20 Movies We Can’t Wait to See at SXSW 2022

Filmed over a three-year period, Danny Cohen’s documentary rides shotgun with Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett as she tours the world for her second album Tell Me How You Really Feel while navigating the rocky road of fame, media attention, panic attacks, heartbreak, and personal upheaval. Barnett provides the diary-like voiceover; the 16mm footage of shows, backstage banter, life on the road and the singer’s own private moments gives you the sense that your watching home movies of an artist in the first stages of a full bloom.

Richard Linklater returns with a Rotoscope-animated YA fantasy about a youngster (voiced by Milo Coy) who’s recruited by NASA for a top-secret mission to test the lunar module before the historic Apollo 11 moonflight. But it’s also a memory piece that revisits life as a preteen in late-1960s Texas, complete with endless summer days, family excursions and the joys of being a kid. It’s funny, funky and a sentimental free-form flashback — a Linklater movie, in other words. Jack Black, Glenn Powell, and Zachary Levi lend their voices to the fun.

Ah yes, the old party-gone-out-of-bounds gonzo horror/comedy chestnut — we do have a fondness for this subgenre, especially if it involves the filthy rich and backbiting. Amandla Stenberg, Pete Davidson and Borat‘s breakout star Maria Bakalova are among a group of twentysomethings throwing a shindig in a mansion turns into something a little more murder-y. It’s worth noting that Kristen Ropuenian, the author of that infamous New Yorker “Cat Person” short story, is among the credited screenwriters here. We’re extremely intrigued.

A woman (Winona Ryder) and her much younger boyfriend (John Gallagher Jr.) decide to rent a cabin for the weekend. When they arrive, another couple is already occupying it. Because it’s late, the tenants let them stay the night. The next morning, our hero’s younger boyfriend is gone. She thinks he’s run off with the cute twentysomething they just met, and wants to confront this homewrecker. The less you know going into this mystery, the better. We’ll just say that this is the sort of role that’s perfect for Ryder; that director-cowriter Eli Horowitz was partially responsible for the Amazon thriller Homecoming; and that growing old is a bitch.

He’s the man on the silver mountain, the inventor of the devil-horns hand gesture, a genuine heavy metal pioneer several times over and a frontman with a voice that could demolish buildings — he’s Ronnie James Dio, someone who’s been long overdue for the full rockumentary treatment. Filmmaker Don Argott and Demian Fenton (Last Days Here) trace the singer’s career from his early days in a pre-Beatles Sixties rock & roll band in upstate New York to getting recruited for Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow, taking over Ozzy’s slot in Black Sabbath and forming his own groundbreaking, dragon-slaying, parent-irritating solo band. Everyone from Rob Halford to Tony Iommi to Jack Black weigh in on the influence of Dio above and beyond the world of metal, while a ton of old concert footage remind you what a charismatic sorcerer he was onstage. The guy will always be the knight in the night, the dark and the light!

Never mind the multiverse — bring us the Michelleverse! SXSW’s opening night selection has the mighty Michelle Yeoh dealing with a mountain of back taxes, a marriage on the rocks and a strained relationship with her rebellious daughter (Stephanie Hsu). The bigger problem, however, is that every one of the universes are collapsing on each other and only she — with some help from her alt-world counterparts — can stop it from happening. How many movies can you feature Jamie Lee Curtis as a crazed tax auditor, Goonies/Temple of Doom MVP Ke Huy Quan as a man who can turn a fanny pack in to a deadly weapon and a bagel that can snuff out all existence? The fact that it’s directed by the duo known as the Daniels (Swiss Army Man, DJ Snake’s insane “Turn Down for What” music video) means it’s even crazier than it sounds. This should be a lively way to kick off the festival.

Gabby Giffords had represented Arizona’s 8th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives for four years when a gunman in Tucson attempted to assassinate her in a supermarket’s parking lot. She survived and retired from political life a year later, yet still fights to get effective gun-control laws passed and advocate for those who’ve suffered through mass shootings. This profile from Betsy West and Julie Cohen — who gave us RBG, the 2018 doc on Ruth Bader Ginsburg — is both a look at someone who refuses to let violence stop her from standing up for what’s right and a portrait of courage under fire. The title says it all.

Writer-director James Morosini mines his own life experiences for this cringe comedy in which a young man (played by Morosini) blocks his flaky, never-there-for-him father (Patton Oswalt) on social media as a form of setting boundaries. Frustrated that he’s been shut out of his son’s life, Pops decides to create a fake Facebook account, complete with profile pictures of a beautiful young waitress. Guess who then falls in love with this faux-stranger? Never mind catfishing — here’s a movie about dadfishing, which isn’t nearly as bad. (Kidding! As this film proves, it’s way worse.)

For over five decades, guitarist Robert Fripp has led prog-rock legends King Crimson through numerous line-ups, albums, tours, and related projects — it would be fair to say he’s earned a reputation as a perfectionist and a bit of taskmaster regarding how the Crimson catalog is performed and interpreted. Documentarian Toby Amies captures the bandleader is all his prickly glory as he tags along on the group’s 2018 tour, and the result is a fascinating look at both a venerable institution, the dynamics of working as a multi-limbed unit that’s ruled by a single iron fist, and what it takes to play this type of music. (It also doubles as a tribute to the late,great Bill Rieflin, who played with the band in various capacities and passed away in 2020.) The program notes put it best: “What began as a traditional documentary…mutated into an exploration of time, death, family, and the transcendent power of music to change lives, but with jokes.”

They were a five-headed beast that came roaring out of Canada, changed sketch comedy, and have seen more ups and downs in their 40 years together than every amusement-park rollercoaster combined. This two-part doc at the Kids in the Hall promises a warts-and-all look at their early days onstage, the TV shows and the tours, how they’ve now influenced several generations of comedians and — hopefully — a sense of what to expect from their upcoming Amazon KITH reboot.

A kid’s-show host (Jim Gaffigan) — think Bill Nye the Science Guy, but goofier — discovers that part of an old Russian rocket has dropped out of the sky and landed in his sleepy Ohio suburb. He believes that it could be a sign that he should revive his childhood dream of becoming an astronaut, and begins constructing a homemade spaceship in his garage. His wife (Better Call Saul‘s Rhea Seehorn) and family think he’s losing his mind. They may be right. The Donnie Darko vibes are strong with this one. Michael Ian Black and Tony Shaloub are along for the ride as well

Jahseh Onfroy began posting songs on SoundCloud at the age of 16, under the name XXXTENACION. By the time he was 20, he’d be famous and a leading pioneer in emo-rap, arrested for aggravated battery, considered one of the most controversial musical artists on the planet and murdered. That’s the story we know from the news reports and articles, at least; filmmaker Sabaah Folayan wants us to take a different look at the life and death of this troubled, young man. Her previous movie Whose Streets? is a landmark doc on the Ferguson uprising after the passing of Michael Brown, so if anyone was going to deal with this divisive subject in a non-exploitative manner, it’s her.

By the age of 23, Carson McCullers was a celebrated novelist, thanks to her stunning 1940 debut The Heart is a Lonely Hunter; by the age of 15, musician Suzanne Vega had become a serious fan of the Southern writer. The “Tom’s Diner’ singer was so enamored of McCullers work and her story, in fact, that many years later, she penned and performed a one-woman musical centered around two lectures that McCullers gave before her death in 1967. If you missed those evenings at the theater, no worry: This concert film of sorts allows Vega to do her tribute show one more time and captures the whole shebang for posterity. It’s worth it just for “Harper Lee,” an infectiously catchy song in which McCullers drags most of her literary peers through the dirt.

With 2007’s Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) and 2017’s Love Means Zero, Jason Kohn established himself as a documentarian who could tackle everything from class warfare in Brazil to tennis coaching from every conceivable angle (and few inconceivable ones as well). His latest dives deep into the world of the diamond industry, where there’s allegedly a criminal conspiracy happening that threatens to throw the world of jewelry into a tailspin. We genuinely can’t wait to see this.

In terms of music industry highs and lows, Sheryl Crow has seen it all — and she’s now ready to spill her guts about all of it for the camera. Documentarian Amy Scott (the incredible Hal Ashby portrait Hal) lets Crow guide us through several decades worth of triumph and trauma, sickness and health, hits and misses, with luminaries like Keith Richards, Emmylou Harris and Joe Walsh adding their two cents. Seriously, have you listened to “If It Makes You Happy” recently? That thing’s a banger!

A manager (co-writer Alison Brie) at an Olive Garden-style restaurant in Bakersfield, California, gets hand-picked to attend a prestigious corporate retreat in Tuscany. Upon arriving in Italy with her fellow trainees, however, she begins to suspect something else is going on. She also attracts the attention of the franchise’s CEO (Alessandro Nivola) and his take-no-shit assistant (Aubrey Plaza). Considering that the Brie and director Jeff Baena’s last project together was the highly unsettling Horse Girl, you should expect this dark comedy to go some weird and disturbing places. Call it Eat, Prey, Cringe. Plus the supporting cast is stacked: Fred Armisen, Molly Shannon, Tim Heidecker, Zach Woods, Lil Rey Howery, BSG‘s Tricia Helfer, SNL‘s Ego Nwodim, High Maintenance‘s Ben Sinclair.

Andrew Dominik chronicled Nick Cave dealing with grief, pain and the healing process in 2016’s One More Time With Feeling; now the director and the songwriter reunite for a look at Cave’s creative partnership and long friendship with multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis. It’s just these two musicians working through songs from their 2021 album Carnage and the 2019 Bad Seeds joint Ghosteen, accompanied by a few extra singers and a string quartet, figuring out how to translate them into a live performance setting. Which, if you’ve heard these albums, is more than enough to keep you riveted.

Once upon a time, Leslie (Andrea Riseborough) won the lottery and had an opportunity to make things better for her and her son. Now, thanks to a life of hard drinking and even harder living, she finds herself out on the street and having alienated her entire family. The kindness of strangers — specifically, a motel manager (Marc Maron) — offers her a second chance at stability, if only she can fight off her personal demons and worst instincts. Does filmmaker Michael Morris’ character study sound like a rough ride through one person’s bottoming out? Yes. Will we watch anything that the extraordinary Riseborough does? Also yes. Allison Janney, Stephen Root, Andre Royo, Owen Teague and 1883’s James Landry Hébert costar.

Nicolas Cage plays the the role he was born to play: Nicolas Cage. Playing a fictional version of himself, i.e. a movie star disillusioned with the industry and dealing with money issues [cough], His Cageness is an actor getting ready to quit the biz when he gets an offer that’s too good to refuse: $1 million to simply show up at a billionaire’s birthday party. It turns out that the host is a superfan. He’s also an international crook, and then the C.I.A. get involved, and also there’s apparently a younger, possibly imaginary, definitely off-the-hook version of Cage running around as well. This could be the Nic Cage meta-comedy we’ve been waiting for.