Slanted, directed by Amy Wang, won the grand jury prize in the narrative competition section of the 2025 SXSW Film and TV festival.
Slanted follows Joan Huang, a senior in high school who undergoes an experimental racial transformation to become white and win Prom Queen.
“This unflinching satirical thriller examines racial identity in a bold and skin-tingling new way. Featuring simmering performances by the cast, this film is both specific to the fractured identity of Asian Americans and universally relatable in its theme of desperately needing to belong,” wrote the competition jury, Variety‘s Clayton Davis, Vanity Fair’s Rebecca Ford and IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio, about Slanted.
In the narrative section, special jury awards were given to Annapurna Sriram for Fucktoys and Amanda Peet for Fantasy Life for multihyphenate and performance, respectively.
Shuffle directed by Benjamin Flaherty, which follows three people in treatment to dig into insurance-fueled cycle of addiction treatment fraud, landed the grand jury prize for the documentary feature competition. Special jury awards were given to The Python Hunt directed by Xander Robin and Remaining Native directed by Paige Bethmann.
F*ckups Anonymous from showrunner Joe Tierney and director Kat Whalen landed the independent TV pilot competition grand jury award, with a special jury prize awarded to Denim from showrunner and director Tedra Wilson.
In addition to the competition sections, SXSW featured premieres of Another Simple Favor, Ben Affleck starrer The Accountant 2 and Nicole Kidman movie Holland.
The full list of 2025 SXSW winners can be found here.
Source: Hollywoodreporter
