“If you love movies that are trying to tell real, unadulterated stories, pure, heartfelt stories, you need to be a part of supporting those films and helping them come into the world, because that’s the only way that they will.” – Alison Bagnall When we contribute to a crowdfunding campaign, we tend to think of the specific project at hand. The quote above reminds us that for movies that pledge can also be an investment in more than a single film. It’s about supporting and encouraging independent filmmaking overall and certain genres or kinds of movies. Bagnall acknowledges that she makes a particular sort of film, which maybe is not everyone, yet which is really, really loved by enough people that they need to be made. Studios and larger production companies might not see reason to make films that a small audience is really into when they get more money out of films that a large audience is just sorta into. The quote above comes from Bagnall’s Kickstarter campaign video for her next feature, Funny Bunny. And we can assume that if we like her previous works, 2003′s Piggie and 2011′s The Dish and the Spoon (one of our must-see picks for SXSW that year) and even Buffalo ’66, which she co-wrote, that we’ll want to see this too. As she describes it, the film is about “a friendless anti-obesity crusader, a trust fund manchild and a reclusive factory farming activist.  These three marginal people bump up against one another and

We open with a gasp. Amy Seimetz’s feature directorial debut, Sun Don’t Shine, kicks off with its lead actress (Kate Lyn Sheil) fighting for breath under the blazing Florida sun, thanks to a knock-down-drag-out fight with her boyfriend (Kentucker Audley) in an empty slice of wetland far from any prying eyes. The two struggle in the mud and sand, until the scuffle is finally over and they resume driving far away from something very bad, very bad indeed. An understated take on the classic Bonnie and Clyde trope with a mumblecore vibe, Seimetz’s film centers on two runaway losers who need to get somewhere far from home – and fast.

Billed as “a deadpan fable about time sneaking up on and swerving right around us” by the SXSW programmers, Bob Byington‘s Somebody Up There Likes Me is boring twaddle masquerading as something more exiciting and more important, thanks to a barely hidden high concept conceit that frequently make the production just look sloppy and inattentive. The film and its often blank-faced lead, Keith Poulson, are without any of the charm and cheekiness of Byington’s previous films, namely the lovely and funny Harmony and Me. Poulson’s Max Youngman is a typical shiftless twentysomething – a waiter, he doesn’t appear to have many life or professional goals and, personally speaking, he’s not doing so hot either. His ex-wife (Kate Lyn Sheil) doesn’t want to get back together, which she proves handily by having sex with another dude within minutes of Max leaving her house. Max’s only friend is his waiter co-worker Sal (Nick Offerman) who, even later in the film after over thirty years of friendship and a number of job changes, Max still calls “the waiter.” A slightly spur-of-the-moment date with co-worker Lyla (Jess Weixler) appears to signal a positive change in Max’s life, and thus the film, but while Somebody Up There Likes Me tracks decades in Max’s life and innumerable changes, there’s little actual evolution to be found.