The 2026 Texas Film Awards honor ‘Spy Kids,’ Sydney Chandler, Julian Schnabel and Sonny Carl Davis

For over 25 years, the Texas Film Awards have honored actors, directors and cinema-makers of all kinds.

A few recipients from the past several years include Carol Burnett, Shirley MacLaine, Shelley Duvall and Glenn Powell.

The 2026 ceremony was March 5. Inductees included director Julian Schnabel and actors Sydney Chandler and Sonny Carl Davis. The event also honored the 25^th anniversary of the film “Spy Kids.”

The Austin Film Society hosts the awards. Holly Herrick is AFS’s Head of Film and Creative Media. Listen to her conversation with the Texas Standard via the audio player above or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard: Tell us more about this year’s honorees.

Holly Herrick: So this year we have just some incredible honorees who’ll be joining the Texas Film Hall of Fame.

We’ve had on our list for a long time our honoree Julian Schnabel, who is both a visual artist and a filmmaker. He has an incredibly unique career as a painter but also as a filmmaker whose most of his filmography has focused on films about artists and on the lives of artists.

And so most people probably know him from “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” which was nominated for an Academy Award. He’s also made movies about Van Gogh and Basquiat. He has a new film called “In the Hand of Dante” that stars Oscar Isaac.

So he’s just a prolific filmmaker in addition to a painter. And each of his films are really remarkable, both in scope and in his interest in sort of the mystery of what creates great art.

And Julian Schnabel is really known as a New York filmmaker, but his years in Texas were extremely important to his development. He moved to Brownsville as a teenager, went to high school and college in Texas before moving to New York.

So they were formative years for him. And he talks about Texas as being essential to his artistic practice and who he became as a creative.

I mentioned the Texas Film Awards are just over 25 now. It’s also 25 years of a big breakout film for a well-known Texas director. Can you tell me about that?

So this is the 25th anniversary of the film “Spy Kids.” And it’s a very special moment for Texas because “Spy Kids” was completely shot at Troublemaker Studios, which is Robert Rodriguez and Elizabeth Avellán’s studio right here in Austin. And it became a major global franchise.

And “Spy Kids,” if you haven’t revisited it lately, it’s a really special film that truly was made for a family audience where adults could enjoy it as much as children, and it was made from this child’s perspective, which is why you see kids falling in love with it over and over.

So two years ago, the film was entered into the Library of Congress, which means that it was preserved for its historical importance, and that was both for its representation of a Latino family, but also for just being one of the children’s and family films that has lasted the test of time.

It was by Robert Rodriguez, who based it on his own family. So it was really, he says, by a family for families.

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It’s part of the Austin Film Society’s mission, of course, to really boost filmmaking in Texas. Is there any shortage, or does it feel like there are just more and more opportunities to celebrate what’s being made here in Texas?

Texas has an incredible film heritage, and what we’re doing with the Texas Film Awards — is celebrating the past while pointing to what is next.

And what is really wonderful and special, and, I think, unique about this event, is that it raises funds for the AFS grant program. And those are grants that go directly to emerging filmmakers.

So the funds raised that evening will actually go to the making of small, independent films that often are the launchpads for these important careers in the arts.

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