The new satirical comedy film from Boots Riley kicks off Austin’s 2026 celebration of movies, music and innovation.
In a landscape where film festivals have had to jostle violently for the attention of sales agents and studios, it helps if you’ve cultivated a specific vibe and an identifiable audience. Austin’s South By Southwest (SXSW) is eking ever closer to its fifth decade of life, and in that time has become one of the vital destinations for hoovering up all the finest alternative culture while – between movies/gigs – drinking in the insights of some of the world’s most radical thought leaders in the worlds of culture and commerce.
Obviously, being a film magazine, we’re going to zero in on all the great movies set to receive premiers at the festival, the first and foremost being Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters, his follow-up to the coruscating workplace satire, Sorry to Bother You. The film, which stars Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie and LaKeith Stanfield, looks at a tight knit clique of expert shoplifters who divert their powers towards taking down a local fashion maven. In the headliners slot there’s also a new film written and directed by the talented BenDavid Grabinski called Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice – about gangsters, their moll and a time machine, starring Vince Vaughn, James Marsden and Eiza González.
We’re excited to catch Over Your Dead Body by Jorma Taccone, who co-wrote and directed one of 2025’s best and funniest films, the Naked Gun reboot. It sees Samara Weaving and Jason Segel as a dysfunctional couple whose decision to head to a remote cabin for some psychological healing ends up taking a turn for the deadly. In the Narrative Feature Competition strand, Will Ropp’s Brian looks interesting – a modern riff on ’90s highschool classics like Election and Rushmore. Severance star Britt Lower leads Russell Goldman’s Sender, in which she plays a woman who descends into paranoia after receiving a series of random packages.
SXSW is known for its focus on documentary, and it looks like there are some exciting options in this year’s line-up. Robert Christgau is a man thought of as the music critic’s music critic, and he’s the subject of Matty Wishnow’s profile doc, The Last Critic. If the title of Ayden Mayeri’s Summer 2000: The X-Cetra Story doesn’t lure you in, then the logline will: four friends reunite when the album they made as pre-teens becomes a cult hit on the internet. See, the internet isn’t just a dissemination tool for facism! But then again, Sidney Fussell and Jennifer Holness’s #WhileBlack suggests it just may be, looking at digital scams and manipulation during the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
One film that has certainly piqued our interest in the Narrative Spotlight strand – not sure if for better or for worse – is Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgewick’s Family Movie, in which the Hollywood power couple play versions of themselves making a low-budget slasher movie. Of course, the fantasy world of cinema quickly overlaps with their fun creative side-hustle. This is but the tip of the cine-iceberg when it comes to capturing the full film programme which can be found right here, but if you’re a fan of festivals which place comedy and genre on a bit of a pedestal, then you really can’t miss.
SXSW 2026 runs from 1 to 6 June.
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