SXSW Audience Award Winners Announced!

The winners are in the Audience Awards at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival! Voted on by attendees at this year’s festival, each category has one chosen winner to highlight the best of this year’s fest. 

In the Narrative Feature Competition section, it was Megan Park’s mass shooting drama The Fallout that pulled out the top prize, which certainly isn’t a surprise given the amount of love it has received since its premiere and it’s unfortunately all too timely subject matter. 

Natalie Morales made her directing debut with Language Lessons, a movie that she co-wrote with Mark Duplass starring the two of them (and no one else), and she was rewarded with her film taking home the prize in the Narrative Spotlight section. This is another very timely picture that we praised highly in our review from Joey Magidson, where he says the film “reminds us of the power of connection”, something we all could do with a little more of right now. 

Other winners include the Tom Petty documentary from director Mary Wharton, titled Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free, and the charming, intimately human Norwegian pregnancy dramedy Ninjababy, directed by Yngvild Sve Flikke.

For the full list of Audience Award winners from this year’s SXSW Film Festival, see below: 

Headliners

Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free
Director: Mary Wharton

Narrative Feature Competition

The Fallout
Director: Megan Park

Documentary Feature Competition

Not Going Quietly
Director: Nicholas Bruckman

Narrative Spotlight

Language Lessons
Director: Natalie Morales

Documentary Spotlight

Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America
Directors: Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler

Visions

Inbetween Girl
Director: Mei Makino

Midnighters

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror
Director: Kier-La Janisse

Global

Ninjababy
Director: Yngvild Sve Flikke

24 Beats Per Second

Soy Cubana
Directors: Jeremy Ungar and Ivaylo Getov

Festival Favorites

In The Same Breath
Director: Nanfu Wang

2020 Spotlight

We Are The Thousand
Director: Anita Rivaroli

Narrative Shorts Competition

Play It Safe
Director: Mitch Kalisa

Documentary Shorts Competition

Joe Buffalo
Director: Amar Chebib

Animated Shorts Competition

Opera
Director: Erick Oh

Midnight Shorts Competition

Stuffed
Director: Theo Rhys

Texas Shorts Competition

Learning Tagalog with Kayla
Director: Kayla Abuda Galang

Texas High School Shorts Competition

Beyond the Model
Director: Jessica Lin

Music Videos Competition

Kuricorder Quartet – ‘Southpaw’
Director: Sawako Kabuki

Episodic Premieres

Them
Showrunner: Little Marvin

Episodic Pilot Competition

4 Feet High
Directors: Maria Belen Poncio and Rosario Perazolo Masjoan

Virtual Cinema Competition

Biolum
Director: Abel Kohen

Virtual Cinema Spotlight

Finding Pandora X
Director: Kiira Benzing

Excellence in Title Design

Birds Of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn Title Sequence
Creative Director and Illustrator: Michael Riley