The second version of SXSW London is quick approaching, with Night time and Day by Virginia Woolfwith Haley Bennett, Jack Whitehall, Lily Allen, Timothy Spall, Jennifer Saunders, Sally Phillips, Misia Butler and Elyas M’Barek, opening Display screen Competition 2026 on Monday June 1.
The romantic comedy from director Tina Gharavi and screenwriter Justine Waddell is an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel. Night time and day. However the movie is only one of a number of dozen, in addition to brief movies, that can be enjoying within the British capital all through the June 1-6 occasion.
The darkish satirical work of Peter Glanz Wild homewhose forged contains Richard E. Grant, Claire Foy, Bel Powley and Jack Farthing, can be among the many headliners at this 12 months’s SXSW London, with an unique premiere screening of the primary two episodes of the Grownup Swim animated sequence. Get Jiroprimarily based on the DC/Vertigo graphic novel by Anthony Bourdain and that includes the voice of Brian Tee (A home of dynamite), which takes place in a not-so-distant future Los Angeles, the place high cooks run town and other people actually kill to get a seat in the most effective eating places.
Worldwide function movies set to premiere within the UK at SXSW London embody The opposite facet of the solardirected by Tawfik Sabouni, movie by Juan Pablo Sallato The pink shed, Roya by director Mahnaz Mohammadi, by Vladlena Sandu Reminiscence, Remake from director Ross McElwee, and Solely the rebels win by director Danielle Arbid. SXSW London is owned and produced by Panarise, which operates below license from SXSW LLC, which is owned by Penske Media Company, the dad or mum firm of The Hollywood Reporter.
Anna Bogutskaya, head of cinema at SXSW London, and her staff had quite a lot of work to do to cut back the massive variety of movies they seen earlier than the second version in 2026.
“Get Jiro”, nonetheless courtesy of SXSW London
“This 12 months, we had the benefit of getting already accomplished one final 12 months with the identical imaginative and prescient, [so] our programming course of was a bit of extra refined,” she says THR. “We had the identical variety of areas, about 40 options.”
However there’s a central lens via which the staff evaluates the movies. “Our imaginative and prescient is closely targeted on worldwide filmmakers and storytelling that matches and pushes genres,” says Bogutskaya. “The shared DNA of SXSW in Austin and the one we’re making an attempt to construct right here in London remains to be on the coronary heart of our programming. The opposite factor is stability, which you solely actually see as an entire when this system is totally finalized. Do now we have sufficient documentaries like that, do not now we have sufficient movies from East Asian international locations, or do not now we have sufficient French or Spanish or Mediterranean movies? We’re all the time searching for a stability, in order that it does not by no means appears to lean an excessive amount of in a single path – not too many horror movies, not too many documentaries of the identical tone, not too many fiction movies of the identical tone, not too many struggle movies, comedies or highway motion pictures.
Lots of display time goes into finalizing the Display screen Competition. “We watched between 2,000 and three,000 movies,” says Bogoutskaïa. THR. “You must be extraordinarily selective and intensely acutely aware of each choice. If we had a program of 200 movies, we might have extra room to maneuver.”
Star energy is a part of the stability the staff seeks. “We now have an attention-grabbing kind of star energy, together with in our headliners, 5 out of six are world premieres this 12 months,” factors out the top of the SXSW London screens. “We now have all of the expertise current, from Claire Foy and Richard E. Grant to Haley Bennett. We now have quite a lot of very sturdy British expertise in addition to worldwide expertise.”
Picture from the movie “Virginia Woolf’s Night time and Day”, courtesy of SXSW London
America and Latin America even have a key presence. “One factor we attempt to do is share the platform with the elemental philosophy of the Display screen Competition, which is worldwide and genre-friendly,” says the top of display programming. “So, for instance, this 12 months now we have two worldwide headliners which might be each world premieres and sequence – an enormous Brazilian manufacturing known as The playoffs And Get Jirowhich is an animated sequence primarily based on a graphic novel by Anthony Bourdain. It is a first step for us. I am actually happy with it, additionally as a result of it is such an unbelievable present. It is bought this tone and this humor and it is so nice that the screening goes to be such a depraved expertise.
The playoffsstarring Cauã Reymond in a sequence a few former footballer turned agent on the run from the militia, his household and himself on the trail to glory once more, can be a coup, given its nation of origin and its timing. “It’s an enormous manufacturing for Globo in Brazil which has an viewers right here, and the timing with the World Cup was too scrumptious to disregard,” shares Bogutskaya. Certainly, the FIFA World Cup, in america, Canada and Mexico, will happen from June 11 to July 19.
Are there any overarching themes on the Display screen Competition? “It’s the form of factor that all the time comes out after this system is over,” she says. “I can have a look at the movies now we have programmed and see the connections between them, however we by no means program with a theme in thoughts. What I can see trying on the program now could be how the characters, in documentary and narrative movies, take care of actual, larger-than-life occasions, [whether] struggle or [other] challenges, utilizing artwork to provide them which means.
An instance is that of Sandu Reminiscencedescribed on the SXSW London web site as “a haunting mix of documentary and dream”. Born in Crimea and raised in war-torn Chechnya, Sandu seems again on her previous via “fragments: household secrets and techniques, rumors and tales that nobody was allowed to inform,” notes a synopsis. “Utilizing evocative and poetic reconstructions and pictures paying homage to a childhood within the Soviet Union. »
Picture from the movie “Reminiscence”, courtesy of SXSW London
Likewise, the doc Remake sees McElwee take care of the demise of his son via cinema and The opposite facet of the solar “It’s an unbelievable documentary the place they use puppets to course of the harm and trauma of being captured and tortured” in Syria. As well as, that of Joan Porcel The meat (The flesh), about “a queer efficiency artist who will get dangerously near a stranger in a web-based chat room”, in response to a synopsis, encompasses a younger man who “creates a play out of the tradition of web connections and the actually ephemeral connections you may make with individuals via a ChatRoulette dialog”, factors out the top of the SXSW London display.
“Even Night time and Day by Virginia Woolf It’s a few girl who seems on the stars and makes use of astronomy to make sense of a deeply patriarchal world,” notes Bogutskaya.
General, audiences at SXSW London 2026 will expertise a mixture of laughter, tears, scares and new concepts – all whereas touring the world cinematically. Bogutskaya concludes: “We’re bringing the world to London audiences via our curation. It is a form of travelogue via totally different types and tones of cinema, together with some actually provocative movies.”