SXSW 2025: Made in the USA

Film festivals are all about discoveries, but in recent years, it’s gotten ever so hard to find true under-the-radar gems in U.S. nonfiction filmmaking. While Sundance long provided the latest crop of American documentaries to rave about, it’s now SXSW that increasingly seems to be taking up the national mantle. To be clear, Sundance is still the first stop for top-notch international surprises on these shores. And yet attendees can easily become frustrated with all the streamer-attached — or aesthetically designed to become streamer-attached — feature-length selections overwhelming the lineup historically dedicated to the “American indie.” Indeed, it’s hard to justify spending 90 minutes of limited festival time watching a doc the world will soon catch on HBO, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and so on in the blink of an eye. Which is not the case with SXSW. While the Austin behemoth undoubtedly has its share of buzzy (i.e., some combination of the true crime, music, and celebrity genre) documentaries, navigating through the admittedly unwieldy program can also be a fun treasure hunt. In the end, you’re likely to be gifted with at least a handful of inspiring U.S. nonfiction films no one is talking about yet.

To read the rest of my dispatch visit Documentary magazine.