SXSW Film Announces Feature Lineup

Rhys Ifans in Mr. Nice (Photo courtesy of Mr. Nice)

When South by Southwest went live with its feature film lineup at 12:01 this morning, it threw a lot of numbers out there fast: "Over the course of nine days, 119 features will screen at the festival, with 55 of those having their world premieres at SXSW 2010," read the press release. "These films were selected from a record 1,572 feature-length film submissions composed of 1,206 U.S. and 366 international feature-length films."

Among those 119 features will be some highly anticipated world premieres, including the Saturday Night Live sketch-to-screen MacGruber starring Will Forte; Hoop Dreams' director Steve James' documentary No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson; British filmmaker Bernard Rose's narrative feature Mr. Nice, about real-life drug smuggler Howard Marks; and Aaron Katz's follow-up to Quiet City, Cold Weather. Notable U.S. premieres include Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Micmacs and Shane Meadows' Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee (co-starring the Arctic Monkeys). Additionally, Sundance titles like the Duplass Brothers' Cyrus, Debra Granik's award-winning Winter's Bone, Floria Sigismondi's The Runaways, and Austinite Bryan Poyser's Lovers of Hate will screen at SXSW Film, which runs March 12-20 this year.

Speaking of local, Texas filmmakers were well-represented throughout the lineup. In the feature competition slate, Dallas filmmaker Clay Liford, fresh off his Park City appearance with short "My Mom Smokes Weed," will premiere his narrative feature Earthling, while Austin's Mike Dolan will compete with Dance With the One, a project that came out of the University of Texas Film Institute's Feature Film Lab (see "Of Strip Clubs and Hash Stashes," Screens, Aug. 1, 2008). Other local filmmakers screening at SXSW include Paul Gordon, with The Happy Poet, and Geoff Marslett, with his long-gestating sci-fi animated romantic comedy (with Kinky Friedman!), Mars.

Favorite sidebars like the music-related 24 Beats Per Second (boasting the world premiere of doc Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields) and SX Fantastic (midnighters programmed by the folks at Fantastic Fest) are back, while special events include the screening of three classic films accompanied with a live score, including Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc.

By our count, that leaves 103 more films still up for discussion. Check out The Austin Chronicle's Picture in Picture blog for a full account of the SXSW 2010 feature film lineup at austinchronicle.com/blogs/pip.