Sundance 2026: The 10 films not to be missed at this year’s festival | Sundance 2026

TThis year’s Sundance Film Festival will be as special for the first time as it is for the last. It will be the first of its kind without its founder, Robert Redford, who died last September at age 89, and it will be the last of its kind in Utah, where it has been since the beginning in 1978.

Emotions, so often apparent regardless of films ruthlessly designed to evoke them, will run high, with events planned to commemorate a figure who helped create a launching pad and then an ecosystem for the American indies. But while both Redford and Park City’s sendoffs will be front and center, Sundance just isn’t Sundance without a slate of films to get attendees talking, too. Last year, it seemed like that chatter was less exciting than usual because while there were films that continued to spark conversation throughout the year ( Sorry Baby, If I Had Two Legs I’d Kick You, Dream Train, The Lurker, Twinless, pretty much every documentary premiere) there were more that were dead on arrival or crawling toward a slow death months later.

Can this year wrap things up for Utah State on a high?

gallerist

After winning a well-deserved Oscar for her traumatic downfall in Black Swan, Natalie Portman continued to take risks that many like her were afraid to take. Some worked (Jackie, Annihilation, May December, Vox Lux) and some didn’t (Lucy in the Sky, Jane’s Got a Gun, Song for Song), and Portman, in the most compliant mode, also managed to get lost in the Marvel machine, getting paid but losing our interest. After Portman criticized the Golden Globes for its lack of female directors in 2018, then wore a cape studded with their names to the 2020 Oscars to draw attention to the sexist snub, she was criticized for having only produced two films directed by women. She raised her hands and said she’d do her best and since then, she’s stuck with it, starring in Alma Har’el’s deranged Apple TV series “Lady in the Lake,” and this year she has two female-directed films scheduled for release. Before we see her enjoying Good Sex for Lena Dunham, she’s helming Cathy Yan’s The Gallerist, a satire of the Art Basel Miami set, in which she plays a gallery owner involved in a scheme that involves using a dead body as art. It’s always exciting to see Portman in non-superhero territory, and the supporting cast — Jenna Ortega, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Zach Galifianakis, Sterling K. Brown, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Danielle Brühl, Charli XCX — are some of the most exciting of the festival.

The moment

Charli xcx’s cinematic year is off to a flying start with Sundance which will see her appear in three major films. There are two small roles in the satirical art drama The Gallerist and the erotic drama I Want Your Sex, and then there is The Moment, her debut as a female lead, in which she played an exaggerated version of herself in a mockumentary of absurdist pop music. It’s the star’s response to many of the concert docs we’ve seen in recent years, imagining what might have been if she had made different choices during the summer of 2024. It’s a fun and unusual move from someone of her level of fame but also a risky one given how difficult it is to nail this particular brand of satire (the star cited This Is Spinal Tap as a major inspiration, and the sequel recently crashed and burned…) Missing or not, it’s going to be one of the hottest tickets at the festival.

The Knife: The attempted murder of Salman Rushdie

While it has become more difficult to rely on feature films in recent years, Sundance has become a more trustworthy place for documentaries. This week saw all five Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Feature depart from last year’s festival, and this month’s crop promises more hot-button issues and big-name celebrity news. There will be docs about figures like Billie Jean King and Brittney Griner, but the film getting the most attention is Alex Gibney’s intimate look at Salman Rushdie and the horrific attack he survived in 2022. Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, based on Rushdie’s similarly titled memoir, will feature video footage filmed by his wife, novelist and poet Rachel Eliza. Griffiths, and is set to give viewers more information about what happened that day and his recovery in the following months. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Rushdie said that the film is not the true crime story he envisioned, but rather a “love story” instead.

owner

It’s pretty much a given that the festival will see a major horror wave, with films like Get Out, Saw, The Babadook, Talk to Me, and Hereditary all receiving premieres at Park City in recent years. It’s not always easy to guess what movie it will be about. The past two years have seen huge sales for It’s What’s Inside and Together ($17 million apiece), two scary films that terrified audiences upon their release. It seems like the most exciting news at the moment is surrounding Buddy, a mystery midnight movie from the company that produces Barbarian and Arms. Little is known about the plot other than that it follows a young girl and her friends who have to escape from an evil version of a classic children’s TV show, and this early promotional hype has been calling it “a new take on horror,” whatever that ultimately means. It stars The Penguin’s Cristin Milioti alongside Michael Shannon, Patton Oswalt, and Keegan-Michael Key, an interesting cast that, along with a writer-director with adult sitcom experience, suggests horror with notable comedic elements.

Friend’s house here

There may be no other film at Sundance this year that feels quite as relevant as The Friend’s House Is Here, both for its content and the issues surrounding its premiere. It’s a secretly shot film about the importance of artistic freedom in Iran, made while the bombing was happening last summer and premiering as Khamenei’s regime makes life harder for Iranians than ever with no access to the internet and violence meted out to those who dare to protest. It also makes its debut because Trump’s travel ban means its two heroines and many crew members are unable to reach the United States. As director Jafar Panahi’s political thriller It Was Just an Accident receives two major Oscar nominations despite the director facing prison time in Iran, this drama about two women in Tehran who must protect each other after their creative circle is exposed, couldn’t seem more relevant.

Artificial Intelligence Doc: Or How I Became an Apocalypse

It’s almost time for an AI doc boom, given how much it’s impacting our daily lives, and this year’s Sundance has the origins of the doc Ghost in the Machine and then the more popular offering The AI ​​Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist. It’s Navalny’s new film from director Daniel Rohr, co-directed by Charlie Tyrell, and boasting Oscar-winning producer Daniel Kwan, of Everything Everywhere All at One. The film, which has major backing from Focus Features, was born from Rohr’s desire to understand the risks and opportunities associated with artificial intelligence as he prepares to become a father. The pre-release material promises “a stark wake-up call that explores the existential perils and extraordinary promise of this rapidly rising technology.”

History of concrete

John Wilson’s critically acclaimed short-lived HBO series How To With John Wilson, which was a memoir, essay, and watch documenting the lives of New Yorkers while dispensing advice, was so difficult to pin down that he made his own trailer focusing on that very fact. His first film is based on a similarly unusual idea: What if he used the knowledge he learned in a workshop meant to help people write and sell a Hallmark movie to try to sell a documentary about concrete? It’s hard to know exactly what to expect from this, but the promotional materials highlight the word “weird” but also “delightful,” so expect the unexpected. With Wilson’s passionate fan base and Josh Safdie as producer, expect this to be one of the most sought-after tickets at the festival.

Invitation

Having premiered her beautifully produced but bafflingly written thriller Don’t Worry Darling in Venice, one might be a bit wary about getting too excited about another Olivia Wilde-directed film getting a premiere at a high-profile festival. But the actor-director, who is also helming Greg Araki’s erotic drama I Want Your Sex at Sundance, has a follow-up interesting enough to pique our curiosity to say the least. While its ambitious sci-fi set in the 1950s may have ultimately collapsed under the weight of its own incoherence, The Invite keeps things simple. Based on the Spanish comedy The People Upstation, the film revolves around an unhappy couple who are invited to participate in an orgy by their neighbors. Wilde stars alongside Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz, and Edward Norton (the original cast was to include Amy Adams, Paul Rudd, and Tessa Thompson), and while the small cast and limited locations may make the film feel like a classic Sundance room cut, Wilde shot it on 35mm with a team of collaborators (longtime Yorgos Lanthimos editor, Blood Orange on music, The Last Black Man in San Francisco’s Skills). cinematographer) suggesting it will be much more than that.

the weight

2025 has been a hell of a year for Ethan Hawke, as he topped the box office with Black Phone 2, a critically acclaimed new TV series in The Lowdown and scored his fifth Academy Award nomination for his exceptional performance in Blue Moon. He begins the new year by returning to Sundance (he has previously premiered films including Before Sunrise, Boyhood and Juliet, Naked at the fest), teaming up with Russell Crowe, who had a surprise hit with the World War II drama Nuremberg last year (the film grossed more than $46 million at the global box office, more than many of this year’s Oscar contenders). In TV director and editor Padraic McKinley’s The Weight, Hawke will play a struggling father in the 1930s who must smuggle gold in order to escape a brutal labor camp. Crowe will once again take on villain duties.

Anti-heroin

One of the festival’s most interesting star-driven docs promises an unfiltered look at Courtney Love, a star who has long been unable to work with any kind of filter. Antiheroine follows her 2019 move to London where she focuses on maintaining her sobriety and recording a new album. The film features contributions from names such as Michael Stipe and Billie Joe Armstrong, and has been described as “raw, complex and very human”. It comes from the same production team that has directed documentaries about other famous women like Pamela Anderson and Victoria Beckham. While it’s healthy to remain a little skeptical of celebrity docs made with the subject’s input, Love is not the star one might imagine.