SXSW London’s Screen Festival: essential picks and highlights
SXSW London returns for its second edition this June, centering the campus around the Truman Brewery in East London. The Screen Festival is organized into six strands—Headliners, Competition, Heartwarmers, Collisions, Shivers and Visionaries—bundling world premieres, genre curiosities, and bold discoveries into one program. The mix promises prestige premieres, boundary-pushing discoveries, and crowd-pleasing entertainments across film, TV and beyond.
Headliners
The Headliners lineup opens with Savage House, a satirical takedown of the upper crust featuring Richard E. Grant and Claire Foy. Also on the bill is Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, a psychosexual horror from Jane Schoenbrun starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, along with Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day, a witty, unromantic look at love and the cosmos.
Shivers
The Shivers strand leans into folk-horror with The Night, Paul Urkijo Alijo’s 17th‑century Basque tale that threads witches into the drama. It’s the mood piece that SXSW London fans often seek out.
Visionaries
Amoeba marks Siyou Tan’s feature debut, following a new student at an elite girls’ school who chooses to form a girl gang rather than blend in. Embers, a dark Chinese drama, follows a crematorium worker who accidentally mixes two sets of ashes with deadly consequences.
Heartwarmers
Heartwarmers may still carry a sting, with The Invite—Olivia Wilde’s emotionally honest portrait of human relationships, featuring Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton—promising a candid, character‑driven night.
Collisions
In Collisions, Winter of the Crow places a tense Cold War Warsaw thriller on screen, adapted from Olga Tokarczuk’s writing. On the Road tracks a young sex worker who falls for an older truck driver while on the run.
Competition
The Red Hangar stands out as a Chilean thriller set against a military coup, centering on a captain torn between duty and morality.
Documentaries and beyond
The documentary slate looks especially strong, with Remake by Ross McElwee examining grief through archival footage after his son’s passing, Memory by Vladlena Sandu blending dreamscapes with real memories, and Marc by Sofia Coppola turning her lens on long‑time collaborator Marc Jacobs. Feast or Famine follows East London’s Angelina restaurant as it pursues a first Michelin star, narrated by Marco Pierre White. Music fans can look forward to James: Getting Away With It, the first authorized documentary about Manchester’s iconic band.
TV and the industry spark
Get Jiro headlines the TV strand as an animated adaptation of Anthony Bourdain’s graphic novel about culinary obsession. The Playoffs and Rivals screening, followed by a cast and crew panel, promise a candid deep dive into media empires and Cotswolds entanglements. If time allows, The Playoffs and other selections are worth a look for the broader festival rhythms.
The Screen Conference will gather prominent figures—Russell T Davies and Sharon Horgan—along with NEON founder Tom Quinn, Mia Bays of the BFI Filmmaking Fund, and the Russo brothers, offering insights into storytelling and distribution in today’s landscape.
Beyond the screens, SXSW London extends into a conference exploring creativity in the AI age, virtual worlds, and the creator economy, while the music program draws from Nigeria’s drill scene, British post-punk and electronic currents. For the full film and festival slate, see the integrated programme on the official site.
To see the full SXSW London programme and to book tickets, visit sxswlondon.com.
Source: Original article
