SXSW 2025 was filled with fantastic screenings, from the best narrative features to stunning documentaries. At the same time, the headliners may get all the attention, but over 100 films played during the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival in Austin, TX. With a slate of 51 documentaries, some celebrated their debuts, some highlighted fandom, others brought perspectives to science, and others still captured the cultural moment. With so many, rounding up the best documentaries of SXSW 2025 isn’t easy. But here are the ones we want to spotlight, the ones we loved and those we think you should look out for.
SXSW Film & TV Festival presented 114 Features including 93 World Premieres, 3 International Premieres, 3 North American Premieres, 4 U.S. Premieres, 11 Texas Premieres + 57 Short Films and 19 Music Videos. The TV Program includes 17 TV projects, with 6 TV premieres, 4 TV Spotlight and 7 Independent TV Pilots. There are 31 projects in the XR Experience Program, including 15 in XR Experience Competition and 16 in XR Experience Spotlight.
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Here are the best documetaries of SXSW 2025.
7. Forever We Are Young
From Seoul to Los Angeles, Texas to Mexico City, Forever We Are Young chronicles BTS ARMY. BTS is a household name and one of the most well-known bands in the world, South Korean and otherwise. In Forever We Are Young, two scholars-turned-filmmakers approach the idea of fandom holistically. They capture the beauty, the power, and the ills of fandom, but more importantly, they capture the impact of a global group of people who love the same seven men.
With an eye toward representing stories from predominantly people of color, the documentary duo
Patty Ahn and Grace Lee use BTS ARMY as a way to look at gender expression, age, masculinity, and ultimately our human need to be connected with others. The film also doesn’t sand any of the fandom’s edges but highlights that no group is wrong for how they love BTS, and no one community is right. What matters is the intergenerational and international connections formed and the good that the fandom does either personally or globally through activism and hope.
6. The Perfect Neighbor
In June 2023, Ajike Owens, a vibrant young Black mother of four and family friend, was shot and killed by her neighbor, Susan Lorincz. The Perfect Neighbor uses body cam footage, interviews, and CC TV to put together a murder and the emotional hole it left in the Owens family—the film pieces together detective interviews, police body cam footage, and witness testimonies. Reality is unsettling and maddening. The anger you feel as the chilling escalation takes place is devastating with every subsequent revelation. Florida’s lenient gun regulations and Stand Your Ground laws take center stage as Geeta Gandbhir shows the real consequences of them.
5. Spreadsheet Champions
When it comes to esports, you may think League of Legends or Rainbow Six. But what about Excel? In Spreadsheet Champions, documentarian Kristina Kraskov follows six students as they put their Excel aptitude to the ultimate test in Microsoft’s most prestigious and difficult competition. The documentary captures the complexity of maintaining their knowledge of formulas and optimizing for performance and the connections they built through the competition.
As much heartwarming as it is illuminating for a little-known esport, Spreadsheet Champions captures the depth of one standard office program and how young students turn it into something challenging, thrilling, and a defining moment of their school life.
4. Deeper
Jennifer Peedom’s Deeper is dedicated to the chase. As much as reaching the depths of the ocean’s mysterious and deepest cave system is titillating, the process and preparation capture the audience in Peedom’s film. In New Zealand, a mysterious cave system is considered the deepest dived cave in the world, and Richard “Harry” Harris is dedicated to reaching its depth.
Known by the world as one of the heroes of the Thai cave rescue, Harry is looking to complete a dive that will define him and give him life. Deeper takes a look at Harry’s life and how the highest stakes dive that he has ever attempted develops. More importantly, though, this documentary looks to see who Harry is to himself and not the public.
3. Starman
Space remains something magical for nearly everyone who admired the night sky as a child, and in Starman, filmmaker Robert Stone details the wonder that space still has for Gentry Lee. A renowned NASA engineer and best-selling science fiction author, Gentry Lee has spent his life exploring space. He’s done so through fiction, through science, and ultimately, the joy and wonder it still instills in him comes through. The only person interviewed throughout the entire document, Starman, is interested in what space means to Lee as much as it tries to sort out any truth in answering the question: are we alone?
For Lee, the ambiguity is what makes it all exciting, and the reality that we only have one planet Earth is the reality that has to be looked at. While we find wonder in the stars, we should look to nature and the life around us and bask in questions instead of constantly trying to find answers. At 82, Lee’s joy is youthful and his hope is something we need right now.
2. Remaining Native
Running takes a special kind of willpower, long-distance running more so. In Remaining Native, teenager Ku Stevens is the solo runner at his high school with no coach. The film documents his resolve, his resilience, and ultimately captures how the act of running can connect people across history. Living on the Yerington Paiute reservation in Northwest Nevada, he needs to do more in order to make it to the University of Oregon. But where Ku trains because of his love for the sport, his great-grandfather Frank Quinn ran for his life.
While this athlete’s story highlights the dedication required to succeed in sport, his deep connection to his great-grandfather, who ran 50 miles at eight years old to escape an Indian boarding school, makes Ramining Native something more entirely. It is a store about holding onto hope, for holding onto your history, and ultimately understanding the space it takes up in your future.
1. We Are Storror
Michael Bay directed We Are Storror without ever knowing what his subjects would do. Why? He couldn’t be liable. At the peak of a death-defying career, the seven friends of parkour team Storror embark on what could be their final project: a globetrotting quest to conquer four extreme environments. But with parkour comes dangerous consequences when mistakes happen and harrowing accidents come with the territory. As we follow the team, the subjects grapple to maintain the bonds that have kept them together for so long. Michael Bay’s immersive documentary is an astounding feat: Part thriller, part athlete story, and all adrenaline.
SXSW 2025 took place from March 7th through 15th in Austin, TX.
