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SXSW 2025
Standing near the entrance of the South Lamar Alamo Drafthouse, waiting to get into my next screening, I noticed something odd. On the street right in front of the theater, where a lone curb forms to separate cars from pedestrians and street from sidewalk, a large, black SUV swiftly pulled up and a flurry of activity followed. The SUV stopped about thirty feet from where I was standing; there was a direct line from the vehicle to the theater doors.
I branched out a little this year at SXSW by attending my first of the many discussion sessions available during the fest, which are held in the Austin Convention Center ballrooms. It wasn’t a movie, but the conversation was certainly movie related, as it was an interview with actor Kyle MacLachlan, hosted by Jenni Kaye, who is a contributor to Letterboxd.
There were a few bad omens trying to tell me that my fate with the mobile Criterion Closet was a doomed one. I decided to try to get into the closet on Sunday morning, the penultimate day of its appearance at SXSW 2025. The plan was to try again for Death of a Unicorn, at it’s second and final screening, then pop across the street after that movie was over to try my luck with the Criterion Closet.
There’s something familiar yet exciting about showing up in the morning waiting for a new day of screenings to start at a film festival. I got to the Lamar Street Alamo a little early on day two of SXSW 2025. The volunteers of the fest have been instructed to start handing out queue cards for each movie an hour before each screening starts. I arrived with about 90 minutes to spare before my chosen first screening for the day, The Spies Among Us, was to begin.
As soon as I dialed into one of the many conversations that was happening around me in theater three of the Lamar Street Alamo Drafthouse, I knew I was in the right place. Waiting for my first screening of South By 2025 to start, I heard one festival goer ask a few others what brought them to the fest. They responded that one of their children was celebrating his impending college graduation. The family celebrated graduations by gathering for an event of the graduate’s choice. This child studied film in college, so his pick was for the family to attend the festival together.
Next week, for the third straight year, I’m heading down to Austin, TX to cover the Lone Star State’s biggest multi-hyphenate festival and conference, South by Southwest. I’ll be honest, I really wasn’t expecting to get in this year, but I was pleasantly surprised a few weeks ago when I received confirmation that I had been approved for press credentials. In 2023, I was gifted a pass by a friend. In 2024, I was sponsored by, and primarily wrote for, a website with a bigger reach than mine in order to cover the fest. This year, I applied on my own, thinking there was no way my little 2800-visitor-a-month website would secure me a press pass.
