SXSW 2024: Five Films You Can't Miss at This Year's Festival

By Sean Boelman

Although SXSW is known for its flashy world premieres of big-budget blockbusters (and don’t get us wrong—we’re just as excited about The Fall Guy as everyone else), the Austin-based film and television festival also showcases a ton of indie projects and smaller-scale studio films that festival-goers absolutely should not miss.

We at disappointment media want to recommend a few films we think you shouldn’t miss that are playing at this year’s SXSW:

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Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story

Molly and Billy connecting on the pontoon. (National Geographic/Charlie Hamilton James)

Admittedly, the inclusion of this documentary on this list might be clouded by the fact that otters are one of the few animals this writer actually finds cute. Putting that aside, though, Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story has plenty of reasons to recommend it to festival-going audiences. The film tells the story of a man in the Shetland Islands who forms an unexpected friendship with a wild otter. It’s an adorable, sweet story, less than 80 minutes long, and shot in beautiful 4K cinematography by Charlie Hamilton-James — what’s not to love?

The Greatest Hits

Credit: Photo by Merie Weismiller Wallace, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Cinephiles are probably most familiar with filmmaker Ned Benson for The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, his trilogy of films telling the same story from different perspectives. His long-awaited return to the directorial chair is the romantic drama The Greatest Hits, which feels like an American answer to the work of filmmakers like John Carney and writer Nick Hornby. The film stars Lucy Boynton as a woman with a strange condition — whenever she listens to certain songs, she is transported back in time to the last moment she heard them with her deceased boyfriend. It’s a lovely film, and it will be released by Searchlight next month in theaters and on Hulu, so don’t miss the chance to check this one out.

Resynator

Courtesy Select A Shape Pictures

Alison Tavel’s documentary Resynator starts out seeming like a standard music documentary as she investigates the synthesizer she discovers was invented by her father. However, as she interviews her father’s peers and family members, the film turns into something much more personal and profound. It’s nice to see a movie like this — telling the filmmaker’s personal story — that is so unafraid to explore the darker elements with such honesty and empathy.

Sew Torn

Sew Torn is the feature debut of filmmaker Freddy Macdonald, adapted from his short of the same name. The short picked up some significant buzz after its release, and canny festival-goers will check the feature out expecting the same. This bonkers crime thriller follows a seamstress who gets caught up in a drug deal gone wrong, leaving her three options: commit the “perfect” crime, call the police, or drive away. The film plays out each of the choices in a format that’s edge-of-your-seat thrilling.

Things Will Be Different

Michael Felker has worked with the filmmaking duo Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead as an editor since Spring, so it’s no surprise that his feature directorial debut, Things Will Be Different, is a mind-bending indie sci-fi thriller. You won’t soon forget this mysterious flick about two siblings who travel to a time-traveling farmhouse to lie low after committing a robbery, only to get stuck in a dangerous limbo. It might not be the type of movie you first think of when you think of a midnight movie, but it’s undoubtedly effective — and occasionally even super gnarly.

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The 2024 SXSW Film Festival runs March 8-16 in Austin, TX.