French Highlights at SXSW 2026 

Mam is a story of passion, resilience, and unexpected friendship in the heart of the city. After falling in love with Vietnamese cuisine during a life-changing trip abroad, Jerald—a self-taught chef from small-town Texas—arrives in New York City with one goal: to open his own restaurant. Juggling odd jobs and secretly perfecting recipes in a basement kitchen, he’s running out of time and money. When he meets Nhung, a sharp-witted Vietnamese waitress, their unlikely alliance sparks a bold culinary journey. From improvised street hustles to a hidden speakeasy, they fight to turn Jerald’s dream into reality.

The Way We Move is a feature-length documentary about Amber Galloway, a star ASL (American Sign Language) interpreter who specializes in live music interpretations. Amber teaches her art to share her life’s mission : making music accessible to the Deaf community. Armed with her astounding teaching skills, she will take her struggling new recruits on a one-of-a-kind journey, hoping they have what it takes to join her at Austin City Limits music festival. As the film unfolds, we learn about Amber’s painful past and about the lives of her recruits, Julian Ortiz and Angela “AV” Vilavong, as they come together and forge life-long bonds. A film about music, Deaf culture, connection and resilience.

Crafting Crimes is an immersive and interactive podcast series that lets you reconstruct some of the most famous crime scenes in history. In this new episode, piece together one of the most world-shaking art heists of all time: the theft of the Mona Lisa. In the summer of 1911, the masterpiece vanishes from the Louvre’s Salon Carré. No alarm. No trace. For two years, the world wonders where the Mona Lisa has gone. The truth? She never left Paris.

Insider-Outsider is an interactive virtual reality musical experience created by Philippe Cohen Solal, inspired by the work of Henry Darger (1892–1973). This pivotal figure in American outsider art depicted the struggle of seven young heroines, the Vivian Girls, against the cruelty of adults. The experience is part of a broader transmedia project titled “Outsider,” blending music with dreamlike imagery. The original soundtrack of the “Outsider” album, composed by Philippe Cohen Solal (Gotan Project) and Mike Lindsay (Tunng), lies at the heart of this journey. It immerses participants in the “Realms of the Unreal,” inviting them to interact with the environment and the Vivian Girls’ battle.

True to his practice of blending tradition with experimentation, the artist opens a new chapter with Spectacular: Jonathan Yeo’s Art in Augmented Reality. In this immersive  experience, his work comes to life,  transforming and responding to visitors, and shifting the act of contemplation into active participation. The journey culminates in a personal surprise: before leaving the exhibition, each visitor departs with a unique creation, a lasting extension of their encounter with Jonathan Yeo’s universe.

Layers of Place is a collective project that encourages exploration of often unseen dimensions of Austin’s public spaces—changing our relationship to place and each other through a co-created collection of six location-based AR experiences, including Paper Boat, directed by 2022 Villa Albertine resident Mathieu Pradat.

This conference examines how AI, beyond cost reduction and visual effects, inaugurates a post-photographic rupture. Cinema’s factuality—rooted in photographic capture of what was—confronts AI’s counterfactuality: statistical generation of what could be, freed from indexical constraints. After metabolizing cinematic language, AI opens unprecedented fictional territories: evolving generative narratives, multiversal storytelling, and dissolution of boundaries between creation and reception. We explore these new fictions that transcend filming constraints and classical narration, revealing how counterfactual generation catalyzes an anthropological mutation of our fictional regimes, and a means of resistance to the dissolution of common truth.

Image: Artificial Imagination and the Fiction after Cinema

Every year, BPI France and Villa Albertine team up with SXSW to offer a wide range of activities showcasing French innovation and creativity at the French Touch Rendez-Vous event, including panels, VR experiences demonstrations, food tasting,s networking events, and more.

Discover the 2026 edition, highlighting the best of French innovation and creativity, at the Courtyard ATX on March 14.

Featured XR Experiences

Discover four groundbreaking XR experiences created by innovative French start-ups, showcasing the future of immersive technology. 

• SILA by Agnès de Cayeux – Dark Euphoria
• The Sad Story of the Little Mouse Who Wanted to Become Somebody by Nicolas Bourniquel – Atlas V
• All Unsaved Progress Will Be Lost by Mélanie Courtinat – Diversion
• Less Than 5GR of Saffron – A Quiet Force in the Fight for Freedom and Equality – Atlas V
• Horizon of Khufu – Trailer – Excurio

Image: Less Than 5 GR of Saffron

Don’t miss a special panel presented by BPI France and Villa Albertine featuring Jules Rimbaud, U.S. Business Development Manager at Excurio; Sarah Wolozin, MIT Open Documentary Lab; and 2024 Villa Albertine resident Mathilde Lavenne, in which they will explore the challenges of immersive creation, from conception to dissemination. The panel will be moderated by Erin Reilly, founding director of the Texas Immersive Institute of UT Austin.

Image: Mathilde Lavenne (c) Camille O’Brien