The SXSW film festival started in Austin on Friday! We always pay close attention to the short film lineup (for obvious reasons) and have shared four short films that are already available online. While the short program this year showcases many new films from Short of The Week alums, there are just as many of our friends in the feature length program. We want to highlight these creators, tease their new full-lengths, and also celebrate the short films that helped them get to this point. Below you will find seven short films picked for our site whose directors have features at South By Southwest. The short films are embedded, click the titles to read our original reviews, and links to the feature film SXSW description pages are in the blurbs. Scroll down to (re)enjoy these gifted filmmakers’ prior work.

Thunder Road (2014)

Dir: Jim Cummings

The first of 3 short-to-feature adaptations we’re highlighting in this piece is Thunder Road. Jim Cummings had a fairytale run with his short film in 2016, winning prizes at Sundance, SXSW, and finishing runner up in the Comedy Category of the Short of the Week Awards. After parlaying that success into a series of single-take shorts for Fullscreen, Cummings hosted a successful Kickstarter campaign to adapt his beloved short into a feature. The short film above serves as the opening scene, where Officer Arnaud (played by Cummings himself) attempts to honor his late Mom at her funeral in…a somewhat odd way. We have already praised the short film for its excellent performances and weird tonal shifts, and are eager to see what happens next to Officer Arnaud!

COUNTERTRANSFERENCE

Dir: Madeleine Olnek

Madeleine Olnek’s latest feature, Wild Nights with Emily, enlists Molly Shannon to upend the popular understanding of famous American poet Emily Dickinson. Remembered as a lonely recluse, Olnek highlights Dickinson’s purported lesbian affair to cast a new, more humorous light on this beloved figure. Olnek first came to our attention with her Sundance-selected short Countertransference, an excellently written dark comedy between a troubled woman and her assertive, deranged therapist, and a pair of low-budget queer comedy features followed—2011’s Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same, and 2014’sThe Foxy Merkins. With her wry distinctive voice and sense of humor, we are quite confident that Wild Nights with Emily film will be a hit and catapult Olnek to a new level of popular acclaim (the early reviews are glowing). 

WHO’S AFRAID OF AI WEI WEI

Dir: Alison Klayman 

Alison Klayman’s new feature documentary, Take Your Pills, explores our “relationship” with prescription stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin. No longer just for ADHD kids, Klayman examines the evolution of these drugs into general performance enhancers for everyone from college students to Wall-Street traders. Exec-Produced by documentary eminence Julie Goldman and former First Lady of California Maria Shriver, the premise is promising, as is the Netflix deal already in hand which will bring the film to the streaming service next week. It’s a starry follow-up for Klayman whom seemingly came out of nowhere when we stumbled upon the above short film made for PBS Frontline in 2011, containing material that would eventually result in her debut feature Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry. Afforded rare and serendipitous access to the global art superstar, the documentary coincided with Ai Wei Wei’s mysterious detainment by the Chinese government and catapulted the project, and Klayman into the limelight. Spending months with her subject, Klayman was able to capture this fascinating man under different angles—artist, blogger, and political activist.

1985

Dir: Yen Tan

A second adaptation, inspired by the short film of the same name, 1985 follows Adrian, a closeted young man returning to his Texas hometown for Christmas during the first wave of the AIDS crisis. In the short film, Adrian, already feeling the effects of the disease, is getting ready to move back in with his estranged mother, when he experiences a surprising moment of empathy and acceptance at a department store makeup counter that profoundly moves him. Yen Tan tells queer stories via a humanistic voice that produces subtle and graceful portraits, and this film is simultaneously one of the most restrained, yet moving, shorts we’ve seen in recent years. Questioning his commitment to filmmaking after the lackluster reception of his feature Pit Stop, Tan was drawn back in by his Producers into making the 1985  short film, and we’re thrilled to see his enthusiasm is fully back with this new feature. 

FUCKKKYOUUU

Dir: Eddie Alcazar

Eddie Alcazar’s SXSW feature is titled Perfect, and has Steven Soderbergh and Flying Lotus attached as Executive Producers. The premise of the film sounds exciting: A boy in a cold and stark modern house, in a vaguely sci-fi world, is seduced by advertisements of perfection to install implantable characteristics directly into his body. Gee, how could that go wrong? A distinctive visual stylist, we were introduced to Alcazar a couple of years ago via his previous partnership with Flying Lotus, the Sundance-premiere short film FUCKKKYOUUU. A bold, experimental body-horror short, the film is profoundly disturbing but undeniably beautiful. Using amazing sound design and lights, it’s a black and white experience that will stir something up inside of you—good or bad.

Prospect

Dir: Zeek Earl & Christopher Caldwell

The third and final short-to-feature adaptation we’re highlighting is maybe the one we’re most excited about. Prospect the feature is directly inspired by the eponymous short film that premiered at SXSW in 2014. A teenage girl and her father are on an alien planet to collect a mysterious substance from a toxic forest, when suddenly the story turns into a fight to survive. In an era of sci-fi short films that are heavy on VFX, but low on ideas or atmosphere, Caldwell and Earl distinguished themselves by crafting thought-provoking shorts that privilege lived-in worlds and practical environments. The Pacific Northwest-based  filmmakers appear to have followed suit with the feature, as early reviews are trumpeting the duo’s skill in world-building. Starring Jay Duplass (Transparent) and Pedro Pascal (Game of Thrones) alongside newcomer Sophie Thatcher, a promising early review from Variety declares that “this is what the standalone “Star Wars” movies should feel like.”

THE STRANGE THINGS ABOUT THE JOHNSONS

Dir: Ari Aster

A late add to Sundance and so not part of our similar coverage back in January, Hereditary turned out to be one of the hits of the Midnight category, with strong reactions from the audience (I was told that people were running out screaming). We’re not surprised however, Ari Aster is no stranger to controversial audience feedback. His 30-minute short film, The Strange Things About the Johnsons blew us away with it’s provocative subject matter when we hesitantly featured it in 2012. Weirdly enough the film experienced a surprise revival in 2017 when it became a social media meme, and became the second most-watched film on our site a full 5 years after we originally featured it. Pure shock value is the primary reason why, as the short film deals with the taboo of family sexual abuse but flips the usual dynamic on its head, creating a situation that twists perversion, and absurdity, blending drama and dark comedy in outrageous ways. A focus of the plot of the short does disservice to Aster’s craft however, which is impeccable in largely pulling off a film that should not be able to be pulled off. If you’re interested in Hereditary, the feature is getting a theatrical release from A24 this year.