The second edition of SXSW London is nearly upon us, with Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day, starring Haley Bennett, Jack Whitehall, Lily Allen, Timothy Spall, Jennifer Saunders, Sally Phillips, Misia Butler and Elyas M’Barek, opening the 2026 Screen Festival on Monday, June 1.
The rom-com from director Tina Gharavi and screenwriter Justine Waddell is an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel Night and Day. But the movie is just one of a few dozen, along with short films, that are unspooling in the British capital throughout the June 1-6 event.
Peter Glanz’s darkly satirical Savage House, whose cast includes Richard E. Grant, Claire Foy, Bel Powley and Jack Farthing, is also among the headliner premieres of this year’s SXSW London, along with an exclusive first-look screening of the first two episodes of Adult Swim animated series Get Jiro, based on the DC/Vertigo graphic novel from Anthony Bourdain and starring the voice of Brian Tee (A House of Dynamite), which is set in a not-too-distant future Los Angeles where master chefs rule the town and people literally kill for a seat at the best restaurants.
Among international features getting their U.K. premiere at SXSW London are The Other Side of the Sun, directed by Tawfik Sabouni, Juan Pablo Sallato‘s The Red Hangar, Roya by director Mahnaz Mohammadi, Vladlena Sandu’s Memory, Remake from director Ross McElwee, and Only Rebels Win by director 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 The Hollywood Reporter.
Anna Bogutskaya, the head of screen at SXSW London, and her team have had a lot of work narrowing down a big number of movies that they viewed heading into the 2026 second edition.
‘Get Jiro’ still, courtesy of SXSW London
“This year, we had the benefit of having done one already last year with the same vision, [so] our programming process was a bit more refined,” she tells THR. “We had the same amount of slots, which is roughly 40 features.”
But there is a core lens through which the team evaluates films. “Our vision is heavily focused on international filmmakers and genre-friendly and genre-pushing storytelling,” explains Bogutskaya. “The shared DNA of SXSW in Austin and the one 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 program is fully finalized. Do we have enough documentaries of this flavor, do we not have enough films from East Asian countries, or do we not have enough French, Spanish or Mediterranean films? We’re always looking for balance, so it never feels too overly weighted in one direction – not too many horror films, not too many documentaries of the same tone, not too many fiction films of the same tone, not too many war films, comedies or road movies.”
A lot of screen time goes into finalizing the Screen Festival. “We watched maybe about 2,000, 3,000 films,” Bogutskaya tells THR. “You have to be extremely selective and extremely conscious of every decision. If we had a program of 200 films, we would have more leeway.”
Star power is part of the balance the team strives for. “We have some interesting kind of star power, including in our headliners, five of six are world premieres this year,” the SXSW London head of screen highlights. “We’ve got talent attending for all of them, from Claire Foy and Richard E. Grant to Haley Bennett. We have a lot of really strong British talent as well as international talent.”
‘Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day’ film still, courtesy of SXSW London
The U.S. and Latin America also have a key presence. “One thing that we are trying to do is share the platform with the core ethos of the Screen Festival, which is international genre-bending, genre-friendly,” says the screen programming boss. “So, for instance, this year we have two international headliners that are both world premieres and both series – a huge Brazilian production called The Playoffs and Get Jiro, which is an anime series based on an Anthony Bourdain graphic novel. That is such an early get for us. I’m really proud of it, also because it is such an incredible show. It’s got that tone and humor and is just such a blast, so that screening is going to be such a wicked experience.”
The Playoffs, starring Cauã Reymond in a series about a former soccer star turned agent who runs from the militia, his family, and himself on the way to regaining glory, is also a coup, given its country of origin and the timing. “It is a huge production for Globo in Brazil that has an audience here, and also the timing with the World Cup was too delicious to ignore,” shares Bogutskaya. Indeed, the FIFA soccer World Cup in the U.S., Canada and Mexico runs June 11-July 19.
Are there any overarching themes across the Screen Festival? “That’s the sort of thing that always comes out after the program is done,” she says. “I can look at the films that we’ve programmed and see throughlines between them, but we never program with a theme in mind. What I can see looking at the program now is how characters, in both documentary and narrative films, are dealing with real-life, larger-than-life events, [whether] war or [other] challenges, by using art to make sense of them.”
One example is Sandu’s Memory, described on the SXSW London website as “a haunting blend of documentary and dream.” Born in Crimea and raised in war-torn Chechnya, Sandu looks back at her past through “fragments: family secrets, rumours, and the stories no one was allowed to tell,” notes a synopsis. “Using reconstructions and evocative, poetic imagery that recalls a childhood growing up in the Soviet Union.”
‘Memory’ film still, courtesy of SXSW London
Similarly, the doc Remake sees McElwee dealing with the death of his son through filmmaking and The Other Side of the Sun “is an incredible documentary where they’re using puppetry to process the damage and the trauma of having been captured and tortured” in Syria. Plus, Joan Porcel’s La Carn (The Flesh), about “a queer performance artist who gets dangerously close to a stranger in an online chat room,” per a synopsis, features a young man who’s “creating a theater piece out of internet hookup culture and the really fleeting connections that you can establish with people through a ChatRoulette conversation,” the SXSW London head of screen points out.
“Even Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day is about a woman who’s looking up at the stars and using astronomy to make sense of a deeply patriarchal world,” notes Bogutskaya.
All in all, SXSW London 2026 audiences are in for a mix of laughter, tears, scares and new ideas – all while traveling the globe cinematically. Concludes Bogutskaya: “We’re bringing the world to London audiences through our curation. It’s a kind of travelogue through different styles and tones of filmmaking, including really provocative films.”