With over 100 screenings of films and many world premieres, the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival embraced genre film more than ever before. With a killer Midnighters line-up that experimented with perspective, or its headliners that included a film a decade in the making, there was no shortage of surprises. While 2025 highlighted its deeply diverse slate of films, the festival’s goodest boy, a movie that will probably never get distribution, friendship, a bad date, and a Nic Cage hit, round out the best movies of SXSW 2025.
The only criterion to be included as one of the best movies of SXSW 2025 is that the film had to have screened as part of SXSW in any of its dedicated tracks. That’s it. Without further ado, here are the best movies we watched at SXSW 2025.
Get BWT in your inbox!
Get BWT in your inbox!
10. Friendship
Friendship is excellent. Few comedies are this well-conceived, strange, or ambitious. Riding a tour-de-force performance from Tim Robinson, Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship is a powerhouse of dark comedy that will have as many audiences too uncomfortable to continue as it will have fans years from now rewatching every scene obsessively. No doubt about it, Friendship has cult comedy written all over it.
9. The Accountant 2
With one of my favorite opening sequences of the festival, The Accountant 2 shows that sometimes waiting isn’t bad. This leads to a more mature film that doesn’t distance itself from the concept that has been raked over the coals.
Instead, it’s looking to learn from the past and step into the future, and ultimately, it’s a reflection of the action mid-budget movie we have been missing. The Accountant 2 lives in the same space as Face/Off and the other action films of the 90s. And I mean that as a compliment. I’ll take three more if only we can get more action.
8. Slanted
Still, Slanted (2025) uses genre storytelling to capture a lived experience that resonates deeply. Amy Wang’s directorial debut is a strong stance on identity and, more importantly, a film that embraces the messiness of it. We can be proud of who we are, and still, with so much inequality, you can’t help but have that one question rattling in the back of your mind.
7. The Surfer
The Surfer (2025)’s answers about what’s going on are shockingly satisfying. The themes of fathers and sons, toxic masculinity, and community all coalesce in a way that just feels right. Unfortunately, while not quite hitting a sour note, the film’s actual ending feels prolonged and over-explaining—going too far beyond the natural ending point.
That in no way diminishes what The Surfer (2025) is trying to do. The Surfer (2025) is a hell of a ride, taking audiences through a ridiculous rivalry between a man who just wants to surf and the men who refuse to let him do so. Rich with thematic material and even richer in performances and aesthetic flourishes, Nicolas Cage’s streak of choosing interesting projects that push him as a performer continues.
6. Drop
Christopher Landon’s paranoid thriller is excellent, to say the least. Each reveal is a switch flipped on a kinetic chain of events with a reveal that doesn’t over-index on exposition. Instead, Drop utilizes the whodunnit eye to capture the angle the audience (and Violet) couldn’t see.
Set mostly in a single location, Drop does the most to stoke paranoia but also explores all the ways for Violet to escape, ultimately paying off with a stellar finale. Part romance and all gas pedal, Drop is the kind of movie meant to headline SXSW. And once again, Christopher Landon knows just how to make a narrative gimmick into a genre thrill ride.
5. We Bury The Dead
Outside of that one decision, however, We Bury The Dead is a stunning film. The undead help us understand ourselves and life. In this film, Zak Hilditch navigates it all beautifully. Tense, unique, and unafraid to let silence dominate a scene, We Bury The Dead is nothing like you would expect and everything that makes a zombie story compelling. It is a thrilling drama instead of an action-packed horror, but it’s Daisy Ridley’s pained performance that makes this film stand out.
4. Redux Redux
Critically, the McManus Brothers center the space of Redux Redux (2025) as a reflection of the protagonist’s emotional state. Just like the characters, the different variations of the town they travel to are broken down, decayed memories of a more prosperous time, filled with shifty characters and a devil- Nelson- haunting their every move. This is the perfect place for a story about the cyclical nature of revenge, a truly timeless concept, to play out.
Redux Redux (2025) isn’t a flashy film. The McManus Brothers’ latest effort puts strong, simplistic storytelling above the theatrics, allowing for a great piece of meat-and-potatoes science fiction to break through the tedious glut of alternate universe stories. It just goes to show that no matter how tired a concept might seem, all it needs is a genuine hand to make it soar.
3. Nirvana The Band The Show The Movie
A perfect score is not to be taken lightly. Oftentimes, there’s an inclination to come out of a film buzzing with the sensation to give out that golden rating with some residual regret on the part of the critic afterward. Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie deserves its flowers, without question.
Matt Johnson’s latest is a laugh riot that doubles as a “they can’t keep getting away with this” kind of stunt and a testament to independent filmmaking ingenuity. Whether or not Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie ever screens again for legal reasons is up in the air, but it earns the distinction of being the most punk rock project to hit SXSW 2025.
2. Good Boy
When it comes to horror, perspective matters. While we’ve seen films giving audiences a look through the eyes of killers and ghosts, Good Boy puts the audience into the mind of a family’s best member: a dog. Unsettling and somehow deeply emotional, director ____ uses our emotional connection to dogs and their love for us to ramp up tension throughout the film. A whimper does more to make your heart drop than any jump scare can. This is a take on horror that we need more of.
1. The Rivals of Amziah King
Montague and Patterson’s script is filled with meaty dialogue that captures life in this rural area with thoughtful intent. These are characters who love and make a life in their small town, and that’s enough. Every monologue feels intimate and personal. Sure, they add exposition, but they never feel shoehorned in just to do so. Even the exploration of the bees and the honey industry is matched with interesting visuals that show you as much as they tell you. Much of The Rivals of Amziah King feels like a conversation you get to look in on, and in that way, it feels familiar in a nostalgic way.
The Rivals of Amziah King is a phenomenal sophomore film for The Vast of Night director Andrew Patterson. The film tells a rich story about a honey farmer, bees, found family, what it’s like to have people who move the world to help you, and what you do to repay that kindness. It is a masterclass in storytelling and one of the best representations of the mythmaking Southern storytelling does as tales spin wide, and the events become more and more “see it to believe it.”
Synopses for Best Movies of SXSW 2025 are taken directly from our writers’ reviews written during the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival, which ran from March 7-15.
