The SXSW film festival has scored a coup by securing the world premiere of the new film by Terrence Malick, entitled Song to Song, for its opening gala.
Filmed largely in Austin, Texas – the festival’s home town, as well as Malick’s – it stars Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Natalie Portman and Michael Fassbender, and its official synopsis describes it as a “modern love story set against the Austin music scene, where two entangled couples … chase success through a rock’n’roll landscape of seduction and betrayal”. Malick has also cast a number of real-life musicians in the film, including Patti Smith, Lykke Li, Iggy Pop and Florence and the Machine.
Song to Song – previously known as Lawless and Weightless – has been a long-gestating project, like most of Malick’s films; Malick and his cast were spotted filming at the Austin City Limits festival and the city’s Fun Fun Fun fest in November 2011. Shooting appears to have been completed in 2012, immediately before Knight of Cups (released in March 2016), and Malick has since completed the longform Imax documentary Voyage of Time, which premiered at the Venice film festival in 2016.
Alongside Song to Song, SXSW has announced a handful of other world premieres, including detective story Small Town Crime, starring John Hawkes and Octavia Spencer, coming-of-age Muslim drama Signature Move, starring and co-written by Fawzia Mirza, and Residente, featuring the eponymous Puerto Rican rapper. The festival will also premiere episodes of the Starz TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.
The SXSW film festival is on 10-18 March, in Austin, Texas.
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