“Hi, I’m Ryan Gosling, and I did almost none of my own stunts.”

The imagery of Roman Catholicism is ripe with the melancholy and macabre. The bones of dead saints make the rounds for adoration, suffering is held up as a paragon of love, blessed flesh is consumed at mass.

To love and be loved. To have hope for the future. To be comfortable living an authentic self. To feel seen by family and friends. For many queer folks, that’s the stuff of adulthood, postponed by bigotry and hate. Ben De Backer, a nonbinary teen, feels like they will never know that joy.

After not responding to recent requests for comment from outlets like The Guardian and The Austin Chronicle, South by Southwest has addressed the past week of musical artists dropping out of festival participation in support of Palestine. It only took a tweet from the governor to get them there.

Towing his suitcase and a giant Toblerone, Ben (Sathya Sridharan) arrives in Sri Lanka counting down the minutes until he reunites with his long-distance girlfriend, Suzanne (Anastasia Olowin). But from the moment they meet, the couple struggles with conflicting desires that only become more apparent as their vacation progresses.

Writer/director Nadia Conners earns a seat at the table with her first narrative feature, which tells the story of an acclaimed stage actress turned Hollywood housewife and mother. Her choices, marriage, and relationship to the industry all go under a wide-angle microscope in The Uninvited.

We happened to sit next to Da’Taeveyon Daniels, a 17-year-old high school student from Fort Worth, at Monday’s panel on the book ban crisis – 1984 or 2024? Book Bans. Censorship. The Fight for Democracy.

As has been noted, South by Southwest is lousy with panels on artificial intelligence this year. One of those filled a conference room at the Thompson Hotel and kicked off with a useful definition from panelist Steven Rosenbaum of that ineffable ideal before which poets and philosophers have prostrated themselves since the time of Plato.

Dev Patel’s directorial debut Monkey Man is a gritty, nasty piece of work.