Austin Film Festival 2010 Lineup: The Details

Austin Film Festival has announced the bulk of its films for the 2010 festival, including marquee screenings and locally made films. The fest still has yet to announce its opening-night, closing-night and centerpiece movies, but I'm sure we'll find that out soon. In the meantime, we've got a lot to look forward to seeing in October. AFF announced its conference schedule last week.

"Marquee screenings" are the big-name films, many of which might be Oscar contenders. One of the nice things about AFF is that it is late enough in the year to give Austin audiences a sneak preview of these end-of-year prestige films, which often don't open here until January or February. Some of these films are from filmmakers who have brought their movies to AFF in previous years.

For example, one of the marquee films is 127 Hours, the latest from Danny Boyle, who was at AFF 2008 with Slumdog Millionaire. Kelly Reichardt's film Wendy and Lucy was the centerpiece film at SXSW 2008 and now AFF brings us her new film, Meek's Cutoff.

Other marquee titles include Darren Aronofsky's film Black Swan; the U.S. premiere of Peep World, which stars Sarah Silverman and Michael C. Hall; Doug Liman's Fair Game, which includes San Antonio native Bruce McGill; Blue Valentine, which stars Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams; and the world premiere of the documentary Exporting Raymond, about the Russian-language remake of Everybody Loves Raymond. And that's not even half of the marquee movies screening this year.

I am so happy to see that Echotone is part of the Austin Screens series during the fest. I saw the film at Marfa Film Festival in May and enjoyed it very much. It's all about Austin musicians and how they're being affected by Austin real-estate development. 

Other films in the Austin Screens series include a world premiere of Ultimate Guide to Flight and regional premieres of Burned: Life in and Out of Texas Youth Prisons, It's Whatever, Paradise Recovered, and The Spirit Molecule.

The Austin Screens category isn't the only place you'll find Austin and Lone Star films at AFF, though. Local filmmaker and AFS afterschool film instructor Stephen Belyeu is screening his movie Dig in the Narrative Feature competition. Rainbows End, which won Eric Heuber a Texas Filmmakers Production Fund grant in 2003, is in the Documentary Feature competition. The Dark Matters category includes the world premiere of the locally shot thriller I Didn't Come Here to Die from Bradley Scott Sullivan.

The AFF 2010 lineup also includes the latest movie from those very funny Oklahoma filmmakers Mark Potts and Cole Selix: S&M Lawn Care. Yes, the title frightens me a bit too. But last year, these guys made me laugh a whole lot with Simmons on Vinyl.

There are a ton of intriguing films in the lineup and if I took the time to find out everything about them and share it all with you, we'd be in October. And I haven't even done any research on the short films yet, which are always a great part of AFF. So go take a look at the AFF website and get all the details.

[With grateful thanks to Bryan Poyser and Austin Film Society for the info on AFS alumni at AFF this year.]