SXSW 2024: The Movies And TV We’re Excited For
by Gary Catig
South by Southwest (SXSW) is almost here, bringing attendees experiences related to the world of technology, music, comedy, and more. During the nine-day event, the SXSW Film and TV Festival is held featuring an impressive slate of premieres.
There are 250 projects shown at SXSW from feature films to television series to shorts to extended reality programs. It can be daunting to sort through everything so we try to make it easy a spotlight a handful that we are most excited to watch.
Monkey Man
The highest profile movies are those included in the Headliners category because they have the biggest star power and talent. With such features as The Fall Guy starring Ryan Gosling and Civil War, directed and written by Alex Garland, it is Monkey Man that is the top of our list.
Monkey Man is Dev Patel’s directorial debut. He also stars as Kid, a young man who participates in an underground fight club in order to make ends meet. He is pummeled night after night by superior pugilists while wearing a gorilla mask. Tired of being exploited, Kid sets out on a bloody quest for revenge against those who took everything away from him.
Arcadian
We are in the middle of a Nicolas Cage renaissance. Long ridiculed for the less-than-stellar films he starred in, he has put together an impressive string of strong performances including Pig, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and Renfield. That’s why we’re anxious to catch Arcadian.
Set in a near future where the human race is nearly extinct, Cage plays Paul, a father of twin teenage boys who have carved out a quasi-peaceful existence on a farm. It’s only quasi because at night a grave danger lurks. When one of his sons fails to return home by curfew, Paul sets out in the perilous night to bring him back.
I Saw the TV Glow
Jane Schoenbrun proved they can do coming-of-age horror well with the movie We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. They go to the well again with their latest, I Saw the TV Glow.
The story follows two teens connected by their love for a mysterious television show, which shows a vision of a supernatural world beneath the real world. While watching the series in the late hours of the night, one of the teens begins to lose touch with their sense of reality. The cast of I Saw the TV Glow includes Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, and Fred Durst.
3 Body Problem
We received our first look at 3 Body Problem at CES when the trailer was released. The series, created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss of Game of Thrones fame and writer Alexander Woo, will have its world premiere at SXSW.
The Netflix show is based off a novel series of the same name that follows an astrophysicist stationed in a remote secret military base in 1960s China. While their, she makes a decision that reverberates across time and space causing a team of scientists to confront humanity’s greatest threat in the present.
Star Trek: Discovery
Star Trek: Discovery helped usher in a new era of shows from the beloved franchise. It introduced new characters and stories while still having ties to The Original Series. In a few weeks it will begin its fifth and final season, but if you’re at SXSW, you’ll be able to watch the premiere ahead of everyone else.
In season five, Captain Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and the rest of the crew of the USS Discovery uncover a mystery that sends them on a quest throughout the galaxy to retrieve an ancient power before it can fall into the wrong hands.
SXSW runs from March 8-16. The lineup for the SXSW Film and TV Festival can be found here.
