If there is one place to explore the final frontier, it's Texas! Known throughout the industry as an indie filmmaker launchpad, the SXSW Film & TV Festival showcases must-see screenings, premieres, and mixed reality project that are truly out of this world.
The 2024 Film & TV Festival is taking registrants on a journey through the past, present, and future in award-winning novel turned Netflix sci-fi series 3 Body Problem, Sundance standout from Greg Jardin It's What's Inside, and the final chapter of the starship Discovery in Star Trek: Discovery Final Season Premiere.
Journey across programming highlights as you prepare to boldly go into the 2024 event with your plans beamed up to the SX Schedule.
3 Body Problem
TV Premiere
A young woman’s fateful decision in 1960s China reverberates across space and time to a group of brilliant scientists in the present day. As the laws of nature unravel before their eyes, five former colleagues reunite to confront the greatest threat in humanity’s history. (World Premiere)
Astra (Australia)
XR Experience Competition
Hidden in the lost belongings of an Astrobiologist are clues for the journey ahead. Welcome to Astra, your ticket to the stars. This Mixed Reality Experience transports you from Earth to the deepest corners of the cosmos as you embark on a quest to uncover the key ingredients of life in the Universe. Step foot on planets and their dark moons in a search for future worlds and far away beings. (World Premiere)
Azrael
Narrative Feature | Midnighter
Many years following the apocalypse, a devout cult of mute zealots hunts down a young woman, Azrael, who has escaped her imprisonment. Recaptured by its ruthless leaders, Azrael is to be sacrificed to pacify an ancient evil that resides deep within the surrounding wilderness – yet she will stop at nothing to ensure her own survival. In what follows, Azrael makes a savage bid for freedom as her escape accelerates towards a vicious, revenge-fueled showdown. (World Premiere)
The Burning Hell - 'All I Need'
Music Video Competition
A music video for The Burning Hell's song 'All I Need'. In a post-human world a lone robot scours apocalyptic wastelands, searching for the rare parts they need to save their only friend.
It's What's Inside
Narrative Feature | Midnighter
A pre-wedding party descends into an existential nightmare when an estranged friend shows up with a mysterious suitcase. (Texas Premiere)
Kiss/Crash (Installation)
XR Experience Special Event
The installation triptych Kiss/Crash employs AI-imagery to explore themes of desire and the expanding gap between real experience and artificial representations in the digital age. The interactive experience consists of three related works that use AI to augment, subvert, and negate the iconic image of the Hollywood kiss. (International Premiere)
The Rainbow Bridge
Narrative Short Competition
Tina and her elderly dog, MeeMoo, visit "Rainbow Bridge Enterprises," a mysterious clinic offering human-to-pet communication. The esoteric Dr. Bailey Picadello and her burnout partner, Herb, detect a cosmically strong bond between their new patients, triggering a journey across time and space where Tina and MeeMoo can properly say goodbye in their final, fantastical forms. Chaos ensues as Tina is abruptly thrust back to reality while MeeMoo is left behind in the transcendental Rainbow Realm. Tina may feel a bittersweet sense of relief, but Dr. Bailey gets more than she bargained for when the fabric of reality might have just split wide open. (Texas Premiere)
Star Trek: Discovery Final Season Premiere
TV Spotlight
Captain Burnham and the U.S.S. Discovery are sent to retrieve a mysterious 800-year-old Romulan vessel; until the artifact hidden inside is stolen, leading to an epic chase. Meanwhile, Saru is offered the position of a lifetime, and Tilly’s efforts to help pull her into a tangled web of secrecy. (World Premiere)
The Vortex Cinema
XR Experience Competition
The Vortex Cinema is a time-traveling, genre-bending VR shooter where you enter the world of black and white movies, stepping into the shoes of a hard-boiled detective at the center of a film noir murder mystery. Uncover an elaborate conspiracy surrounding a scientist that spontaneously combusted, a red-eyed raven, a corrupt police department and a mafia underworld that holds the city in its grip. As your case unravels it will take you deeper down a rabbit hole of intrigue and face to face with friends and foes from different dimensions. Your actions and decisions will affect their lives. But beware! A dark and shadowy figure is also pulling the strings. And they are waiting for you. (World Premiere)
We're All Gonna Die
Narrative Feature Competition
A struggling beekeeper is forced to team up with an emotionally raw EMT on a roadtrip to retrieve her bees (and his car) after their stuff is suddenly teleported across the country by a massive alien tentacle that looms over Earth. (World Premiere)
