The Audacity excels as a slice of life look at the excesses (and yes, audacity) of Silicon Valley’s elite in the rapidly expanding AI era. While its early episodes come off as more of a vibe in search of a story, the level of talent both behind and in front of the camera suggests that it has plenty of room to grow. – AB

The Comeback Season 3

Since The Comeback first premiered in 2005, Valerie Cherish has always returned to TV when it needs her the most. The first season of the HBO comedy found the aging sitcom diva played by Lisa Kudrow trying to navigate the brave new world of reality TV, recording her comeback as Aunt Sassy on new sitcom “Room and Bored.” In 2014’s season 2, Valerie attempted to get in on the Bravo-fication of the medium by pitching a pilot to Andy Cohen. Now, with The Comeback’s third and final season, Valerie is set to tackle television’s gravest challenge yet: artificial intelligence.

“[The Comeback] began with what everyone thought was the first extinction event [of TV], which was reality TV, eliminating scripted television for the more economical – no rules, no unions,” Kudrow says. “Happily that wasn’t the end. [Co-creator Michael Patrick King and I] were having lunch and he was like ‘What about this: Valerie is finally offered the lead in a multi-camera sitcom but it’s written about AI.’”

The Comeback season 3’s eight episodes present yet another comedic masterclass of industry satire and character-building. There’s never been someone quite like Valerie Cherish on television and there is unlikely to be ever again. The fading superstar is desperate for fame yet uniquely ill-equipped to handle it, spending much of her adult life flourishing in front of sitcom studio multicams while putting her foot in her mouth in front of documentary single cams. 

The Comeback’s satire is so subtle as to be barely visible. Really it’s the story of a singular character who refuses to let her story end regardless of how many times the industry tries to close the book… and all the humiliation she endures with a grin because of it. Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King give Valerie Cherish the ending she so richly deserves, but we’ll miss her all the same. – AB

The Dark Wizard

The history of rock climbing is rife with larger-than-life characters and adventure sport trailblazers, but few loom as large as Dean Potter. A climber, high-liner, BASE jumper and all around Yosemite Valley Renaissance man, Potter set speed records and free soloed daunting walls at an unprecedented caliber for the duration of his career. Now, Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen – documentary filmmakers and Potter’s old friends – are bringing his story to HBO Max with their new docuseries, “The Dark Wizard.” 

“His aura and myth dominated the sport, both because he was pioneering all these crazy things … but there was also a much broader story there, the behind the scenes and what was going on in his personal world that was really compelling that no one had really heard about,” Rosen says. 

“The Dark Wizard” not only details Potter’s Herculean feats and the impact he had on the climbing community, but also his mental health journey that took place behind the closed doors of an alpha facade. 

“It’s unbelievable seeing all these Olympic athletes talk about their mental health and the struggles,” Mortimer says. “That just was not happening back in the time.” 

The only documentation of Potter’s internal dialogues were in his journals, which his sister donated to the filmmaking duo so they could platform the realities of his life. Using stylistic images and animations from these diaries, alongside interviews with Potter and his inner circle, Mortimer and Rosen crafted a chilling recapitulation of the climber’s life. – SR 

Margo’s Got Money Troubles

Margo’s got money troubles, sure. But she’s also got some big expectations to meet. The Apple TV dramedy entered the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival as the undisputed TV headliner, thanks to the involvement of two prestige studios (A24 and the aforementioned Apple TV), a legendary TV showrunner (David E. Kelley), and a high-powered cast that would fit right in at this year’s Oscars ceremony (Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nick Offerman, Nicole Kidman, and more). Still, it’s one thing to have a lot of expensive toys; it’s another thing entirely to know how to play with them. Thankfully, Margo’s Got Money Troubles puts forward an eight-episode experience well worthy of its creative firepower. 

Based on a novel of the same name by Rufi Thorpe, Margo stars Elle Fanning as the titular young woman with money problems due to an unexpected pregnancy following a tryst with her douchey literature professor. Anticipating little help from her ex-Hooters waitress mother (Pfeiffer) or professional wrestler estranged father (Offerman), Margo gets creative (and sometimes nekkid) to pay the bills. Margo’s Got Money Troubles is Juno for the OnlyFans generation. It’s also the rare “prestige” episodic experience that doesn’t feel like a two-hour movie script that got out of hand. That’s all thanks to a preposterously charming lead performance from Fanning and her equally likable supporting cast. – AB