Top 5 Films from the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival
Each year, the SXSW Film & TV Festival delivers a lineup that spans genres, tones, and styles, offering everything from bold directorial debuts to established voices pushing their craft in unexpected directions. The 2025 festival was no different, serving as a reminder of why this event remains a launchpad for some of the year’s most memorable films.
As festival acquisitions roll in and word-of-mouth builds, a handful of films have already begun making waves – ones that will likely stay in the conversation long after SXSW has wrapped. Whether through technical ambition, deeply personal storytelling, or performances that refuse to be forgotten, these five films each stand out in their own way at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival.
5. Bunny
Short Synopsis:
Bunny is a hustler out on a job when things go sideways and he’s thrown into a fight for his life. With the help of his best friend Dino, this fight kicks off one hot, endless, New York summer day spent scheming with the neighbors of their East Village tenement building to try — and repeatedly fail — to hide a dead body. Did I say body? I meant bodies. The cops keep sniffing around, the downstairs neighbors want to party, an Airbnb guest longs for love, an estranged father resurfaces, and Bunny just wants to make it through the night.
Director:
Ben Jacobson
Cast:
Mo Stark, Ben Jacobson, Liza Colby, Tony Drazan, Linda Rong Mei Chen, Genevieve Hudson-Price, Liz Caribel Sierra, Ajay Naidu, Richard Price
My Thoughts:
Bunny throws its audience headfirst into the chaotic, overstuffed world of a New York tenement building where doors never seem to close, and peace is an abstract concept. It’s a film that doesn’t ask for permission – it moves at its own manic rhythm, balancing slapstick absurdity with an unexpected warmth that makes it impossible not to root for its characters, no matter how flawed they are.
Like the best festival discoveries, Bunny embodies everything that makes indie film so exciting – the scrappy determination to get something made, a cast that clearly loves working together, and an absolute refusal to be anything other than what it is. It’s not aiming for glossy perfection or pretentious thematic exploration, but that’s precisely what makes it so much fun.
What Others Are Saying:
Bunny is ultimately more of an immersive experience than a film, allowing viewers to feel what it’s like to live in one of those dimly lit, overpacked walkups where strange odors always linger in the air and there’s no such thing as a peaceful night – Jordan Mintzer (The Hollywood Reporter)
Distribution:
Bunny is still seeking distribution. Sales are being handled by CAA.
4. Hallow Road
Short Synopsis:
Two parents receive a distressing late-night call from their teenage daughter, who has just accidentally hit a pedestrian. They jump in their car, racing to get there before anyone else stumbles across the scene. As they head deeper into the night, disturbing revelations threaten to tear the family apart as they soon realize they might not be the only ones driving down Hallow Road.
Director:
Babak Anvari
Cast:
Rosamund Pike, Matthew Rhys, Megan McDonnell
My Thoughts:
Confined largely to the inside of a car, Hallow Road turns a parent’s worst nightmare into a suffocating psychological experience, unfolding mostly in real time through a series of frantic phone calls.
Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys deliver powerhouse performances, anchoring the film’s emotional core as parents racing toward an unknown fate. Beyond the performances, Hallow Road becomes even more unnerving with its stylistic transformation. The world outside the car is shot on 16mm film, its grainy texture evoking a kind of grounded realism. But once inside the vehicle, the format shifts to digital, its images sharpened, its lighting stylized, subtly warping the space into something more nightmarish.
As the tension escalates, the car itself becomes a psychological prison, visually trapping its characters in their paranoia and guilt, and the looming forest at the end of the road is a reflection of the buried fears within our subconscious.
What Others Are Saying:
Few films have ever induced such immense tonal whiplash while exhibiting such tight formal control over their transformations. There’s a very clear boundary separating the kind of movie “Hallow Road” starts out as from what it eventually becomes, which all but cements its place as a fascinating artifact of this year’s midnight movie scene – Siddhant Adlakha (Variety)
Distribution:
Hallow Road is still seeking distribution. Sales are being handled by XYZ Films.
(Top Films from the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival)
3. Together
Short Synopsis:
Years into their relationship, Tim and Millie (Dave Franco and Alison Brie) find themselves at a crossroads as they move to the country, abandoning all that is familiar in their lives except each other. With tensions already flaring, a nightmarish encounter with a mysterious, unnatural force threatens to corrupt their lives, their love, and their flesh.
Director:
Michael Shanks
Cast:
Dave Franco, Alison Brie, Damon Herriman
My Thoughts:
Michael Shanks’ debut feature takes the creeping anxieties of long-term commitment and twists them into something visceral, grotesque, and unexpectedly hilarious.
Tonally, Together is a balancing act of horror and humour, shifting seamlessly from darkly comic moments to sheer dread. One second, the film disarms you with its sharp, observational wit—the next, it launches you into body horror so unexpected that it elicits genuine, full-body reactions. The cinematography mirrors this push-and-pull, contrasting claustrophobic interiors with lush, expansive landscapes, creating an uneasy tension between freedom and entrapment.
Beneath its genre elements, Together is a disturbingly honest depiction of codependency, where the fear isn’t just of losing someone – it’s of losing yourself in them. It doesn’t vilify commitment, but it does force you to question just how much of yourself you should surrender for love.
What Others Are Saying:
Real-life couple Brie and Franco bring great gusto and personal investment to the hair-raising (or at one point, -eating) Cronenbergian ordeal they find themselves stuck in, which fortifies the underlying themes of codependency, commitment phobia and the fear of losing oneself in a relationship, intensifying when a couple’s existence is more isolated – David Rooney (The Hollywood Reporter)
Distribution:
Together has been acquired by Neon and is scheduled for an August 1st, 2025 theatrical release.
2. The Perfect Neighbor
Short Synopsis:
In June 2023, Ajike Owens, a vibrant young Black mother of four and family friend, was shot and killed by her neighbor, Susan Lorincz. The conflict that ignited this tragic event was a neighborhood dispute over children playing in a nearby field. Heartbroken, I embarked on a film project to unravel the chilling escalation from a minor disagreement to a devastating murder. “The Perfect Neighbor” is a powerful and unsettling exploration, weaving together detective interviews, police body cam footage, and witness testimonies. This film chronicles the tragic sequence of events and also highlights the perilous implications of Florida’s lenient gun regulations and Stand Your Ground laws.
Director:
Geeta Gandbhir
My Thoughts:
Few films capture tragedy the way The Perfect Neighbor does. Using two years’ worth of police bodycam footage, director Geeta Gandbhir reconstructs the avoidable murder of A.J. Owens.
Much of the film’s power lies in its editing. Working with Viridiana Lieberman, Gandbhir structures the footage into a narrative that unfolds with unbearable inevitability, never needing reenactments or outside commentary to drive home its urgency, with the Florida neighborhood ultimately becoming its own character. This is an emotionally devastating, formally innovative documentary that many more folks will be watching soon.
What Others Are Saying:
The callous indifference that’s coded into the body cam aesthetic collides with the intimate proximity of watching an officer tell the father of Owens’ children that she’s gone, and then listening (from just a few inches away) as the man relays that message to his newly motherless kids. The disparity between what the law permits from some and deprives of others has seldom been rendered as devastatingly as it is here – David Ehrlich (IndieWire)
Distribution:
The Perfect Neighbor has been acquired by Netflix and should be available on the platform later in 2025.
(Top Films from the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival)
1. Satisfaction
Short Synopsis:
Set against the stunning Greek isles, Satisfaction is a nuanced psychological drama that unravels the fragile bond between British composers Lola and Philip. Their relationship lingers in silence as Lola struggles to reclaim her voice. Weaving between their present-day trip to a remote Greek island and the start of their romance at a London music school, the film slowly reveals an unspoken rift. When Lola meets the magnetic Elena on a nudist beach and invites her into their world, tensions escalate, forcing Lola to confront the darkest part of her past.
Director:
Alex Burunova
Cast:
Emma Laird, Fionn Whitehead, Zar Amir, Adwoa Aboah
My Thoughts:
At SXSW this year, no films feel as quietly devastating as Satisfaction. Directed by Alex Burunova, the film is an exercise in restraint – a meditation on power dynamics, unspoken control, and the slow reclamation of “self”. But what truly elevates this picture is Emma Laird’s performance, a career-best turn that cements her as one of the most compelling rising stars today.
As Lola, Laird doesn’t rely on heightened emotion or showy moments. Instead, she builds her performance in silence, letting her character’s internal unraveling play out in micro-expressions, flickers of hesitation, and the weight of what remains unsaid. The film’s most powerful moment – a single, unbroken shot of Lola’s face – refuses to offer relief. That decision forces the audience to sit with Lola’s pain, with Laird carrying every ounce of it in her expression.
For Burunova, Satisfaction is a deeply personal project. For Laird, it’s a defining one – and a signal that she’s ready to lead.
What Others Are Saying:
Satisfaction is a powerful debut, a dark examination of a relationship in crisis. It’s not an easy watch but an engrossing one – an intimate, complex portrayal of love, pain, and the journey toward self-liberation – Sara Clements (Next Best Picture)
Distribution:
Satisfaction is still seeking distribution. Sales are being handled by United Talent.
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