I had hopes that Amazon Prime partnering with the SXSW Film Festival would result into something worthy, but, alas, I’ve been proven wrong with the announcement that only 5% of the films that were supposed to premiere at the Austin festival in March will take part in this digital Amazon venture.
Only 39 SXSW projects, including seven feature films, will be available to stream on Amazon Prime beginning April 27th. That’s slim pickings when you realize that close to 135 films had been selected to take part in this year’s event. There are also no American feature films, only foreign-language entities.
The partnership was already being protested by a few filmmakers who were supposed to have their films debut at SXSW last March, with many being concerned with their chances for distribution being squashed if they decide to go the way of Amazon Prime. For others, mainly the 39 filmmakers that are taking part in this digital festival, well, they just want their films to be out there, no matter what.
You can scroll through and see what the slim pickings over at THR