Frank & Lois review – A poignant drama about dementia and caregiving in prison | Sundance 2026

HeyOne of the greatest achievements of a particular type of Sundance film is the ability to highlight an experience or community that we were not previously aware of. This year’s stoic and sensitive drama Frank and Louis takes us behind bars, a place we’ve been many times before at this festival, but to highlight the hard work done by inmates who care for those with dementia, a particularly difficult task in an already difficult place. Petra Volpi, the Swiss writer-director, who last explored a more familiar form of caregiving in Late Shift, a grueling nursing drama, makes her English-language debut with a film inspired by the “Gold Coats” peer support program at a California state prison for men.

As with her previous films, there’s a real rigor in how she focuses on underappreciated work, but whereas Late Shift was more naturalistic and experimental, Frank & Louis is far more crafted and emotional, a sharper showcase for the heartstrings. It’s a difficult subject not to be moved by, the slow loss of our mental faculties, something many of us are probably terribly familiar with, and it’s a difficult and somewhat desperate experience to witness on screen.

It’s a case Frank (Kingsley Ben-Adir) has no experience with, moving to his umpteenth prison while serving a decades-long sentence for murder. But he joins a foster program while he awaits his parole hearing, hoping his participation will mitigate the severity of his crime. It’s caregiving as a form of rehabilitation, and I was reminded of last year’s darker HBO documentary The Alabama Solution, which showed how prisoners were forced into the role of rehabilitation counselor — former addicts trying to save the lives of those still in the grip of addiction. This is much more structured but there is a similar feeling that the untrained are tackling a role that usually requires a huge amount of training. Frank finds himself in a dilemma and expects not to sink, after a serious advisor (Indira Varma) warns him that failure may negatively affect his file.

He’s paired with Louis (Rob Morgan), whose aggressive resistance to any form of help, even as his condition rapidly deteriorates, has left Frank in a difficult position. The two men slowly find a bond, the rigidity of their learned and necessary facades slowly melting as Louis realizes he needs to accept care and Frank figures out how to provide it effectively. Volpi finds poignant in their growing physical closeness—the strength of the hand that helps steady her—and as we learn more about their past crimes and their fractured families, she raises thorny questions. Frank discovers that Louis was someone who ruled the yard violently, creating enemies, some of whom still haunt him, waiting for revenge. But Lewis can barely remember the facts of his life, let alone the worst things he did in it, so is it right to punish someone for something he doesn’t remember doing? One of Frank’s fellow caregivers is a Latino man (Puerto Rican rapper Residente) who has to take care of a racist tattooed with a swastika. How much care does he deserve?

By sticking to a more traditional structure, Volpe’s film often seems to stick to the book. It may have found an unusual way in, but it still takes us to a place we know well, at least from afar. Frank’s scenes away from Lewis often feel too generic and unrevealing, and at times, it feels as if the story, with its inevitable ending established early on, doesn’t contain enough to power a full movie. Volpe wisely keeps her direction uncomplicated, and her sustained interest in caregiving unusually admirable, yet I found some of her work to be a bit flat and faceless, and the absent strings failed to lift some of the final act’s more emotional scenes. It works when it works because of its central performance. Ben-Adir is given a fairly standard prison character — quiet, withdrawn, holding his own until it’s most needed — but he avoids the tough, taciturn stereotype, and manages understandable waves of anger, fear, and discomfort, adding depth to a character that, on the page, is in need of some.

Morgan is a perfect example of a well-known but not widely known character actor who deserves a bigger and better chance. He’s found a home at Sundance, with roles in Pariah, Mudbound, Monsters and Men, and The Last Black Man in San Francisco, and the nature of this particular role and the haunting force of his performance seem enough to push him into new, perhaps award-worthy, territory. His dark moments of realization – that something is changing, fading, dying – are so devastating to watch, as the man is no longer able to protect and maintain himself as he always had, and becomes dependent on a caregiver who is neither family nor even a friend, and ultimately loves him. Frank and Louis is a strong drama, but Ben Adir and Morgan is something special.