As screenings continue and the music folks roll into town, SXSW last night announced the winners of its 2013 Film Festival. At the Paramount Theater, Destin Cretton’s crowd-pleasing Short Term 12 and Ben Nabors’ African-set, sustainable energy doc William and the Windmill took the top juried prizes. Audience prizes will be announced at the festival’s conclusion. A complete list of winners follows: Feature Film Jury Awards DOCUMENTARY FEATURE COMPETITION Grand Jury Winner: William and the Windmill Director: Ben Nabors Special Jury Recognition for Cinematography: Touba Director of Photography: Scott Duncan Special Jury Recognition for Directing: We Always Lie To Strangers […]

Every festival has its bright spots, especially important ones like the SXSW Film Conference & Festival, but this year they were perhaps harder to find than in years past. I would have stuck around to see the lovely Destin Daniel Cretton and his indie tearjerker Short Term 12 accept the top prize for narrative (or Ben Nabor take the doc prize for his look at a Malawian windmill architect, William and the Windmill), but the weirdly tone-deaf, sycophantic awards ceremony — during which festival honcho Louis Black railed about how he “didn’t care about money” at this for-profit festival and the all-white […]

Winner of the Narrative Grand Jury Prize at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival, Destin Cretton’s Short Term 12 is a warm, generous drama about counselors and youth at a group home for troubled teens. A feature expansion of his 2009 short of the same name, winner of the Best Short Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Cretton’s new picture has a low-key authenticity — the writer/director worked himself in such a facility, and his experiences inspire some of the subplots here — as well as the classic values of good, character-based storytelling. (At the premiere’s post-screening Q&A, Cretton cited One […]

Jillian Lucas and Lucas Leyva, two of our “25 New Faces” from 2012, are back at SXSW with their new short #PostModem after making their name at the fest last year with the mind-blowing Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke. Here they talk with Romain Thomassin as part of the Motionmaker series of Young Guns interviews with emerging filmmakers.

Having established himself as a painter, photographer, and sculptor, Carter continues to expand his art repertoire with his newest feature film, Maladies. After working with James Franco on his directorial debut, Erased James Franco, Carter decided to write another film with Franco in mind. Maladies follows the relationship of a former actor who befriends a family of artists. All equally eccentric, their interactions explore the struggle artists often have with creativity. The movie also stars Catherine Keener, David Strathairn, and Fallon Goodson, who also acted as a producer. Maladies premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February and makes its North American debut […]

On this special episode of Shooting With John, we shoot M1911’s with Geoff Marslett and talk to the crew of Loves Her Gun about the role guns play in cinema. Check out Loves Her Gun this week at SXSW: Monday, March 11th 1:45PM – 3:24PM Topfer Theatre at ZACH Tuesday, March 12th 11:15AM -12:54PM SXSatellite: Alamo Village Friday, March 15th 4:00PM – 5:39PM Topfer Theatre at ZACH

In Ruben Amar and Lola Bessis’s Swim Little Fish Swim, Lilas (Bessis) defiantly flees her coddled Parisian life for a nomadic walkabout in New York. An aspiring visual artist, desperate to strike out from the shadow cast by her famous mother (Anne Cosigny), Lilas falls in with Leeward (Dustin Guy Defa), his wife (Brooke Bloom), and their daughter (Olivia Costello). Quick to align herself with Leeward and his band of musicians, Lilas’ presence as an added distraction for her hapless husband unnerves Bloom’s breadwinning nurse. Amar and Bessis spoke to Filmmaker about the method to their collaboration in advance of […]

Tucked away in the middle of the Ozarks, far away from the bright lights of the coasts, lies Branson, Missouri, a place that has been dubbed “the live music capital of America.” The opposite of hip, its theaters feature a wide variety of traditional family entertainers such as the comedian Yakov Smirnoff and the singer Andy Williams who are neither gone nor forgotten by the 7.5 million tourists who visit each year. It’s the type of place where a lively game of bumper boats might be followed by a dinner and a rodeo show at the Dixie Stampede Theater. Five […]

When President Obama announced in the State of the Union that the war in Afghanistan would effectively end by 2014, the news was greeted with little more than a collective shrug. That thing was still going on? But what is very far away for most Americans is very close for all Afghans, a fact made clear in the SXSW-premiering documentary, The Network. The feature directorial debut of the Academy Award-winning producer Eva Orner, The Network tells the story of TOLO TV, Afghanistan’s first independent television network. Granted complete access by Saad Mohseni, the founder of the network (dubbed the “Rupert […]

Quickly after premiering Filly Brown at Sundance in 2012, filmmakers Youssef Delara and Victor Teran moved into production on their newest feature, Snap. As close collaborators for many years on other films, Delara and Teran teamed up again to co-direct and produce Snap. Set in the explosive world of underground dubstep, the film explores the dangerous psyche of a young man as a social worker and her mentor try to uncover his secrets before his violent past erupts. Snap stars Jake Hoffman (Barney’s Version), Nikki Reed (Thirteen, Twilight), Scott Bakula (American Beauty, TV’s Quantum Leap), and Thomas Dekker (Kaboom), and makes its world premiere tomorrow at SXSW in […]