Other Worlds Austin, the city’s only science fiction film festival, starts tonight at the Galaxy Highland. It continues Friday and Saturday.
The U.S. première of Özgür Yildirim’s “Boy 7,” the German-language adaptation of a popular Dutch young adult dystopian novel, takes place tonight.
Most of the slate — including a mess of short films — screens only once. There are two screenings each for two centerpiece films, “No Men Beyond This Point” (twice on Friday) and “Embers” (twice on Saturday).
“No Men Beyond This Point,” an alternate history written and directed by Mark Sawers and making its Texas première, stars Patrick Gilmore, Kristine Cofsky and Tara Pratt. Andrew Myers is a 37-year-old who happens to be the youngest man still alive, as this is a world where women have been able to reproduce without men since 1953 and eventually stopped giving birth to male babies entirely. Myers becomes involved in a push to keep men from going extinct.
“Embers,” directed by Claire Carré and written by Carré and Charles Spano, stars Jason Ritter, Iva Gocheva and Greta Fernández in a post-apocalyptic flick that follows five stories in world in which memory no longer exists, because of a global neurological epidemic.
The festival will close by announcing the winner of the inaugural Mary Shelley Award for Sci-Fi Filmmaking, a $500 grant that will be given to the best film that “furthers the involvement and representation of women in sci-fi.”
To qualify, the films must either be written and/or directed by a woman, or feature complex female protagonists driving the narrative and leading the action. This year’s jury will be Austin Chronicle’s Marjorie Baumgarten, Atlanta Film Festival creative director Kristy Breneman and Gamechanger Films president Mynette Louie.
Go here for tickets.
