It’s arduous to imagine that an period goes to finish this month. After January 2026, the Sundance Movie Competition, nonetheless one of many key occasions on any film-lover’s calendar, will likely be leaving Park Metropolis, Utah, and heading to Boulder, Colorado, for the foreseeable future. Going into this closing Utah Sundance, there was a query of whether or not it could be a deserved celebration of what was completed or an comprehensible wake for what’s being misplaced.
The jury remains to be out on whether or not the tone will likely be somber or joyous on the bottom—my wager is on an enchanting mixture of the 2—however this system appears undeniably spectacular. Final yr’s Sundance noticed the premieres of “Practice Desires,” “Sorry, Child,” “Rebuilding,” “Seeds,” “BLKNWS: Phrases and Situations,” “All That’s Left of You,” “The Good Neighbor,” “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” and plenty of extra movies that have been thought of among the many better of 2025. What would be the standouts of 2026? Most likely just a few from this record; most likely just a few that can shock everybody.
As standard, we plan to cowl virtually the complete program with critiques by Robert Daniels, Monica Castillo, Peyton Robinson, Zachary Lee, Marya E. Gates, and yours actually. Come again beginning Friday morning, January 23, for days of protection, together with all 20 movies beneath.
(Synopses courtesy of Sundance.)
“Chasing Summer season”
After shedding each her job and boyfriend, Jamie retreats to her small Texas hometown, the place mates and flings from a fateful highschool summer season flip her life the wrong way up.
Celebrated Sundance Movie Competition alum Josephine Decker (director of 2018’s Madeline’s Madeline and 2020’s Shirley) collaborates with acclaimed comic — and right here, writer-star — Iliza Shlesinger to deliver to life this charming and sensual story of generational subversions and sudden second probabilities. Shlesinger’s razor-sharp wit is in full type and pairs seamlessly with Decker’s vibrant cinematic eye, making for an empowering and refreshing take a look at the implications and pleasures of past-meets-present collisions. Shlesinger mines private expertise for a robust and ardent efficiency, revealing a uncommon and nuanced vulnerability. Turning the millennial coming-of-age narrative on its head with humor and coronary heart, Chasing Summer season provides a relatable stroll down the messy crossroads that coming dwelling can deliver — in all its chaos and risk.
“Frank & Louis”
Frank, serving a life sentence, takes a jail job caring for ageing inmates with Alzheimer’s and dementia. What begins as a self-interested bid for parole turns into a profound, transformative bond with fellow inmate Louis, providing Frank a glimpse of redemption in an unforgiving place.
In jail for homicide, Frank (Kingsley Ben-Adir) accepts a put up caring for fellow inmates within the hopes of successful parole. He’s assigned to frail, paranoid Louis (Rob Morgan), a once-feared inmate with early-onset dementia. Frank steadily wins his belief, however is quickly confronted together with his personal reminiscences and regrets.
Anchored by Ben-Adir’s and Morgan’s quietly transferring performances, Petra Biondina Volpe’s understated jail drama explores the potential for rehabilitation via caretaking. As Frank types an unusually intimate and tender reference to Louis, the movie thoughtfully displays on reminiscence, guilt, and id and explores the distinction between punishment and redemption. Avoiding the sensational tropes of the jail style, Frank & Louis is a considerate story concerning the affected person work of going through oneself whereas caring for others.
“Gail Daughtry and the Movie star Intercourse Move”
Midwestern bride-to-be Gail Daughtry has a “free celeb move” settlement along with her fiancé — who makes use of it. Along with her relationship in disaster, Gail units out on an epic journey via Hollywood to even the scales.
Director David Wain’s fifth function movie to premiere on the Sundance Movie Competition follows wide-eyed Gail (a delightfully impressed Zoey Deutch) and her fellow hairdresser/bestie Otto on their quest to seek out and seduce Gail’s celeb crush, the enigmatic and beguiling Jon Hamm. Unbeknownst to them, a pair of hapless mob enforcers are scorching on their path to reclaim an by chance swapped briefcase stuffed with secret (and essential) paperwork for his or her imperious boss. Traversing the streets of Los Angeles, they decide up a motley assortment of Hollywood hangers-on, all keen to help Gail on her frenzied hunt for Hamm.
Wain and co-writer Ken Marino brilliantly make the most of and enhance upon each adventurous caper film trope conceivable. With daft dialogue, absurd sight gags, and cameos that by no means disappoint, Gail Daughtry and the Movie star Intercourse Move is an unhinged screwball comedy that isn’t to be missed.
“The Gallerist”
A determined gallerist conspires to promote a useless physique at Artwork Basel Miami.
Cathy Yan returns to the Sundance Movie Competition (her debut, Lifeless Pigs, premiered on the 2018 Sundance Movie Competition) with this wickedly enjoyable, corrosive satire of the modern artwork world.
Getting ready for her Artwork Basel premiere, gallerist Polina Polinski (Natalie Portman) hosts an early search for artwork influencer Dalton Hardberry (Zach Galifianakis) to evaluation rising artist Stella Burgess (Da’Vine Pleasure Randolph). Dalton’s unimpressed with the gallery till he sees one piece that captures his consideration and revs up the ruthless machine of the artwork world.
Strong and exact with terrific performances by a stellar forged, The Gallerist reinforces Yan’s buoyant means to survey society’s ills while illuminating poetic swimming pools of magnificence speckling the surrounds.
“Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!”
Haru and Luis love competing in Tokyo’s ballroom dance scene, however after tragedy strikes, Haru withdraws into isolation. When mates coax her again to the studio, she develops an infatuation with the brand new teacher. She should face what comes subsequent as sparks fly.
Director Josef Kubota Wladyka’s effervescent depiction of a girl dancing via her grief is as heartwarming as it’s enjoyable. Visually daring and brimming with whimsy but grounded in emotional reality, the movie pulses with vivid colours, vibrant music, and zesty characters. Acclaimed actress Rinko Kikuchi brings profound sensitivity and endearing appeal to the function of Haru, deftly balancing the burden of a mourning widow with the spark of newfound want. Breakout dance numbers provide a window into her fantastical creativeness, that includes invigorating choreography matched by a digicam that feels simply as kinetic. Whereas the movie is anchored by processing grief, Haru’s journey bursts with a lot messy life that it serves as a joyous reminder of the fantastic thing about dwelling, and dwelling full out.
“The Historical past of Concrete”
After attending a workshop on learn how to write and promote a Hallmark film, filmmaker John Wilson tries to make use of the identical formulation to promote a documentary about concrete.
Documentarian and observational humor connoisseur John Wilson makes his function directorial debut with a movie that’s effortlessly hysterical and genuinely arduous to explain. The The best way to With John Wilson creator’s fast, permeating wit and boundless curiosity clock in, this time via the lenses of urbanism and, one way or the other, the establishment of Hallmark.
A heady comedic whiplash emerges as Wilson bounces between (literal) textures of the mundane. Underlying Wilson’s well-established, distinctive filmmaking language are each an mental specificity and a unusually leveling impulse — a fascination with the breadth of American life and the constructed surroundings that comprises it.
The Historical past of Concrete rests on a pure, generative want to offer heat to the invisibly ubiquitous, answering key questions comparable to: “Who removes the gum from our sidewalks?” That is an unassumingly unusual, joyful documentary that nobody else might have made, good for the chronically on-line, the studied thinker, and everybody in between.
“I Need Your Intercourse”
When fresh-faced Elliot lands a job with artist and provocateur Erika Tracy, his fantasies come true as she faucets him to grow to be her sexual muse. However Elliot finds himself out of his depth as Erika takes him on a journey right into a world of intercourse, obsession, energy, betrayal, and homicide.
In writer-director Gregg Araki’s newest function, a sex-forward Los Angeles artwork gallery hosts a delightfully enigmatic sadomasochistic recreation, as Cooper Hoffman’s keen Elliot is pushed to the sting by the sharply sardonic Erika, masterfully portrayed by Olivia Wilde. Greater than an art-world satire or a celebration of depravity, Araki and Karley Sciortino’s quick-witted writing and round narrative construction reveal a spunky but earnest reflection on the present state of intercourse — difficult misaligned conceptions of kink/predation, exhibition, and generational predispositions towards sexual freedom and autonomy.
I Need Your Intercourse is Araki’s eleventh Sundance Movie Competition premiere (following the episodic Now Apocalypse in 2019), constituting a recent, prismatic validation of type for the auteur — an outrageously playful sexual campaign that solely the one Gregg Araki might make.
“If I Go Will They Miss Me”
Twelve-year-old Lil Ant struggles to attach together with his father when he begins to see surreal, virtually spectral visions of boys drifting round his neighborhood. Their presence reveals a hyperlink between father and son, laying naked the threads that bind household, legacy, and place.
Set within the working-class Watts neighborhood in South Los Angeles, writer-director Walter Thompson-Hernández’s transferring household drama focuses on a fraught father-son relationship. Huge Ant is simply out of jail and struggling to reconnect together with his spouse, Lozita (Danielle Brooks), and adolescent son, Lil Ant, a delicate artist craving for a task mannequin. Tailored from his acclaimed quick (2022 Sundance Movie Competition, Brief Movie Jury Award: U.S. Fiction), Thompson-Hernández audaciously combines social and magical realism, charting the emotional trajectory of a conflicted dad and his stressed son. Dense with allusions to Greek mythology, however grounded in documentary element, the movie has its head within the clouds with out shedding sight of the street-level situations that form its characters’ lives. If I Go Will They Miss Me is a loving, lyrical portrait of life below the LAX flight path.
“Within the Blink of an Eye”
Three storylines, spanning hundreds of years, intersect and mirror on hope, connection, and the circle of life.
From the 2017 Black Checklist script by Colby Day (Spaceman), Andrew Stanton (Wall-E, Discovering Nemo) constructs an elegantly interwoven triptych that contemplates the essence of humanity throughout three moments in time. A Neanderthal household, displaced from their dwelling, struggles to outlive, shield the kids, and use primitive instruments. Within the current day, Claire (Rashida Jones), a pushed post-grad anthropologist learning historic proto-human stays, begins a relationship with a fellow pupil, Greg (Daveed Diggs). And two centuries later, on a spaceship sure for a distant planet, Coakley (Kate McKinnon) and a sentient onboard laptop confront a illness afflicting the ship’s oxygen-producing crops. The clever, poetic manner the movie’s storylines intersect creates a profound, philosophical meditation on how we expertise love, loss (of oldsters and youngsters), mortality and the necessity for connection — with one another, the pure world, and expertise — no matter our time.
“The Invite”
Joe and Angela are on skinny ice, and tonight could be when all of it falls aside. Sadly, their upstairs neighbors are about to reach for dinner, and the whole lot that may go mistaken goes worse.
A fiercely energized chamber dramedy, The Invite revitalizes the basic, largely bygone cinema of marital strife. Olivia Wilde’s scenes from a wedding are suitably uncooked and revealing, but additionally compassionate, deeply human, and extremely humorous. From a screenplay by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, the movie gleefully plunges two {couples} (Wilde and Seth Rogen; Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton) into the crucible of a seemingly innocuous night, delighting in its contortions as awkward small speak turns to the unearthing of long-tenured grievances, insecurities, codependencies, failed aspirations, and sexual FOMO. Establishing a vibrant aesthetic and brilliantly orchestrated interactions, Wilde finds a universe of house inside one location, and her course of — workshopping materials with the forged, capturing chronologically (on 35mm!), and welcoming them to discover as they labored — offers The Invite a outstanding authenticity.
“Josephine”
After 8-year-old Josephine by chance witnesses a criminal offense in Golden Gate Park, she acts out seeking a technique to regain management of her security whereas adults are helpless to console her.
Author-director Beth de Araújo creates a tense, devastating, and transcendently empathetic portrait of a younger lady wrestling with a newly found worry and anger she will neither escape nor absolutely comprehend after her encounter with violence. Greta Zozula’s exact cinematography escalates the unease, often putting us in Josephine’s weak, pissed off perspective because the movie finds a daring and distinctive visible language to symbolize how the expertise continues to hang-out her.
Mason Reeves delivers a looking out, tender efficiency as Josephine. As her fiercely protecting father and delicate mother, Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan give keenly felt turns as dad and mom who’re completely dedicated to their struggling, beloved little one however are ill-equipped to navigate the upheaval their household faces. Philip Ettinger does unforgettable work in an important, advanced supporting function.
“The Second”
A rising pop star navigates the complexities of fame and business strain whereas making ready for her enviornment tour debut.
A flashy, tongue-in-cheek hyper-pop mockumentary, The Second is Charli xcx’s artistic reflection on her personal meteoric success with brat. Directed and co-written by “360” music video director Aidan Zamiri in his function debut, the movie has a stylishly easy rhythm and a uniquely self-aware, ironic humorousness. Charli xcx performs an exaggeratedly manic model of herself, surrounded by a forged of characters that mirror each the chums and foes of the period. Hailey Gates and Alexander Skarsgård personify near-diametrically opposed influences in Charli xcx’s dynamic profession; items within the grand scheme of brat’s enduring cultural energy.
Behind the satire and Charli xcx’s celeb is an earnest and heartfelt expression of the burden of success, the value of legacy, and the battle to protect creative integrity. The Second is a movie for followers and newcomers alike — a full of life, present, dazzling capsule of probably the most iconic artists of our time.
“As soon as Upon a Time in Harlem”
A decade after his dying, genre-defying filmmaker William Greaves has one final trick up his sleeve with what he thought of a very powerful occasion he captured on movie: a 1972 get together he engineered with the dwelling luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance.
Already a longtime documentarian and having simply made Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, William Greaves gathered among the key artists, musicians, librarians, poets, journalists, actors, photographers, lecturers, and critics of the Harlem Renaissance at Duke Ellington’s dwelling for a celebration, which he filmed. The ensuing full of life conversations, constructed round vivid retelling of previous occasions, are partly outdated mates reconnecting, partly a rehashing of acquainted conflicts, and partly private reminiscences turning into recorded historical past. Co-directed by his son David Greaves, who was a cameraman that day at Ellington’s condo, As soon as Upon A Time In Harlem is a staggering achievement, each as a file of probably the most vital creative actions in American historical past, and in addition as a chronicle of the magical energy of artwork and its creation to remake our world.
“Saccharine”
Hana, a lovelorn medical pupil, turns into terrorized by a hungry ghost after participating in an obscure weight reduction craze: consuming human ashes.
Natalie Erika James follows Relic (2020 Sundance Movie Competition) with this revoltingly punchy, trendy, and well timed tackle physique horror. Via sickeningly syrupy scenes of literal and religious consumption, Midori Francis embodies Hana, a body-dysmorphic younger lady bent on chasing her weight purpose in any respect prices. The archetypal fantasy of the hungry ghost manifests actually, making a uniquely tense ambiance match for a bodily and metaphorically harmful hang-out.
The viscosity of James’ exploration of haunting and physique horror within the period of accessible weight-loss drugs is very poignant, as Saccharine works to deconstruct weight and fatness as metrics by which we classify antagonism and private shortcoming. What if the desperation to evolve is a harmful consumption itself? What if we manifest our personal bottomless specters?
“See You Once I See You”
With the assistance of his household, a comedy author battles PTSD after the tragic dying of his sister.
Jay Duplass makes his return to the Sundance Movie Competition with an emotionally advanced examination of grief and trauma, balanced completely with streaks of levity all through. See You Once I See You brings author Adam Cayton-Holland’s memoir Tragedy Plus Time: A Tragi-Comedian Memoir to the display screen with an impressed ensemble forged led by fellow Sundance Movie Competition alum, director-actor Cooper Raiff, as Aaron, a younger author struggling to come back to phrases with the lack of his sister and greatest good friend Leah (Kaitlyn Dever). Duplass faucets into the millennial milieu of masking sorrow with humor and the devastating psychological toll that avoidance can tackle the bereaved, ushering us via a parade of ill-advised coping mechanisms and the collateral injury that follows together with his trademark sense of compassion and empathy at each flip.
“The Shitheads”
When two unqualified bozos are employed to switch a wealthy teen to rehab, their easy gig shortly spirals into harmful mayhem.
Macon Blair makes a welcome return to the Sundance Movie Competition following his acclaimed U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize winner — I don’t really feel at dwelling on this world anymore. (2017) — with this raucous and wildly entertaining descent into insanity. Dave Franco and O’Shea Jackson Jr. are completely (mis)matched as Mark and Davis, the fumbling circumstantial chaperones in command of transporting the more and more psychotic Sheridan (a superb Mason Thames). Phenomenal supporting turns from Nicholas Braun, Peter Dinklage, and Kiernan Shipka spherical out the ensemble forged, every extra sudden and weird than the final. Blair treats us to his signature absurdist humorousness and douses it with gasoline and psychedelics, crafting an uncanny world the place the worst intentions internet the very best yields and the open highway is stuffed with Shitheads.
“Troublemaker”
The battle in opposition to apartheid is recounted via Nelson Mandela’s personal voice, drawn from recordings he made whereas writing his autobiography Lengthy Stroll to Freedom.
Director Antoine Fuqua and anti-apartheid activist Mac Maharaj deliver to cinematic life just lately recovered interviews with Rolihlahla — a reputation that interprets from Xhosa as “troublemaker,” and is the delivery title of Nelson Mandela.
Fuqua crafts collectively Maharaj’s testimony, highly effective archival footage, the evocative animation of Thabang Lehobye, and Mandela’s spoken phrases to supply this remarkably private and anatomical recount of the anti-apartheid motion — from Mandela’s childhood grooming within the royal court docket, his rebellious elopement and politicization in Johannesburg, his historic presidency, and at this time’s enduring problems with liberation in South Africa.
As fascist white supremist actions proliferate violently world wide at this time, Troublemaker shines mild on a motion that discovered its technique to the successful facet, and what worth a troublemaker provides when there’s power in numbers and collective motion.
“undertone”
The host of a preferred paranormal podcast turns into haunted by terrifying recordings mysteriously despatched her manner.
Strained by the duty of offering end-of-life care to her dying mom, Evy (Nina Kiri) seeks respite from the loneliness of her fragmented actuality. Now dwelling in a home stuffed with sentimental keepsakes and reminiscences, her sanity and construction lies inside her work on a supernatural podcast, The Undertone. Whereas she often performs skeptic to the creepy (and infrequently disturbing) audio information despatched to her by co-host Justin (Adam DiMarco) for podcast fodder, the newest submission hits otherwise. A collection of 10 unheard recordings from a younger pregnant couple are unfurled one after the other, every extra ominous than the final. As Evy attracts parallels to her present plight, hidden messages manifest, pushing her additional towards insanity.
Author-director Ian Tuason’s debut function is unsettling to say the least. Deceptively terrifying in its conceit, Evy’s solitude manifests itself as a visceral audio-visual panorama, the place the ring of a cellular phone creates simply as a lot of a soar scare as any monster ever might.
“The Weight”
In Oregon in 1933, Samuel Murphy is torn from his daughter and despatched to a brutal work camp. Warden Clancy tempts him with early launch if he smuggles gold via lethal wilderness, however betrayal festers throughout the crew, and Murphy questions how far he’ll go to see his little one once more.
“zi”
In Hong Kong, a younger lady haunted by visions of her future self meets a stranger who modifications the course of her night time — and presumably her life.
Kogonada performs with — and returns to — type on this delicate cinematic poem. Held inside a classy jaunt via the streets of Hong Kong, zi is a movie with soul and a wavelike confidence that commits to recursivity as a mode and central theme. Kogonada regulars Michelle Mao, Haley Lu Richardson, and Jin Ha rigorously painting transitory misfits, grappling with a intelligent fusion of existential nervousness, romantic misgiving, and private reminiscence.
Someplace between sci-fi and supernatural, a deep, simple heat takes root. Following Columbus (2017 Sundance Movie Competition), After Yang (2020 Sundance Movie Competition), and A Huge Daring Stunning Journey, Kogonada crafts a decidedly contained movie, exploring a pervasive sense of unmooring, but cultivating an unrelenting sense of peace. Via the igniting/smoldering embers of relationships misplaced/forming, zi is an invite to give up to Kogonada’s actually indie world of temporal fragmentation.
