Agent of Happiness (2024), which screened at Indie Meme Fest 2025 takes place in Bhutan, a beautiful, small country with a unique policy: collecting and analyzing data on the happiness of its people.
Read More
What does it mean that the industry of death photography is itself dying? Madan and Lahiri offer a wonderfully Asian response: Absolutely nothing.
Read More
Sad Letters of an Imaginary Woman is a psychological horror at the level of identity, and part of a powerful wave of tense, feminist indie horror in South Asian cinema.
Read More
Death is an inevitability, Alexis Franco affirms in his documentary Donde Los Árboles Dan Carne (Where the Trees Bear Meat). Shown during Austin Film Society’s annual Doc Days, Franco’s film is an intimately quiet portrait of the modern Argentine gaucho shaped by the slow destruction of climate change.
Read More
Regardless of your relationship with the 90s, you will feel nostalgic for your own youth while watching Middletown, the third directorial collaboration between spouses Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, following the lauded Boys State (2020) and Girls State (2024).
Read More
In Mistress Dispeller, Elizabeth Lo’s (罗宝) second documentary feature, the camera feels almost absent, disappeared in the way of a narrative film. It’s a documentary shot like a romantic drama, specifically evoking the dreamy, languid camera most associated with slow cinema.
Read More
Over seven years and multiple visits, Singh filmed the documentary And, Towards Happy Alleys, which screened in April as part of Austin’s 2025 Indie Meme Festival. It’s electric.
Read More
While The Glassworker doesn’t quite stick its landing, it’s thoughtful, thorny, and willing to ride ambiguities and uncertainties.
Read More
With SXSW ‘25 in the rearview mirror, here’s the full rundown of our coverage.
Read More
Started in 2016 by co-founders Dave Cebrero, Pedro Rivas, and David Cortez, the Houston Latino Film Festival offers an eclectic selection of films.
Read More
Each year, Austin Film Society brings the best of nonfiction cinema from across the world to our city for the annual Doc Days film festival.
Read More
Arrest The Midwife is a powerful reminder that we are all we have, that our similarities are more striking than our differences, and that the people we’ve helped can and will go on to help others.
Read More
Bunny (Mo Stark, also co-writer), the titular lead of the dramedy Bunny, which premiered at SXSW 2025, is the sort of guy you’d want for a neighbor.
Read More
Despite the occasional lapse in focus, Spreadsheet Champions offers a fascinating look at an under-discussed subculture.
Read More
It’s that time of year again: the Hyperreal Film Journal crew is hitting the town for the 2025 SXSW Film Festival.
Read More
As part of our coverage of Animation First Festival 2025, which celebrates Francophone film, we took a look at the second of their two short film programs.
Read More
HFC sat down with Momoko Seto at Animation First Festival ‘25 to discuss her debut Dandelion’s Odyssey, her unique approach to filmmaking, and the beauty of rot.
Read More
At Sundance 2025, Sorry, Baby is just the kind of independent debut you hope to uncover.
Read More
Brit Chainey’s Rabbit Trap, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival, tries to capitalize on the wild and weird beauty of Wales to create a folk horror story with a strong emotional tenor. But clever visual tricks and an evocative setting can’t save Rabbit Trap from its own incoherent plot.
Read More
In her directorial debut Seeds, which won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary, Brittany Shyne offers an intimate look at the fate of Black farmers in the American South. Shooting in black-and-white with a single-minded focus on her subjects, Shyne creates what feels like an elegy for a way of living on the brink of dying out.
Read More