There are Texas filmmakers who talk about Texas a lot. David Lowery is not one of them. He is based in Dallas, makes films on his own terms, and has quietly built one of the most varied and respected directorial careers of his generation — moving between A24 arthouse and Disney without losing his voice in either direction.
That's harder than it sounds.
The Resume
Lowery (born 1980) started making short films in Dallas in his early twenties. His feature debut St. Nick (2009) played festivals. Then Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013) — a sun-bleached Texas romance with Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck — premiered at Sundance and announced him to the world. Sundance was not ready for how quiet it was, and that was the point.
What followed is a filmography that shouldn't cohere but does:
- Pete's Dragon (2016) — a Disney remake that was better than it had any business being
- A Ghost Story (2017) — a film about grief told from inside a sheet; one of the stranger films released by a studio-adjacent label in the last decade
- The Old Man & the Gun (2018) — Robert Redford's final film, a heist picture of exceptional charm
- The Green Knight (2021) — Dev Patel in an A24 Arthurian epic that divided audiences and delighted critics
- Peter Pan & Wendy (2023) — Disney+ again, handled with care
The thread running through all of it: Lowery is interested in time, memory, and what people leave behind. He's not interested in plot for its own sake. He is, by any useful definition, an auteur — and he does it from Oak Cliff, Dallas.
What He's Doing for North Texas
Beyond his own work, Lowery has made a concrete investment in the next generation of DFW filmmakers. The North Texas Pioneer Film Award, which he co-sponsors through the Austin Film Society and Ley Line Entertainment, offers cash grants specifically for emerging North Texas filmmakers — with an emphasis on underrepresented voices.
The award is administered via the Oak Cliff Film Festival (OCFF), held each June at the Texas Theatre on Jefferson Boulevard — the same theater where Lee Harvey Oswald was captured in 1963. The OCFF is a genuine neighborhood film festival: community-driven, locally focused, and genuinely good at identifying films that matter.
The 2025 edition reportedly broke attendance records. Best narrative feature went to No Sleep Till. David Lowery was in the building.
The Austin Film Society, which administers the grant alongside OCFF and Ley Line, also runs its own annual grant program for Texas filmmakers statewide. But the North Texas Pioneer Film Award is specifically for DFW — and Lowery's involvement is a signal: there's a network here, and it's worth plugging into.
Why This Matters
Texas's film infrastructure story in 2025-2026 has been dominated by Taylor Sheridan's industrial-scale production empire in Fort Worth. SGS Studios, Landman, $1.5 billion in state incentives — it's a legitimate industry story.
But Lowery is the counter-narrative: the independent filmmaker who never left, who makes personal films with theatrical ambition, and who uses whatever cultural capital he's accumulated to pull other North Texas filmmakers up alongside him. It's not flashy. It works.
If you're a filmmaker in Dallas and you haven't connected with the Oak Cliff Film Festival orbit or the AFS grant network, you're missing the most useful community available to you in North Texas.
What's Next
Lowery is characteristically quiet about his next project. His last film was Peter Pan & Wendy in 2023, so he's due. Given his pace (a film every 2-3 years) and the volume of work he put into the Arthurian and fairy tale territory, speculation points toward something more personal and lower-budget — closer to A Ghost Story than Pete's Dragon. But he's earned the right to surprise us.
He'll be around. He always is.
Oak Cliff Film Festival: oakclifffilmfestival.com | Usually held in June at the Texas Theatre, Dallas AFS Grants (incl. North Texas Pioneer Film Award): austinfilm.org/grants
Texas Filmmaker Profiles: texas.film/filmmakers