AUSTIN, TEXAS — The documentary "Capturing Bigfoot" premiered at the 2026 SXSW Conference & Festivals in Austin, Texas, presenting newly discovered 1966 footage that the film argues was a rehearsal for the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film of Bigfoot. The documentary aims to debunk the original Patterson-Gimlin film.

The Patterson-Gimlin film is under one minute long and shows a tall, furry creature walking on two legs through Northern California woods. In the footage, the creature turns slightly, looks over its shoulder, and then walks away.

In 2022, a colleague of director Marq Evans approached him with a piece of old film belonging to her deceased father, seeking assistance to process and transfer it. The colleague's father had worked in a film processing lab in the 1960s and was socially connected to Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin. The newly discovered footage shows Gimlin on horseback alongside a man in a fur suit and was filmed approximately one year before the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film, possibly as a rehearsal.

Evans, who directs the documentary and teaches film at Olympic College in Washington, addressed skepticism about the footage's authenticity. On social media, some have suggested that the newly discovered footage could be an AI-generated hoax. "I think we're in that same boat now with AI, that because something could be AI, anything could be dismissed as AI," Evans said.

Eric Palacios, an Austin-based YouTuber who runs a channel devoted to investigating Bigfoot and other cryptids, attended the SXSW screening and posted a reaction video immediately afterward. Before seeing the documentary, Palacios believed the Patterson-Gimlin film held up to scrutiny; after viewing it, he changed his mind about the film's credibility.

Palacios received criticism and harassment from Bigfoot believers after posting his reaction. "I was kind of disgusted the way some of these people were acting — people that you've seen on television, on documentaries, talking about the Patterson footage and other stuff," Palacios said in a video posted online. Despite his changed view of the Patterson-Gimlin film, Palacios maintained an openness to broader possibilities. "To me, I still think there's a possibility of something being out there. What it is, I can't say, but I mean, there's a million reports, eyewitness reports, and everything," he said.

Some members of the Bigfoot community who have not seen the documentary have relied on secondhand descriptions of the new footage in forming their assessments.