South by Southwest kicks off a new edition, leaning into what works: Genre, fun and Spielberg

Though there are plenty of serious subjects among the selections at this year’s South by Southwest, which begins tonight, even the festival’s own programmers were surprised to find how strongly they gravitated toward films that made them laugh amid the chaos of the world at large.“I don’t know if it’s the generation of filmmakers or just a reaction to how grim the rest of the world is,” says Peter Hall, SXSW senior film & TV programmer.“The filmmakers are processing it through a slightly more comedic lens.

Even some of the dramas that we’re playing or the horror films — a lot of what we responded to has some comedic element to it.”In a change introduced this year, the film and TV portion of SXSW — which also spotlights live music and technology — launches Thursday (pushed up from the traditional Friday opening) with the world premiere of Boots Riley’s political satire “I Love Boosters,” the follow-up to his celebrated 2018 debut feature “Sorry to Bother You.” The anticipated Apple TV series “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” starring Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer and Nicole Kidman, premieres later Thursday night.Rather than creating a “chaos reigns,” everything-in-overdrive sprint of an event, organizers hope the new format for the overall SXSW festival will be a positive change, encouraging interactions and discovery.“The film festival has always spanned the entire event,” Hall says of how the film festival previously ran for all nine days when SXSW was a longer event.

“So even though the dates changed, on a philosophical level, it didn’t really change for us because we were always across everything the whole time.”Another change for the event this year is that the central hub of the Austin Convention Center has been demolished and is in the process of being rebuilt.It will remain closed for the next few years, forcing organizers to rethink the overall SXSW footprint across the city.

To that end, events for ...