In 2018, 24-year-old Hayden Pedigo released a bizarre 58-second video announcing his candidacy for Amarillo city council. At the time, Pedigo had no intention of launching an actual political career; the video was meant to be a Harmony Korine-esque exercise with an amateur filmmaker friend.

Writer-director Lázaro Ramos takes an age-old racist threat and wonders how it’d look in real life in this Brazilian thriller about a government forcing its Black citizens to “go back to Africa.”

TikTok’s influence on music consumption sprawls wider than 10-second clips of Generation Z members flailing around to soundbites. Musicians Blu DeTiger, Max Motley, Devon Schmalz, and Tai Verdes joined TikTok music editorial lead William Gruger to discuss the video-sharing social network’s true role as a vehicle for discovery and education.

Women artists dominate pop music, but behind the scenes, progress comes more slowly. A&R directors Margaux Grober (Arista Records) and Sammye-Ruth Scott (Atlantic Records) met with moderator Olivia Shalhoup on Tuesday morning – first day of virtual SXSW 2021 – for an online brainstorm on how to up the industry’s gender parity. 

It’s easy to admire the transportive work of filmmaker Barry Jenkins and composer Nicholas Britell, but who knew they’d embody #friendshipgoals too?

Welcome to Short and Sweet, our look at short films playing at SXSW. This time it’s “Sophie and the Baron”, filmmaker Alexandria Jackson’s affecting documentary focused on the collaboration of rising artist Sophie Kipner and renowned Rolling Stone photographer Baron Wolman.

Before there was hacking, there were broadcast signal intrusions: strange incidents where people would hijack TV signals and insert strange clips or weird rantings. Their enduring mystery powers Broadcast Signal Intrusion, the SXSW Midnighter directed by Jacob Gentry.

Missing shouldering your way through the South by Southwest crowds? Lamenting that you won't have to work out how to sprint from Red River to Congress to catch a show? Don't panic: for its 2021 online iteration, SXSW has collaborated with extended reality experts VRrOOm to create a virtual downtown Austin in the SXSW Online XR world.

What do Mayor Pete Buttigieg and former Governor George W. Bush have in common (aside from having laid dibs on bedrooms in the White House, to varying success)? They've both just been added to the speaker line-up at this year's SXSW virtual conference.