The Big Picture
Last night the city briefly pretended it was a movie set instead of a traffic jam. The 33rd Austin Film Festival opened Thursday across five venues, bringing more than 200 films to Austin screens and folding a writers' conference into the program so the people who make stories can explain how they did it.
Screenings are taking place at five venues including the State Theatre downtown and two locations at the University of Texas at Austin: Hogg Auditorium and the Union Theater. The festival’s lineup spans documentaries, independent features, short films and titles generating Oscar buzz.
What Changed
This year’s festival is notable for scale: organizers are programming over 200 films and pairing that slate with a writers’ conference expected to draw about 5,000 screenwriters. Festival staff say the event intentionally lowers industry barriers — “no VIP room, no velvet rope” — so community members and industry professionals mix on equal footing.
The festival also leans into Austin’s growing industry profile, citing both the city’s independent filmmaking roots and recent state film incentives as reasons more production activity is happening in Texas.
What's Next
The Austin Film Festival runs for eight days. The festival opens with The Debut, written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg and starring Julianne Moore, Paul Giamatti and Halle Bailey. Individual film tickets and festival passes are available to the public on the festival website: https://austinfilmfestival.com/.
If you want panels and networking with visiting writers, the writers’ conference programming begins Thursday and runs for the first four days; the coverage provided says the conference is expected to draw about 5,000 screenwriters.
Go if you want to watch films that might be on awards radars and hear screenwriters tell you how the sausage is made — minus the velvet rope, per organizers. Only here would industry access be framed as a civic virtue and a scheduling problem at the same time.