It’s fitting that the last film I saw at SXSW was Nerdcore Rising. I’d begun my experience of this year’s festival with a screener of We Are Wizards (review here), a documentary that mostly focuses on the Harry Potter-based “wizard rock”, which I’d then assumed was the nerdiest music genre in existence. And now I’d finished my experience with this doc, which is actually about the nerdiest music genre in existence, “nerdcore hip hop”.

The proof is not in the artists, though. It’s in the fans, which director Negin Farsad is right to concentrate on and showcase so significantly here. The film may center on one specific nerdcore hip hop artist, MC Frontalot, and his band’s first tour, but Nerdcore Rising is really, ultimately, about the freaks and geeks who make up the audience at each show along the way. Not since the height of the ska scene ten years ago has there been a genre so well defined by the character of its fanbase.

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