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CategoryFilm Festivals

Posted Female Filmmakers

SXSW: I Used to Be Funny

Sam Cowell (Rachel Sennott) used to be funny. Her stand-up comedy acts would elicit uproarious laughter from the crowd and hate comments on the internet. All of that ended when a traumatic event sent her into a deep depression. With the support of her roommates, Sam navigates her new life with PTSD. But she’s forced to face her past when Brooke (Olga Petsa), the teen she used to care for as a nanny, goes missing.

Written and directed by Ally Pankiw, I Used to Be Funny is a heartfelt drama that tackles PTSD and depression while balancing the poignancy with humor. The story alternates between the present day and the events that lead to Sam’s trauma. A slow burn keeps the audience both anticipating and dreading the moment that led Sam to her current mental state. I can’t say enough good things about Rachel Sennott who shines in this dramatic role while still also showcasing her knack for comedy. I was fully invested in Sam’s story and I think audiences will too.

I Used to Be Funny had its world premiere at the 2023 SXSW Film and TV Festival.

Posted Documentaries

SXSW: The New Americans: Gaming a Revolution

Technology is changing our every day lives and a rapid-fire pace. We live at the pace of social media and the intersection between the real world and the internet became even more enmeshed than ever before. The power of the internet is inescapable.

The COVID pandemic brought on a level of digital disruption that had real world ramifications. R/Wallstreetbets became a gathering place for average folks to become retail investors. They turned GameStop ($GME) and AMC ($AMC) into meme stocks creating a short squeeze that adversely affected hedgefund investors and short sellers. They gamified their work with apps like Robinhood and with memes, symbols and jargon like “diamond hands” and “tendies”. All the extra time at home gave Americans an opportunity to learn financial strategies and turn it into a game that both made them a lot of money and disrupted the financial market. At the same time another form of disruption was brewing online, building steam during the 2020 presidential election and culminating in the January 6th, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

The internet allows for varying levels of anonymity. Behind avatars, online users can expose a darker side of humanity with all of the dangerous ideologies and harmful rhetoric that comes with it.

Directed by Ondi Timoner, The New Americans: A Gaming Revolution is a high-paced and engrossing documentary about our new age of finance and digital disruption. This subject matter can be difficult to understand especially for the uninitiated who are unfamiliar with r/Wallstreetbets, cryptocurrency, memes and TikTok. Even the chronically online, like myself, need a bit of guidance to understand this complex online world and all the jargon that goes with it. Timoner uses facets of internet culture to visually tell her story while also pausing throughout the movie to define specific words and phrases that need to be clarified in order for the current conversation happening on screen to be fully understood. This helps the viewer not get lost in the technicalities and enriches the film by providing both visual entertaining with information.

“…the only way to approach this journey was to interview people across all aspects of the disruption and to tell the resulting story in the same language that drove it: with Tik-Toks, memes, and fast-cuts that mimic the online world of the new generation that fueled this movement.”

Director Ondi Timoner
  • Notable talking heads in the film include
  • R/Wallstreetbets founder Jamie Rogozinski
  • The Real Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort
  • Former White House Communications director and founder of SkyBridge Capital Anthony Scaramucci
  • Investor Raoul Pal who provides the viewer with valuable insights
  • Influencers Blayne Macauley, Hugh Henne, ProThe Doge, Taylor Price
  • Investors, artists, and more.

The New Americans: A Gaming Revolution presents complicated subject matter in a way that is both approachable and entertaining.

The New Americans: A Gaming Revolution had its world premiere at the 2023 SXSW Film Festival.

Posted BIPOC

SXSW: Bottoms

PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri) are bonded by their lifelong friendship and shared experience as lesbian misfits at their high school. They both have their eye on cheerleaders Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber). Their awkwardness becomes a roadblock in their quest to get laid. When Josie injures Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine), the star of the football team and an idol on campus, her crush Isabel is impressed. PJ and Josie soon concoct a plan. They start a girls-only fight club on campus, with the guise of building community, in order to impress their crushes. They even trick their teacher Mr. G (Marshawn Lynch), who is otherwise distracted by his divorce, into sponsoring them. What begins as a ruse becomes more earnest as the club members feel more empowered by their new skills and each other. All the events lead up to a football game between two rival high schools.

Directed by Emma Seligman, Bottoms is absolutely bonkers in the best way possible. The film unabashedly leans into its ridiculousness and is bolstered two strong leads. High school cliches are turned up several notches to great comedic effect. The story was co-written by Seligman and Sennott, their sophomore collaboration after the hit indie film Shiva Baby (2020).

My only quibble is that the romantic pairs, both lesbian and straight, have little chemistry. You have to suspend your disbelief in order to buy that these young people are into each other.

The cast is really stupendous. In addition to Sennott and Edebri, who have great on screen camaraderie, Marshawn Lynch, Miles Fowler and Ruby Cruz also shine in their respective roles. Bottoms is great fun and sure to be a crowd-pleaser.

Bottoms had its world premiere at the 2023 SXSW Film Festival and is distributed by Orion Pictures.

Update: MGM and Orion Pictures will be releasing Bottoms in select theaters on August 25th. 

Posted BIPOC

SXSW: Love to Love You, Donna Summer

Donna Summer achieved a level of fame and adoration that few singers have been able to attain. “Love To Love You”, “Last Dance”, and “She Works Hard for the Money” were all major hits and became anthems for sexuality, indulgence and feminism. Despite her incredible celebrity, Donna Summer had always been an enigma. Fiercely private, when she wasn’t on stage Summer was off-limits.

Directed by Roger Ross Williams and Summer’s daughter Brooklyn Sudano, Love To Love You, Donna Summer gives viewers a peak at the real woman behind the iconic image. The documentary is comprised with archival footage from performances, television appearances and home movies along with a few scenes of Brooklyn Sudano in present day interacting with her family. There is no real narration, instead Summer’s story is told primarily through audio interviews with family members and some archival interviews from Summer herself. The film does address her religious beliefs and the controversy surrounding them during the 1980s.

Love To Love You, Donna Summer isn’t as revelatory as it promises to be and leaves the audience with more questions than answers. Donna Summer was and continues to be an enigma and although this documentary gives us a look at her celebrity and personal life, it does so in a fairly biased and roundabout way that will ultimately leave viewers unsatisfied.

Love To Love You, Donna Summer had its US premiere at the 2023 SXSW Film Festival and will be released by HBO in May.

Emily Nestor, host of the Mile Marker 181 podcast. | Credit: Chris Kasick & Jared Washburn
Posted Documentaries

SXSW: Citizen Sleuth

The True Crime world is messy. Over the past several years, a spring of podcasts, YouTube channels, Facebook groups and message boards have popped up giving True Crime fanatics a place to indulge in their favorite mysteries. The creators who run these accounts are passionate about what they do and often self-taught in the art of investigative journalism and content creation. However, their work falls into a gray area where good intentions and questionable objectives converge. And while the intention is to be helpful, the process can also be hurtful, especially when the True Crime content creator oversteps boundaries.

Documentarian Chris Kasick’s film Citizen Sleuth profiles one True Crime podcaster whose investigation into a local case begins to unravel. Emily Nestor is the host behind the popular True Crime podcast Mile Marker 181 which is devoted to the investigation of the mysterious death of Jaleayah Davis. Nestor is a fantastic storyteller and with her podcast she expertly wove a tale of small-town intrigue and police negligence. Her goal with the podcast was to solve a murder but her years of investigation ultimately led her down a different path.

Citizen Sleuth navigates some murky waters when the documentarian becomes part of the story. And just like Nestor’s podcast, this documentary evolved into something different than what was originally intended. Nestor is fascinating. She’s vulnerable and raw. Her story makes for a compelling watch.

Citizen Sleuth had its premiere at the 2023 SXSW Film and TV Festival.

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