CineManiax: Podcast Transcripts

SXSW Film & TV Festival 2026

Wednesday, September 30, 2026

Intro

[upbeat music plays]

EMILY ROBINSON:

And so I think having experienced the acting side of it, I was kind of probably overthinking a lot about how to create an environment for myself that allows me to perform the way I need to because this film is a very performance-heavy film. And also, how do I create an environment for our department heads where they still have the support that they need, we have all the conversations we need to have, and we're not scrambling on the day? And how do I create that environment for our cast?

CHRIS REED:

Hello and welcome to the CineManiax podcast. I'm your host, Chris Reed, Editor of Film Festival Today and Lead Film Critic at Hammer to Nail. On today's show, we're going to talk about the 2026 South by Southwest Film and TV Festival in Austin, Texas. Joining me on the show is Tina Kakadelis, who is based in Pittsburgh and is a member of a number of critics organizations, including the Online Association of Female Film Critics. She writes for her site Beyond the Cinerama Dome and also Film Obsessive. It's great to have you on the show, Tina. Thank you so much for joining me.

TINA KAKADELIS:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to talk about South by.

CHRIS REED:

Absolutely. We were both on the ground there, and we saw many films. What were, let's say, three of the favorite things that you saw there?

TINA KAKADELIS:

Absolutely. So I'm going to give you two features and a short, which is kind of unexpected. So I'm going to say Brian is one of my favorite. It was a feature. Drag was another one, another feature. And then a short film that really just captured my heart was called Eructation.

CHRIS REED:

Tell me about each of those films, starting with the short, which-- if I'm not mistaken, it was the winner of a Special Jury Award in its category of Documentary Shorts.

TINA KAKADELIS:

Yes, it was.

CHRIS REED:

Let's start with that one.

TINA KAKADELIS:

Absolutely. Yeah, so it was directed by Victoria Trow. The word "eructation" is just a really, really fancy way of saying a burp, and it is. So it's kind of a humorous documentary of this woman who really wants to break the Guinness World record for the loudest female burp. And I'm curious if you have a guess of what decibel the current record is.

CHRIS REED:

Oof, I'm not even going to try. 80?

TINA KAKADELIS:

107.3.

CHRIS REED:

Oh my God.

TINA KAKADELIS:

So the subject, Kaylee-- it's her quest of trying to train to become the loudest female burper, and it's really beautifully put together. It's kind of manicured in this nice way that it has a tinge of flair to it. Victoria, the director, spent 15 years in marketing, and so you see that come through. But it is still, at the end of the day, just this simple story of the pursuit of something bigger than yourself. It just happens to be a burp.

CHRIS REED:

That's beautiful. I can't wait to watch it. I'll try to get a link. Tell me about Brian. I almost saw it, but the scheduling just didn't work out.

TINA KAKADELIS:

Yeah. Brian is directed by Will Ropp, a first-time feature from him. It's about a teenage boy who struggles with OCD and intrusive thoughts, and he's trying to keep it under control. But when he's stressed or anxious or something, these sentences just come out that are usually angry and profanity-filled. And when you're in high school, when are you not stressed or angry or scared or anxious?

And so it's about him, similarly to Eructation, actually, about him wanting to feel good at something, wanting to be considered the guy to go to for this specific thing. His brother is really great at sports. He's got all these trophies. But Brian is known for these outbursts, and so he decides he's going to run for class president. And it's the dark humor of him trying to fit in a place that he doesn't yet understand. And it's all led by Ben Wang, who plays Brian, from The Long Walk, who's going to be in The Hunger Games, and he's just an incredible performance in that film.

CHRIS REED:

And he was the lead in American Born Chinese, right?

TINA KAKADELIS:

I think so, yeah. And then he's going to be in the Sundance movie that came out from the Wet Hot American Summer guys, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass. He's got a wide range.

CHRIS REED:

Yeah and he's clearly having a moment. I really liked American Born Chinese that Disney+ show. Your final film was Drag, so tell me about that.

TINA KAKADELIS:

Drag is directed by Raviv Ullman, who-- you mentioned Disney. He, in his teenage years, was on Phil of the Future, a little television show on Disney Channel-- so directed by Raviv Ullman and Greg Yagolnitzer. It's kind of been the easiest movie, I feel like, to sell to friends and family since coming back. These two sisters break into a house, and one of them throws out her back 20 minutes before the guy who owns the house is going to come back. So she has to get dragged through the house trying to escape. It's really fun. John Stamos is in it. Lizzy Caplan is one of the leads.

CHRIS REED:

 Oh, I love her.

TINA KAKADELIS:

Yeah. Lucy DeVito, who's Danny Devito's daughter, is the other sister. It's the two of them, and it's a really, really fun, a little gnarly horror movie, I guess you could say.

CHRIS REED:

That was not on my radar at all, but your description of it kind of makes me want to check it out. So my three that I chose to talk about because I liked a number of films were Basic and then two documentaries, First They Came for My College and Serling. So let's start with the non-documentary first. Did you see any of those three?

TINA KAKADELIS:

I saw Basic, and I wanted to see Serling because I was a young little pre-teen who was obsessed with The Twilight Zone, and I am so sad to have missed it. So I can't wait to hear what you have to say about it.

CHRIS REED:

Yeah, well, I hope you can get a link for it because it's definitely worth watching. So you saw Basic, so just for the sake of our viewers, I'll briefly describe it. So it's from Chelsea Devantez, who's also an actress, but she wrote and directed this. She had a three-minute short that was supposed to play at the 2020 South by Southwest, but that got canceled because of COVID. And this is the feature-length version of that.

The film stars Ashley Park and Leighton Meester, and Ashley Park plays a woman who thinks she's happily in love in her relationship. But then she starts-- never do this-- spending time on social media stalking her boyfriend's ex, who's played by Leighton Meester, leads to all sorts of shenanigans. Ashley Park is so much fun on screen, and I love how the relationship that she develops with her boyfriend's ex goes in some really unexpected directions. And there was so much great energy watching it at the premiere at South by, and I hope the film does well outside. It's a female-driven comedy that is just a delight to watch, and I loved it.

Let's go now and have a downer moment. So the documentary First They Came for My College is directed by Patrick Bresnan, and it's about, basically, the destruction of the New College of Florida, though the people doing it don't see it as a distraction. It's a state school, an honors school, and it's taken over by Ron DeSantis to change it from what it was, which was this progressive liberal arts institution, into something quite different. And we watch this transformation happen on screen.

Interestingly, one of the main characters in the documentary is a woman that I went to grad school with years ago whose last name is also Reid but spelled differently, R-E-I-D, Amy Reid. And so that was a surprise. I'd forgotten she was teaching there. And yeah, it's an intense documentary that I recommend people watch because it speaks to a lot of the things happening in our moment.

And then finally, Serling, which is directed by Jonah Tulis and a film I hope you get to see-- and as you mentioned, it does have a connection to The Twilight Zone because it is a documentary biopic about Rod Serling, the creator of The Twilight Zone and other things that I didn't know about afterwards. But it follows his life and shows you his service in the military during World War II and then something I already knew, which was how in the '50s he struggled to get social justice themes that he wanted in his scripts to make it to the small screen.

He wanted to do a show on the murder of Emmett Till, and that got so changed that it was no longer really about racism. And this pushed him to finally really work hard to get his own show for five seasons, The Twilight Zone, and it follows him and his struggles because he worked so hard. The man was a workaholic. But he was also a father and a husband, and so it tracks all of that. And yeah, I really liked it, and I highly recommend it. So are there any films from South by that you think have a chance of making a splash outside the fest this year? Did you hear any buzz, anything like that?

TINA KAKADELIS:

If the marketing does well, I think Basic has the heart and the humor and the performances to really, really fill this gap of romantic comedies and just comedies in general that have this wide appeal that I feel have been missing for a really long time. I think a lot of people think of Leighton Meester from Gossip Girl, and to see her in this performance is so fun. And I really believe that there's so much life in basic that is, like I said, so wide appeal that I feel like it's not going to be in the Oscar conversation, but I do feel like maybe a Golden Globes for comedy because it's so strong and so tightly written.

CHRIS REED:

I suspect you're right, and I certainly hope you are. I think another film that might have a life outside of South by is Over Your Dead Body, ultraviolent. I wouldn't call it horror, but let's call it comedy-thriller starring Jason Segel and Samara Weaving. That's a remake of a Norwegian film of the same title. That has comedy. It has a lot of violence. There's also Normal starring Bob Odenkirk, sort of leaning into his action phase after the Nobody films. I think those might reach some kind of audience, but yeah, let's hope for Basic.

TINA KAKADELIS:

I love Boosters. That is the one coming out of the festival that I feel like we're going to be talking about for the Oscars. I think it's got a runaway win already with costumes. I will be shocked. I would love to see the thing that is going to dethrone this because those costumes in that film are unlike anything I feel like I've seen in a while.

CHRIS REED:

I'm so glad you brought that film up. I completely forgot to mention it. I didn't get to the festival until after both of its screenings. So they had the opening night screening, and then they had it on Friday before I was on the Ground. So I didn't see it. But I love Boots Riley, and so I hope I get to see it. And I've heard nothing but good things. Well, Tina, I want to thank you so much for being on the show and sharing your thoughts about the 2026 South by Southwest Film and TV Festival.

TINA KAKADELIS:

Thank you so much for having me. This was awesome.

CHRIS REED:

Next up, I'd like to share excerpts from three interviews I did on the ground in Austin, all with directors whose films I also liked very much. They are Maya Annik Bedward, who directed the documentary Black Zombie, Gloria Mercer, who made the dramatic thriller A Safe Distance, and Emily Robinson, who directed and starred in the body horror-adjacent drama Ugly Cry. Black Zombie explains how misconceptions and willful one dimensional appropriations of Haiti's native vodou faith have led to racist interpretations and uses of the zombie figure in literature and on screen.

So here I am at the 2026 South by Southwest Film Festival with Maya Annik Bedward, the director of Black Zombie. Welcome to the CineManiax podcast.

MAYA ANNIK BEDWARD:

Thank you.

CHRIS REED:

So you take on quite a lot here. It's a very ambitious doc. How and when did you decide to tell this particular story?

MAYA ANNIK BEDWARD:

So I'm Afro-Caribbean Canadian. My father was born in Jamaica, and I've always been really interested in stories and the history of our people that predate colonialism and our connection to West Africa. And often those connections are said to be lost, that there's no record of this. But there are, and there's traces of it in our spiritual traditions. So vodou, candomblé, santería-- these things were always very interesting to me because it holds so much knowledge and history.

So when I heard that the zombie was a Haitian vodou metaphor for slavery, I was completely shocked that I didn't know that, and I needed to learn more. And as I learned more, I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't believe no one's told this story and no one knows this story. And it just became a huge passion project of mine.

CHRIS REED:

Excellent. Well, it definitely has quite a lot in it that holds the interest, and it's very informative. So how was your research on Haitian vodou? What was your research like? It's a huge topic. Where did you start, and how did you find the people that you interviewed for the film about Haitian vodou?

MAYA ANNIK BEDWARD:

I always knew I wanted to center the voices of Haitian vodou practitioners, so I very much started from there. And I went to Haiti, and I worked with Haitian crew there, who introduced me to one of their friends, who's [INAUDIBLE] in the film, the vodou priest in the film. And then I reached out to other people, practitioners who are also advocates for changing the representation of vodou in the media. So that's how I found them.

And then I knew key parts of the story were White Zombie, were Night of the Living Dead, were Serpent and the Rainbow to understand the evolution of the zombie as a phenomenon in pop culture, so I just knew that there were key people who could tell that story and looked for those people and critics of those stories as well who could also be in the film.

CHRIS REED:

I remembered watching your film that I had seen The Serpent and the Rainbow when it first came out, and I remember not thinking that much of it. And now I feel validated.

[laughter]

MAYA ANNIK BEDWARD:

I know it also was never supposed to be as bad as it was, but the studio made them make it gorier and messier and crazier. They just wanted it to be nuts and no thought to what that would do to the representation of Haiti or vodou.

CHRIS REED:

And certainly the clips you choose from it do the film no favors.

MAYA ANNIK BEDWARD:

No.

CHRIS REED:

Thank you so much for joining me on the CineManiax podcast.

MAYA ANNIK BEDWARD:

Thank you for having me.

CHRIS REED:

A Safe Distance has the great virtue of narrative unpredictability, which, coupled with fine performances from the two lead actresses, makes for a wholly engaging watch. Bethany Brown and Tandia and Mercedes star as women who find friendship, sexual attraction, and possibly love in the unlikeliest of circumstances.

Gloria Mercer, welcome to the CineManiax podcast. I'm here with you at the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2026 to talk about your film, Safe Distance.

GLORIA MERCER:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really thrilled to be here.

CHRIS REED:

As somebody who's made plenty of films of his own, I always find it difficult, though I encourage the students at my university to collaborate. But the idea of giving up your baby to somebody else to cut has always struck me as a difficult process, so I can certainly understand why you'd want to edit your own film.

GLORIA MERCER:

I really enjoy editing. I will say, I would love to relinquish that control, and I hope I don't just seem like a control freak because part of my editing, it was just the logistics of having an indie and having such a small team and wanting time in the edit. And sometimes if you don't have a huge budget, you lose the resources to bring someone on for a really long time. And we didn't take too long to cut it, but it was-- so part of it was just having the freedom to play in the edit a little more.

And I do come from a post background, so I like editing. It's not my first time doing it. But honestly, in future, I would really-- because I come from post, I know a ton of great editors, and I look forward to handing that over on the next feature potentially or having some sort of collaboration because I do think there is a huge value in having an editor be separate from the director. But also, on this film, it was very fun to edit myself as well.

CHRIS REED:

I can understand. So let's talk about your cast. You have Bethany Brown as Alex, Tanda Mercedes as--

GLORIA MERCER:

Tandia.

CHRIS REED:

--Tandia as Kianna, Chris McNally as Joey, and Cody Kearsley as Matt?

GLORIA MERCER:

Yeah.

CHRIS REED:

What was the casting process like?

GLORIA MERCER:

It was great. It was a really-- so firstly, I'll say all of our cast are wonderful BC, from Canada, locals, and so I just love that. I love putting as much of our home talent on screen as I can. And they were great, and I'm so happy we have them.

Our amazing casting directors, Kris & Kara casting in BC, they showed us Bethany, and we just-- immediately I was like, I feel like she's perfect. She just is very good at doing so much just non-verbally because there's a lot of silence in the film. And I think I saw Bethany's reel, and I just think she's a d I don't know. Just she's a great listener, and you can just-- and she does so much without using her words and as well as doing some great line delivery. So I really loved her for Alex.

Tandia Mercedes-- this was her first feature film, which I wasn't even aware of in the moment. And then we cast her, and I was just blown away by how quickly she just jumped into it. And so we cast her through an open casting call, and I just loved the energy she brought in her read. And then we had, I think, a chemistry read with Bethany, and immediately the two of them had such great chemistry. And Tandia just really felt to me like the character of Kianna, even though she is very different. But she brought some of herself and then was just able to really embody her.

Cody actually knew our producer, but I had only seen him in Riverdale, and he's playing a teenager in high school. And so Nick, our producer, Nic Altobelli, suggested him for Matt. And so I looked at his stuff. Because at first I was like, oh, that's an interesting idea. And then I met with him, and he just had all these great questions about the character. And I was like, again, he's very different from Matt, who's maybe not a great guy in every single way, but he just really felt like he got it. He got like the idiosyncrasies of the character and what Matt as a character is wrestling with. And so I was just so excited to be connected with him.

And Chris is a big-- he's like a great actor in Vancouver. He does a lot of Hallmark, and we just love-- I don't know. We put him in the role of Joey. We went out to him. We asked him if he wanted to read the script, and it's very different from what he does a lot of. But yeah, he just was extremely game right from the jump, and it's sort of counter-casting what he does in some ways normally. But I thought it worked great, and it was just a dream to have him on set.

CHRIS REED:

Well, Gloria, thank you so much for talking to me for the CineManiax podcast, and I wish you all good things with the film.

GLORIA MERCER:

Thank you so much for having me.

CHRIS REED:

In Ugly Cry, a young actress who should be focusing on performance instead becomes obsessed with making her face show as little emotion as possible. You wouldn't want to scare people with the ugliness of real pain, now, would you?

Here I am at the 2026 South by Southwest Film Festival with Director and Actor Emily Robinson of Ugly Cry. Welcome to the CineManiax podcast.

EMILY ROBINSON:

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.

CHRIS REED:

You've made three shorts prior to this as a director.

EMILY ROBINSON:

Really two, but one of them was like a photo montage that I made in high school that somehow wound up on YouTube and then wound up on IMDb, which is humiliating.

[laughs]

CHRIS REED:

So you made two shorts prior to this one.

EMILY ROBINSON:

Thank you.

CHRIS REED:

And you also acted in those if I'm correct. So could you tell me about the challenges of directing yourself and how-- I'm sure that those challenges were heightened at the feature level. So what was it like being both director and actor?

EMILY ROBINSON:

So my first short film, Virgin Territory, I was the lead actor in that, and so I was in every scene, which was definitely great practice for Ugly Cry. I was also 16. It was a long time ago. It was 10 years ago. And then my other short film was really lovely because I had more of a-- it was more of an ensemble, and so I was only in one or two scenes. So I had some wonderful experience getting to be mostly on monitor and then also getting to dip my toes back into acting for that.

I've been lucky enough to be an actor on films where the director was also acting in it, and so I feel really fortunate to have had firsthand experience of what it's like being directed by someone who you are scene partners with and was able to get really valuable advice and wisdom from Alex Heller, who did that with me in The Year Between, and Brie Larson for Unicorn Store. And so I think having experienced the acting side of it, I was probably overthinking a lot about how to create an environment for myself that allows me to perform the way I need to because this film is a very performance-heavy film.

And also, how do I create an environment for our department heads where they still have the support that they need, we have all the conversations we need to have, and we're not scrambling on the day? And how do I create that environment for our cast where they don't feel like they're a million cooks in the kitchen or there's too much happening or like their scene partner is just giving them passive-aggressive judgment. So how do we create this environment that feels super collaborative and creative and exciting while I'm kind of running around and wearing all these hats?

And the way that I did that, I think, I hope was just completely over preparation. It was pre-production, talking to actors for years and years in some cases. Ryan Simpkins and I had been improvising and talking about this for truly, like, three years before we ended up filming it for real. When we were actually in production, the night before every day, I would-- basically, after we would wrap, a producer and I would meet and go through the scenes for the next day and talk through all of the notes for department heads, for actors, and go through each of the beats of the scene.

And then the next morning I would get to set a few hours early, like one or two hours early, and go through the scenes as an actor and take that time and space so that when we were actually in production filming I could be there for all of the other people, and I could be running around. I be doing all of the things, and I still had that base well of performance thoughts and feelings to dip back into more easily.

CHRIS REED:

Well, I'm even more impressed now than I was before. It's a very ambitious work, and certainly everything that you took on makes it even more so. Well, thank you so much. I wish you all good things with the film. I really enjoyed watching it. "Enjoy" perhaps is the wrong word. I found it fascinating, and I'm really impressed with it.

EMILY ROBINSON:

Thank you so much. Thank you. I really appreciate it.

CHRIS REED:

Black Zombie, a Safe Distance, and Ugly Cry are all definitely worth watching. You can read the full transcript of my interviews over at Hammer to Nail. If you're curious about any of the films discussed on today's show, be sure to look for them in theaters or via streamers. You can read my film reviews at Hammer to Nail and Film Festival today. For the CineManiax podcast, I'm your host, Chris Reed. Thanks for joining me, and I'll see you at the movies.

Outro

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PODCAST PRODUCER:

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SXSW Film & TV Festival 2026