The second edition of SXSW London is almost here Virginia Woolf Night and Daystarring Haley Bennett, Jack Whitehall, Lily Allen, Timothy Spall, Jennifer Saunders, Sally Phillips, Misia Butler and Elias Mebarak, opens the 2026 Screen Festival on Monday, June 1.
This romantic comedy from director Tina Garaffey and screenwriter Justine Waddell is based on Virginia Woolf’s novel. Night and day. But the film is just one of dozens of short films, along with short films, that will be screened in the British capital throughout the event, which runs from June 1 to 6.
Peter Glanz is darkly satirical Savage housewhose cast includes Richard E. Grant, Claire Foy, Bel Powley and Jack Farthing, is also among the premieres at this year’s SXSW London, along with an exclusive preview of the first two episodes of the Adult Swim animated series Get a gyrobased on the DC/Vertigo graphic novel by Anthony Bourdain and starring the voice of Brian Tee (Dynamite house), which is set in Los Angeles in the not-so-distant future where top chefs rule the city and people are literally killing each other to get a seat at the best restaurants.
Among the international features making their UK debut at SXSW London are The other side of the sunDirected by Tawfiq Sabouni, Juan Pablo Salato Red barn, vision Directed by Mahnaz Mohammadi, directed by Vladelina Sandu memory, remake From director Ross McElwee, and Only revolutionaries win Directed by Danielle Arbid. SXSW London is owned and produced by Panarise, which operates under license from SXSW LLC, which is owned by Penske Media Corporation, the parent company of Hollywood Reporter.
Anna Bogutskaya, Head of Screen at SXSW London, and her team have done a lot of work to narrow down the large number of films they’ve seen ahead of the second 2026 release.
“This year, we benefited from doing one last year with the same vision; [so] Our programming process has been a bit more precise THR. “We had the same number of openings, something like 40 features.”
But there is a basic lens through which the team evaluates films. “Our vision is very focused on international filmmakers and genre-appropriate storytelling,” Bogotskaya explains. “The shared DNA of SXSW in Austin that we’re trying to build here in London is always at the heart of our programming. The other thing is balance, which you only really see as a whole when the whole program is done. Do we have enough documentaries of this flavour, don’t we have enough films from East Asian countries, or don’t we have enough French, Spanish or Mediterranean films? We’re always looking for balance, so we never feel overweight in one direction – not too many horror films, not too many documentaries with Same tone, and there’s not a lot of fantasy movies that have the same tone, and there’s not a lot of war movies or comedies or road movies.
A lot of screen time is allocated to end the screen fest. “We watched about 2,000 or 3,000 films,” Bogotskaya says. THR. “You have to be very selective and very conscious of every decision. If we had a program of 200 films, we would have more freedom.”
Star power is part of the balance the team seeks to achieve. “We have an interesting kind of star power, including in our headliners, five of the six being world premieres this year,” highlights Head of Screen at SXSW London. “We have talent that brings them all together, from Claire Foy and Richard E. Grant to Haley Bennett. We have a lot of really strong British talent as well as international talent.”
The United States and Latin America also have a major presence. “One thing we are trying to do is share the platform with the core ethos of Screen Festival, which is international and genre-friendly,” says the Head of Screen Programming. “So, for example, this year we have two major international films having their world premieres and both series – a huge Brazilian production called Playoffs and Get a gyroan anime series based on a graphic novel by Anthony Bourdain. This is getting early for us. I’m really proud of it, also because it’s an amazing show. He’s got that accent and the humor and he’s so adorable, so the show is going to be a wicked experience.
Playoffsstarring Qua Raymond in a series about a former football star turned agent on the run from a militia and his family on his way to reclaiming glory, is also a coup, given its country of origin and timing. “It’s a huge Globo production in Brazil that has an audience here, and the timing with the World Cup was too delicious to ignore,” says Bogotskaya. In fact, the FIFA World Cup, organized by FIFA in the United States, Canada and Mexico, will be held from June 11 to July 19.
Are there any overarching themes at the Screen Festival? “This is the kind of thing that always comes up after the show is over,” she says. “I can look at the films we’ve programmed and see the lines between them, but we never program with a theme in mind. What I can see when I look at the program now is how the characters, in both documentaries and fiction, deal with real, larger-than-life events, [whether] War or [other] Challenges, using art to understand them.
One example of this is Sandhu memorydescribed on the SXSW London website as “a haunting mix of documentary and dream”. Born in Crimea and raised in war-torn Chechnya, Sandu looks at her past in “fragments: family secrets, rumours, and stories no one was allowed to tell,” as the book’s synopsis notes. “Using reconstructions and evocative, poetic images that recall a childhood growing up in the Soviet Union.”
Likewise, Doc remake It sees McElwee dealing with his son’s death through filmmaking and… The other side of the sun “It is an amazing documentary in which they use puppets to process the damage and trauma caused by their arrest and torture” in Syria. Plus Joan Purcell No Karen (The body), about “a gay performance artist who gets dangerously close to a stranger in an online chat room,” according to the synopsis, and features a young man who “creates a theatrical piece of online hookup culture and the really fleeting connections you can establish with people through a ChatRoulette conversation,” notes SXSW London’s head of screen.
“until Virginia Woolf Night and Day “The film is about a woman who looks at the stars and uses astronomy to understand a deeply patriarchal world,” Bogotskaya says.
Overall, SXSW London 2026 audiences will enjoy a mixture of laughter, tears, fear and new ideas – all while traveling the world cinematically. “We bring the world to the London audience with our curation,” concludes Bogotskaya. “It is a kind of journey through different styles and colors of filmmaking, including truly provocative films.”
