SXSW 2023: Here's Everything We Experienced at This Year’s Festival

Image via Getty/Amy E. Price/SXSW

Beef, created by Lee Sung Jin, is the best new series of 2023.

There really is no argument against this, as is made increasingly clear as you get deeper and deeper into this 10-episode exploration of (more than road rage revenge, more than whatever idea you may have about what kind of series this is) what it means to be alive—and all the relentless pain, and sporadic moments of misery-pausing bliss, that arrive tucked into our existence like hidden ticket fees.

Loneliness can make you do incredibly destructive things, and to complicate the human experience even further, those of us who are seemingly surrounded by people who care are not necessarily immune to the palpable sort of loneliness explored here. Some of us, like Danny (played by Steven Yeun) and Amy (played by Ali Wong), find ourselves going to objectively extreme lengths to connect in a way that others in our lives aren’t able to give us.

After watching screeners at home and in my hotel room, it was quite special to see how the audience reacted to the two episodes that premiered at SXSW. If you only have time for one new show to add into your rotation in the coming months, make it this one. While the inciting moment here is indeed a road rage incident involving two strangers, the flooringly exceptional writing soon takes viewers somewhere as surprising as it is remarkable.

Steven Yeun, Ali Wong, and Lee Sung Jin were kind enough to carve out time during their brief and busy trip to Austin to sit down with me for lunch at Lamberts to talk Beef over beef. Our full conversation launches soon.

It’s fitting that I bumped into Sneaker Shopping’s own Joe La Puma outside the premiere of Air. This is the story not of Michael Jordan, exactly, but of how his industry-shifting deal with Nike quite literally changed the world—without the course of events depicted in this film going exactly as they did, there would likely be no Sneaker Shopping.

While it may seem improbable to anyone not familiar with how the long-ubiquitous Air Jordan brand came into being, the deal that started it all was far from an expected victory for the Nike team. This film utilizes the feelings around Nike at the time to build out the proceedings into an inspirational story about, above all else, what can be accomplished when you trust your own instincts despite nearly everyone around you predicting a career-ruining failure.

Everyone in this cast (and what a cast it is) is operating in top form here, including Ben Affleck as Phil Knight. But as director, Affleck deserves particular praise, namely for his shrewd decision to not even try to cast an actor to play Jordan in the Alex Convery-written film.

After about 10 minutes into Bottoms, director Emma Seligman’s follow-up to Shiva Baby, it became strikingly clear that this is a film I’ll be returning to a lot. 

In fact, it’s this writer’s opinion that Bottoms is the best high school comedy in years—a distinction it earns through sharp writing (Seligman wrote the script with star and fellow Shiva Baby alum Rachel Sennott), continually stacked layers of satirization, and a cast that’s clearly having the time of their lives.

You likely already know the setup here—two high schoolers (Sennott and The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri) start a fight club with ulterior motives—but it’s safe to say you can’t predict where this film is going to take you. 

Never in your life underestimate Boots Riley.

I’m a Virgo, the multifaceted artist’s latest creation, is unlike anything else you’ll (soon) find on Prime Video. Starring Jharrel Jerome as 13-foot-tall Cootie, this series is as keenly perceptive as it is boldly imaginative. While Riley is prolific across multiple mediums, I’m a Virgo marks his first entry in the film and TV space since 2018’s Sundance-premiered Sorry to Bother You, his feature debut.

Like anything Riley’s ever done, Virgo is distinctly his. To paraphrase someone I sat next to at another screening who asked if I had seen Virgo—“It’s very, very Boots Riley. And that’s a good thing.” When the strength of your creations results in your name being used as a complimentary adjective, you’re in a lane all your own. How many artists can say that?

While a release date hasn’t yet been announced, Prime revealed it will be arriving in the summer.

There’s much to love about Jake Johnson’s feature directorial debut, including the concept. In short, Tommy (played by Johnson) agrees to participate in a bizarre life-or-death game for a shot at winning $1 million. To win, he must stay alive for 30 days while a group of killers set out to track him down.

The loophole that Tommy uses to his advantage, and the strongest part of this story, is that these killers—per the rules of the game—aren’t allowed to take him out unless he’s alone. The first chunk of the film is hard to deny, particularly with Johnson and Anna Kendrick’s contagious chemistry, while the last act is fairly confounding in its unevenness. 

Worth seeing? Yes, and there are some really fine moments here. Fully developed? Not quite. That said, it’s inspiring to see Johnson (who also wrote the script) exploring such a simultaneously high-concept and heart-proudly-on-its-sleeve story. Hopefully there’s much more to come from him in this lane.

There’s a melody on Blondshell’s “Sepsis,” taken from songwriter Sabrina Teitelbaum’s upcoming self-titled album, that has (perhaps permanently) taken up residence in my head like nothing else in recent memory. This is due to more than the melody itself, though that alone is worth typed-up praise. But it’s also the perceptive way in which it gives a very specific, very relatable variety of wistfulness its own theme music.

Blondshell played multiple times as part of this year’s SXSW festivities, including two performances I caught. One, as part of FLOODfest at the Mohawk, resulted in the venue hitting capacity. Those who got inside, meanwhile, stood shoulder to shoulder in an immovably packed crowd.

Unsurprisingly, Blondshell would go on to be named one of SXSW’s 2023 Grulke Prize Winners, taking home the Developing U.S. Act honor. As you’ll recall, Blondshell was previously featured as a Best New Artist pick by Pigeons & Planes.

Margo Price, fresh off the release of a confidently genreless new album and an acclaimed memoir, gave the closing SXSW Keynote at the Austin Convention Center on Friday.

The nearly hour-long discussion saw Price touching on the ins and outs of her writing process, the power of vulnerability, tackling family trauma in her work, and more. One particularly enlightening moment, and a topic Price also explores in her book, is the songwriter’s decision to stop drinking. As Price explained, she credits psilocybin as a major “catalyst” behind this change.

“Quitting drinking has been the start of me, like, healing things that I have been just pushing down and numbing out,” she told the audience when speaking with Angie Martoccio. “It was very problematic. You know, at times it was really fun. I mean, there’s a lot of good times out there that I like to recall and laugh about. But where I’m at right now feels very good. It feels good to wake up in the morning and not have to wrestle with the decisions of the night before.”