It’s already been a year since the world came to a pause because of the pandemic and while for very few it is already a thing of the past, for most of us it is still very much the present, and we still don’t know when we will be able to enjoy festivals the way we used to!

Back in March 2020, SXSW was one of the first festivals that got hit so close to its start date, but like many other festivals, it quickly adapted to our new reality with a full-on virtual event on its own platform. We all obviously hoped SXSW would be back in full-form in 2021, sadly that hasn’t been possible.

Unlike IRL, this year a unique badge, at quite an affordable price, gives you access to everything SXSW has to offer: the conference, the comedy festival, the music festival and of course the film festival. The entirety of the shorts program has never been this easy to binge, as they will all be available to watch at any time during the festival, from the comfort of your own home – with only a few geo-restrictions limiting what you might be able to watch.

As a double agent (being also on the SXSW programming team), I obviously recommend all the shorts available, but in this article we’re going to focus on films from S/W alums, providing those attending the festival with a few titles to add to your watchlist and for everyone else highlight some shorts you’ll hopefully see on S/W soon.

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Short Films: Already Online

If you want to get the party started early, debunking the myth that all the big festivals have strict rules with the premiere status, you can already watch a few shorts online. In the midnight program you will actually find two films already available on S/W, Morgan Krantz’ Squeegee and Ariel Zengotita’s Flick. Truth be told when we featured them, we all agreed that they had SXSW written all over them.

Squeegee

dir. Morgan Krantz

High-powered CEO meets high-rise window-washer for an erotic rendezvous on opposite sides of her skyscraper window – [read review].

Flick

dir. Ariel Zengotita

A reclusive college student is driven mad after picking a booger he can’t flick away – [read review].

Also available for free, there are a couple of Sundance 2021 picks in Josefin Malmen and David Strindberg’s Flex and if you are in a country where Arte is available (and speak Turkish, French or German) you can check out Les Criminels (The Criminals) by Serhat Karaaslan.

Rounding off the shorts available online we have: Julian Terry’s Animal Crossing Horror Don’t Peek, Percolate Galactic’s crazy animation Rendang of Death and Andrew Carter’s hilarious comedy Marvin’s Never Had Coffee Before.

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Short Films: From Alums

Every year, the SXSW program feels busier and busier with our previously featured filmmakers and the 2021 shorts line-ups see no less than 10 S/W alums with new projects!

Renee Zhan (Pidge, Hold Me (Ca Caw Ca Caw)) has already won an award at TIFF with O Black Hole!, Erick Oh’s (Pig: The Dam Keeper Poems, Heart, Way Home) new short Opera is currently shortlisted for an Academy Award and SXSW regular Kangmin Kim (38–39ºC, Deer Flower, JEOM) returns with Kkum – a personal tale in his distinct stop-motion style.

Leah Shore’s (Old Man) new film Puss is starting its festival run in the midnight block, Max Walker-Silverman (Lefty/Righty) is also in the lineup with Chuj Boys of Summer and James Burns (We Live This, Revolving Doors) will premiere his new short documentary (with co-director Shal Ngo) The Box.

After premiering at Clermont, established filmmaking duo Rayka Zehtabchi & Sam Davis ((SHn(y)o͞of)) return to SXSW with a beautiful drama – Are You Still There?. With the success of their Oscar-winning short doc Period. End of Sentence leading to a couple of years of almost exclusively documentary work, including Just Hold On (SXSW 2020), the duo admit they were “eager to return to our first love of narrative filmmaking with Are You Still There?”. Adding that, “it was fun to see how some of the skills we developed while making documentaries seeped into our narrative filmmaking, such as working with non-actors, leaning into the quirks of the location, or knowing when it’s best to throw the script out the window.”

Charles Wahl (Little Grey Bubbles) also returns to SXSW to premiere The Mohel. “My previous experience at the festival was so thrilling that I didn’t want to leave”, he reveals as we discuss what screening his work at the festival means to him. “It’s such a warm and welcoming festival that has a reputation for curating great work and even though it’s virtual this time everything leading up to it has felt the same. With the festival being online the potential audience outreach and interaction is so much higher, and I love that more people than usual can have the opportunity to participate in the festival.”

Also debuting is Molly Gillis’ (Now You Know) Plaisir. “While it may be virtual – I still believe that there is community in that, particularly for short films which most often end up being hosted ultimately on a digital platform of some kind”, the filmmaker explains, as we discuss her first time at SXSW. “I will greatly miss the opportunity to be in an audience in a dark room, listening and absorbing how the film plays out with different people – but I do think there is a new kind of accessibility that is achieved with audiences at a distance.”

Not an alum quite yet, but I’m looking forward to featuring Theo Rhys’ Stuffed, a musical (yes, that’s right!) in the midnight block, on S/W in the upcoming weeks. The filmmaker admits he’s “gutted we’re not about to jump on a plane to Austin”, but revealed they would “pour ourselves a beer in a plastic cup and be there in spirit”. Adding that they were taken “a bit by shock when we got selected for the Midnighters selection”, as they’d “always just thought of the film as a love story”, they do understand that “human taxidermy is a pretty dark subject!” – we think the Midnight audience will love this short.

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Feature Films: From Alums

If you still have time and want to dip into the longer projects available at SXSW, we were also super excited to see some of our alums in different feature sections of the festival as well.

In the Narrative Feature Competition, Islands and Potato Dreams of America are having their world premiere, directed respectively by Martin Edralin (Hole) and Wes Hurley (Little Potato).

Coming to Shudder later this month, nothing seems to stop Violation by Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli (Woman in Stall), which will be available in the Festival Favorites section after selections at both TIFF and Sundance. In the same category, you’ll also find Daryl Wein’s (Unlocked) new film How it Ends (co-directed with Zoe Lister-Jones), which we were lucky to catch at Sundance.

SXSW is also highlighting features that were selected last year in the 2020 Spotlight section, which gives us the opportunity to catch Justine Bateman’s (Five Minutes) feature debut Violet. We also look forward to watching Ayar in Visions, even though the director Floyd Russ is not a S/W alum, his short Zion is included in our Ten Best Short Films Available on Netflix article and producer Kara Durrett produced two S/W films Lockdown and Caroline.

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For more shorts from the festival, check out the SXSW collection on S/W, there are currently over 140 titles to choose from.