By Jessica Herndon
We’re always thrilled when the films we’ve championed through Sundance Institute programs continue to make waves in the festival circuit. After 11 Sundance-supported projects screened at the Berlin International Film Festival and 14 works shown at the True/False Fest in February, 22 Sundance-supported films will hit the screens at the 2025 South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, from March 7–15.
After premiering at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival or receiving direct support from our Artist Accelerator program or Documentary Film Program, the projects listed below — from Isabel Castro’s heartwarming documentary Selena y Los Dinos on the iconic singer and her family to Michael Shank’s supernatural horror Together starring Alison Brie and Dave Franco — are ready for their next big moment. There’s something so special about watching these projects grow, and we love to see Sundance Institute gems get a fresh spotlight on the riverbank. Get ready for the 2025 SXSW because these 22 projects are about to take over Austin in a big way.
If you’re hitting SXSW, be sure to check out these titles. And for more about the programs mentioned in this list, click here.
FEATURES
Dead Lover — 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Logline: A lonely gravedigger who stinks of corpses finally meets her dream man, but their whirlwind affair is cut short when he tragically drowns at sea. Grief-stricken, she goes to morbid lengths to resurrect him through madcap scientific experiments, resulting in grave consequences and unlikely love.
Deaf President Now! — 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Logline: During eight tumultuous days in 1988 at the world’s only Deaf university, four students must find a way to lead an angry mob — and change the course of history.
Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore — 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Logline: In 1987, Marlee Matlin became the first Deaf actor to win an Academy Award and was thrust into the spotlight at 21 years old. Reflecting on her life in her primary language of American Sign Language, Marlee explores the complexities of what it means to be a trailblazer.
Night Fight — Documentary Film Program, SXSW Film Festival world premiere
Logline: It’s been seven years since I was followed by a vigilante down back roads in rural Canada. Night Fight explores the secret life spawned by the encounter and the impossible task of sharing this experience with my young son.
Remaining Native — Documentary Film Program, SXSW Film Festival world premiere
Logline: Ku Stevens is the solo runner at his high school with no coach. Living on the Yerington Paiute reservation in Northwest Nevada he needs more to be seen by his dream school, the University of Oregon. As Ku trains, unreconciled emotions unearth the memory of his great-grandfather, Frank Quinn. At 8 years old, Frank ran 50 miles across the desert to escape an Indian boarding school. Frank’s story becomes interwoven with Ku’s journey to run a collegiate qualifying time. Will Ku outrun his history or will he learn to run in parallel with it to achieve his dreams?
SALLY — 2025 Sundance Film Festival (Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize)
Logline: Sally Ride became the first American woman to blast off into space, but beneath her unflappable composure was a secret. Sally’s life partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, reveals their hidden romance and the sacrifices that accompanied their 27 years together.
Selena y Los Dinos — 2025 Sundance Film Festival (U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Archival Storytelling)
Logline: Selena Quintanilla — the “Queen of Tejano Music” — and her family band, Selena y Los Dinos, rose from performing at quinceañeras to selling out stadium tours. The celebration of her life and legacy is chronicled through never-before-seen footage from the family’s personal archive.
The Ballad of Wallis Island — 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Logline: Eccentric lottery winner, Charles, dreams of getting his favorite musicians, McGwyer Mortimer, back together. His fantasy turns into reality when the bandmates and former lovers accept his invitation to play a private show at his home on Wallis Island. Old tensions resurface as Charles tries desperately to salvage his dream gig.
The Librarians — 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Logline: As an unprecedented wave of book banning is sparked in Texas, Florida, and beyond, librarians under siege join forces as unlikely defenders fighting for intellectual freedom on the front lines of democracy.
The Perfect Neighbor — 2025 Sundance Film Festival (Directing Award: US Documentary)
Logline: A seemingly minor neighborhood dispute in Florida escalates into deadly violence. Police bodycam footage and investigative interviews expose the consequences of Florida’s “stand your ground” laws.
The Tallest Dwarf — Artist Accelerator, Documentary Film Program, SXSW Film Festival world premiere
Logline: When Julie embarks on a journey to understand her own body and the rumors of dwarfism in her family, her path collides with a new drug that promises to make little people taller, threatening the community’s existence.
Together — 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Logline: With a move to the countryside already testing the limits of a couple’s relationship, a supernatural encounter begins an extreme transformation of their love, their lives, and their flesh.
Touch Me — 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Logline: Two codependent best friends become addicted to the heroin-like touch of an alien narcissist who may or may not be trying to take over the world.
Uvalde Mom — Documentary Film Program, SXSW Film Festival world premiere
Logline: When a school mass shooting rocks a small town in Texas, a mom desperate to save her kids is launched into the public eye. She speaks out against a system that never protected her. The community challenges these powers and exposes those who failed to protect its most vulnerable — children.
Zodiac Killer Project — 2025 Sundance Film Festival (NEXT Innovator Award Presented by Adobe)
Logline: Against the backdrop of sunbaked parking lots, deserted courthouses, and empty suburban homes — the familiar spaces of true crime, stripped of all action and spectacle — a filmmaker describes his abandoned Zodiac Killer documentary and probes the inner workings of a genre at saturation point.
EPISODIC
BULLDOZER — 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Logline: An undermedicated, chronically impassioned young woman lurches from crisis to crisis of her own making.
Cigarettes — Artist Accelerator, SXSW U.S. premiere
Logline: When Nora finds Ali bumming cigarettes outside a gas station, she skips school on her college decision day to help him settle a debt.
SHORTS
Hurikán — 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Logline: Hurikán rushes to save his favorite beer stand from closure by fetching a new keg to impress the bartender he has a crush on. In a wild Prague district, he faces robbers, cops, and his own thirst.
Out for Delivery — 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Logline: When terminally ill Joanna makes the difficult decision to pursue end-of-life options through the Death with Dignity Act, the systems set up to make her death peaceful and dignified yield the opposite.
The Long Valley — 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Logline: Documenting the people and landscapes of the Salinas Valley, one of the most productive agricultural regions in California.
Tiger — 2025 Sundance Film Festival (Short Film Special Jury Award for Directing)
Logline: A portrait of award-winning, internationally acclaimed Indigenous artist and elder Dana Tiger, her family, and the resurgence of the iconic Tiger T-shirt company.
Unholy — 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Logline: Noa attends her family’s Passover Seder for the first time since being put on a feeding tube for a gastrointestinal disorder. There, she is confronted with pushy family members, malfunctioning medical devices, and a room of food she can’t eat.
