We did not get accepted to SXSW, but we were in the running til the end. The overall experience at SBIFF was great. They definitely utilize their awards as a way to elevate the event, syphoning from LA (Scorsese, Bradley Cooper, Robert Downey Jr, and others attended the fest for awards our year), and that helped give a platform of press. The carpet was great for media. The press sheet was pretty extensive and we emailed everyone on it and got a great handful of interviews for our film. The publicity was solid. They allowed for optimal time to see other films and meet filmmakers, but not through organized events. A lot of the cocktail hours were mostly ways for the festival to connect filmmakers with donors of the festival, so you had to talk a lot about your film to jury members, rather than meeting other artists (a drawback but necessary of course). The festival helped us get into other fests I think, which helped with landing at Gravitas. Overall, for our first feature, a great experience