Senior film and TV festival programming manager, SXSW
Ecuadorian-American Francis Román volunteered at local festival SXSW in 2011 while attending the University of Texas at Austin “so I could watch films I might not get to see elsewhere”. She was hooked and landed a job producing the festival’s film awards in 2014, before joining the festival proper in 2017. She has been in her current role since 2022.
“Now I lead our shorts and independent TV pilots curation,” says Román. “I’m also part of our feature programming team and I oversee the entire filmmaker process.” A key source of inspiration is SXSW VP of film and TV Claudette Godfrey: “She leads the team with a big heart.”
Román watches around 1,000 shorts a year out of roughly 7,500 submissions. A small but “mighty” team is assisted by screeners and film lovers before the programmers debate which make the cut. She looks for works that demonstrate “clear cinematic vision, strong voices [and are] maybe unexpected or subversive”.
Rejecting films is the toughest part of the job, Román says, adding: “I send personal notes to those filmmakers.” And her favourite part? “Watching the filmmakers when an audience responds to their work.”
An eclectic annual selection includes Festival Favorites, culled from Sundance, Toronto and other programmes. “Shorts are their own tiny little universes,” Román says. “It’s pulse-pounding drama one minute and crying with laughter five minutes later.”
Her team does not programme thematically but Román has noticed a connective thread. “I have been seeing a lot of work that shows the outsider yearning for connection,” she says. Whatever the film, the SXSW crowd laps it up. “They are the rowdiest, most excited audiences I have ever seen.”
The festival has programmed shorts from filmmakers who have gone on to direct acclaimed features such as Emma Seligman (the Shiva Baby short played in 2018), the Daniels (Interesting Ball, 2015), and, most recently, Sean Wang (SXSW 2023 prize-winning short Nai Nai & Wai Po) who returned this year with Didi.
Contact: Francis Román
No comments yet