2026 Sundance Preview: 20 Films We Can’t Wait to See | Festivals & Awards | Roger Ebert

It’s hard to believe that an era is going to end this month. After January 2026, the Sundance Film Festival, still one of the key events on any film-lover’s calendar, will be leaving Park City, Utah, and heading to Boulder, Colorado, for the foreseeable future. Going into this final Utah Sundance, there was a question of whether it would be a deserved celebration of what was accomplished or an understandable wake for what’s being lost.

The jury is still out on whether the tone will be somber or joyous on the ground—my bet is on a fascinating combination of the two—but the program looks undeniably impressive. Last year’s Sundance saw the premieres of “Train Dreams,” “Sorry, Baby,” “Rebuilding,” “Seeds,” “BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions,” “All That’s Left of You,” “The Perfect Neighbor,” “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” and many more films that were considered among the best of 2025. What will be the standouts of 2026? Probably a few from this list; probably a few that will surprise everyone.

As usual, we plan to cover almost the entire program with reviews by Robert Daniels, Monica Castillo, Peyton Robinson, Zachary Lee, Marya E. Gates, and yours truly. Come back starting Friday morning, January 23, for days of coverage, including all 20 films below.

(Synopses courtesy of Sundance.)

“Chasing Summer”

After losing both her job and boyfriend, Jamie retreats to her small Texas hometown, where friends and flings from a fateful high school summer turn her life upside down.

Celebrated Sundance Film Festival alum Josephine Decker (director of 2018’s Madeline’s Madeline and 2020’s Shirley) collaborates with acclaimed comedian — and here, writer-star — Iliza Shlesinger to bring to life this charming and sensual story of generational subversions and unexpected second chances. Shlesinger’s razor-sharp wit is in full form and pairs seamlessly with Decker’s vibrant cinematic eye, making for an empowering and refreshing look at the consequences and pleasures of past-meets-present collisions. Shlesinger mines personal experience for a powerful and ardent performance, revealing a rare and nuanced vulnerability. Turning the millennial coming-of-age narrative on its head with humor and heart, Chasing Summer offers a relatable stroll down the messy crossroads that coming home can bring — in all its chaos and possibility.

“Frank & Louis”

Frank, serving a life sentence, takes a prison job caring for aging inmates with Alzheimer’s and dementia. What begins as a self-interested bid for parole becomes a profound, transformative bond with fellow inmate Louis, offering Frank a glimpse of redemption in an unforgiving place.

In prison for murder, Frank (Kingsley Ben-Adir) accepts a post caring for fellow inmates in the hopes of winning parole. He’s assigned to frail, paranoid Louis (Rob Morgan), a once-feared inmate with early-onset dementia. Frank gradually wins his trust, but is soon confronted with his own memories and regrets.

Anchored by Ben-Adir’s and Morgan’s quietly moving performances, Petra Biondina Volpe’s understated prison drama explores the potential for rehabilitation through caretaking. As Frank forms an unusually intimate and tender connection with Louis, the film thoughtfully reflects on memory, guilt, and identity and explores the difference between punishment and redemption. Avoiding the sensational tropes of the prison genre, Frank & Louis is a thoughtful story about the patient work of facing oneself while caring for others.

“Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass”

Midwestern bride-to-be Gail Daughtry has a “free celebrity pass” agreement with her fiancé — who uses it. With her relationship in crisis, Gail sets out on an epic journey through Hollywood to even the scales.

Director David Wain’s fifth feature film to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival follows wide-eyed Gail (a delightfully inspired Zoey Deutch) and her fellow hairdresser/bestie Otto on their quest to find and seduce Gail’s celebrity crush, the enigmatic and beguiling Jon Hamm. Unbeknownst to them, a pair of hapless mob enforcers are hot on their trail to reclaim an accidentally swapped briefcase full of secret (and very important) documents for their imperious boss. Traversing the streets of Los Angeles, they pick up a motley assortment of Hollywood hangers-on, all eager to assist Gail on her frenzied hunt for Hamm.

Wain and co-writer Ken Marino brilliantly utilize and improve upon every adventurous caper movie trope imaginable. With daft dialogue, absurd sight gags, and cameos that never disappoint, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is an unhinged screwball comedy that is not to be missed.

“The Gallerist”

A desperate gallerist conspires to sell a dead body at Art Basel Miami.

Cathy Yan returns to the Sundance Film Festival (her debut, Dead Pigs, premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival) with this wickedly fun, corrosive satire of the contemporary art world.

Preparing for her Art Basel premiere, gallerist Polina Polinski (Natalie Portman) hosts an early look for art influencer Dalton Hardberry (Zach Galifianakis) to review emerging artist Stella Burgess (Da’Vine Joy Randolph). Dalton’s unimpressed with the gallery until he sees one piece that captures his attention and revs up the ruthless machine of the art world.

Robust and precise with terrific performances by a stellar cast, The Gallerist reinforces Yan’s buoyant ability to survey society’s ills whilst illuminating poetic pools of beauty speckling the surrounds.

“Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!”

Haru and Luis love competing in Tokyo’s ballroom dance scene, but after tragedy strikes, Haru withdraws into isolation. When friends coax her back to the studio, she develops an infatuation with the new instructor. She must face what comes next as sparks fly.

Director Josef Kubota Wladyka’s effervescent depiction of a woman dancing through her grief is as heartwarming as it is fun. Visually bold and brimming with whimsy yet grounded in emotional truth, the film pulses with vivid colors, vibrant music, and zesty characters. Acclaimed actress Rinko Kikuchi brings profound sensitivity and endearing charm to the role of Haru, deftly balancing the weight of a mourning widow with the spark of newfound desire. Breakout dance numbers offer a window into her fantastical imagination, featuring invigorating choreography matched by a camera that feels just as kinetic. While the film is anchored by processing grief, Haru’s journey bursts with so much messy life that it serves as a joyous reminder of the beauty of living, and living full out.

“The History of Concrete”

After attending a workshop on how to write and sell a Hallmark movie, filmmaker John Wilson tries to use the same formula to sell a documentary about concrete.

Documentarian and observational humor connoisseur John Wilson makes his feature directorial debut with a film that is effortlessly hysterical and genuinely hard to describe. The How to With John Wilson creator’s quick, permeating wit and boundless curiosity clock in, this time through the lenses of urbanism and, somehow, the institution of Hallmark.

A heady comedic whiplash emerges as Wilson bounces between (literal) textures of the mundane. Underlying Wilson’s well-established, unique filmmaking language are both an intellectual specificity and a strangely leveling impulse — a fascination with the breadth of American life and the built environment that contains it.

The History of Concrete rests on a pure, generative desire to give warmth to the invisibly ubiquitous, answering key questions such as: “Who removes the gum from our sidewalks?” This is an unassumingly strange, joyful documentary that no one else could have made, perfect for the chronically online, the studied philosopher, and everyone in between.

“I Want Your Sex”

When fresh-faced Elliot lands a job with artist and provocateur Erika Tracy, his fantasies come true as she taps him to become her sexual muse. But Elliot finds himself out of his depth as Erika takes him on a journey into a world of sex, obsession, power, betrayal, and murder.

In writer-director Gregg Araki’s latest feature, a sex-forward Los Angeles art gallery hosts a delightfully enigmatic sadomasochistic game, as Cooper Hoffman’s eager Elliot is pushed to the edge by the sharply sardonic Erika, masterfully portrayed by Olivia Wilde. More than an art-world satire or a celebration of depravity, Araki and Karley Sciortino’s quick-witted writing and circular narrative structure reveal a spunky yet earnest reflection on the current state of sex — challenging misaligned conceptions of kink/predation, exhibition, and generational predispositions toward sexual freedom and autonomy.

I Want Your Sex is Araki’s 11th Sundance Film Festival premiere (following the episodic Now Apocalypse in 2019), constituting a fresh, prismatic validation of form for the auteur — an outrageously playful sexual crusade that only the one Gregg Araki could make.

“If I Go Will They Miss Me”

Twelve-year-old Lil Ant struggles to connect with his father when he begins to see surreal, almost spectral visions of boys drifting around his neighborhood. Their presence reveals a link between father and son, laying bare the threads that bind family, legacy, and place.

Set in the working-class Watts neighborhood in South Los Angeles, writer-director Walter Thompson-Hernández’s moving family drama focuses on a fraught father-son relationship. Big Ant is just out of prison and struggling to reconnect with his wife, Lozita (Danielle Brooks), and adolescent son, Lil Ant, a sensitive artist yearning for a role model. Adapted from his acclaimed short (2022 Sundance Film Festival, Short Film Jury Award: U.S. Fiction), Thompson-Hernández audaciously combines social and magical realism, charting the emotional trajectory of a conflicted dad and his restless son. Dense with allusions to Greek mythology, but grounded in documentary detail, the film has its head in the clouds without losing sight of the street-level conditions that shape its characters’ lives. If I Go Will They Miss Me is a loving, lyrical portrait of life under the LAX flight path.

“In the Blink of an Eye”

Three storylines, spanning thousands of years, intersect and reflect on hope, connection, and the circle of life.

From the 2017 Black List script by Colby Day (Spaceman), Andrew Stanton (Wall-E, Finding Nemo) constructs an elegantly interwoven triptych that contemplates the essence of humanity across three moments in time. A Neanderthal family, displaced from their home, struggles to survive, protect the children, and use primitive tools. In the present day, Claire (Rashida Jones), a driven post-grad anthropologist studying ancient proto-human remains, begins a relationship with a fellow student, Greg (Daveed Diggs). And two centuries later, on a spaceship bound for a distant planet, Coakley (Kate McKinnon) and a sentient onboard computer confront a disease afflicting the ship’s oxygen-producing plants. The artful, poetic way the film’s storylines intersect creates a profound, philosophical meditation on how we experience love, loss (of parents and children), mortality and the need for connection — with each other, the natural world, and technology — regardless of our time.

“The Invite”

Joe and Angela are on thin ice, and tonight might be when it all falls apart. Unfortunately, their upstairs neighbors are about to arrive for dinner, and everything that can go wrong goes worse.

A fiercely energized chamber dramedy, The Invite revitalizes the classic, largely bygone cinema of marital strife. Olivia Wilde’s scenes from a marriage are suitably raw and revealing, but also compassionate, deeply human, and incredibly funny. From a screenplay by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, the film gleefully plunges two couples (Wilde and Seth Rogen; Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton) into the crucible of a seemingly innocuous evening, delighting in its contortions as awkward small talk turns to the unearthing of long-tenured grievances, insecurities, codependencies, failed aspirations, and sexual FOMO. Constructing a vibrant aesthetic and brilliantly orchestrated interactions, Wilde finds a universe of space within one location, and her process — workshopping material with the cast, shooting chronologically (on 35mm!), and inviting them to explore as they worked — gives The Invite a remarkable authenticity.

“Josephine”

After 8-year-old Josephine accidentally witnesses a crime in Golden Gate Park, she acts out in search of a way to regain control of her safety while adults are helpless to console her.

Writer-director Beth de Araújo creates a tense, devastating, and transcendently empathetic portrait of a young girl wrestling with a newly discovered fear and anger she can neither escape nor fully comprehend after her encounter with violence. Greta Zozula’s precise cinematography escalates the unease, frequently placing us in Josephine’s vulnerable, frustrated perspective as the film finds a bold and unique visual language to represent how the experience continues to haunt her.

Mason Reeves delivers a searching, tender performance as Josephine. As her fiercely protective father and sensitive mom, Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan give keenly felt turns as parents who are totally devoted to their struggling, beloved child but are ill-equipped to navigate the upheaval their family faces. Philip Ettinger does unforgettable work in a crucial, complex supporting role.

“The Moment”

A rising pop star navigates the complexities of fame and industry pressure while preparing for her arena tour debut.

A flashy, tongue-in-cheek hyper-pop mockumentary, The Moment is Charli xcx’s creative reflection on her own meteoric success with brat. Directed and co-written by “360” music video director Aidan Zamiri in his feature debut, the film has a stylishly effortless rhythm and a uniquely self-aware, ironic sense of humor. Charli xcx plays an exaggeratedly manic version of herself, surrounded by a cast of characters that mirror both the friends and foes of the era. Hailey Gates and Alexander Skarsgård personify near-diametrically opposed influences in Charli xcx’s dynamic career; pieces in the grand scheme of brat’s enduring cultural power.

Behind the satire and Charli xcx’s celebrity is an earnest and heartfelt expression of the weight of success, the price of legacy, and the fight to preserve artistic integrity. The Moment is a film for fans and newcomers alike — a lively, current, dazzling capsule of one of the most iconic artists of our time.

“Once Upon a Time in Harlem”

A decade after his death, genre-defying filmmaker William Greaves has one last trick up his sleeve with what he considered the most important event he captured on film: a 1972 party he engineered with the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance.

Already an established documentarian and having just made Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, William Greaves gathered some of the key artists, musicians, librarians, poets, journalists, actors, photographers, teachers, and critics of the Harlem Renaissance at Duke Ellington’s home for a party, which he filmed. The resulting lively conversations, built around vivid retelling of past events, are in part old friends reconnecting, in part a rehashing of familiar conflicts, and in part personal memories becoming recorded history. Co-directed by his son David Greaves, who was a cameraman that day at Ellington’s apartment, Once Upon A Time In Harlem is a staggering achievement, both as a record of one of the most significant artistic movements in American history, and also as a chronicle of the magical power of art and its creation to remake our world.

“Saccharine”

Hana, a lovelorn medical student, becomes terrorized by a hungry ghost after taking part in an obscure weight loss craze: eating human ashes.

Natalie Erika James follows Relic (2020 Sundance Film Festival) with this revoltingly punchy, modern, and timely take on body horror. Through sickeningly syrupy scenes of literal and spiritual consumption, Midori Francis embodies Hana, a body-dysmorphic young woman bent on chasing her weight goal at all costs. The archetypal myth of the hungry ghost manifests literally, creating a uniquely tense atmosphere fit for a physically and metaphorically dangerous haunt.

The viscosity of James’ exploration of haunting and body horror in the era of accessible weight-loss medications is especially poignant, as Saccharine works to deconstruct weight and fatness as metrics by which we classify antagonism and personal shortcoming. What if the desperation to conform is a destructive consumption itself? What if we manifest our own bottomless specters?

“See You When I See You”

With the help of his family, a comedy writer battles PTSD after the tragic death of his sister.

Jay Duplass makes his return to the Sundance Film Festival with an emotionally complex examination of grief and trauma, balanced perfectly with streaks of levity throughout. See You When I See You brings writer Adam Cayton-Holland’s memoir Tragedy Plus Time: A Tragi-Comic Memoir to the screen with an inspired ensemble cast led by fellow Sundance Film Festival alum, director-actor Cooper Raiff, as Aaron, a young writer struggling to come to terms with the loss of his sister and best friend Leah (Kaitlyn Dever). Duplass taps into the millennial milieu of masking sorrow with humor and the devastating mental toll that avoidance can take on the bereaved, ushering us through a parade of ill-advised coping mechanisms and the collateral damage that follows with his trademark sense of compassion and empathy at every turn.

“The Shitheads”

When two unqualified bozos are hired to transfer a rich teen to rehab, their straightforward gig quickly spirals into dangerous mayhem.

Macon Blair makes a welcome return to the Sundance Film Festival following his acclaimed U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize winner — I don’t feel at home in this world anymore. (2017) — with this raucous and wildly entertaining descent into madness. Dave Franco and O’Shea Jackson Jr. are perfectly (mis)matched as Mark and Davis, the fumbling circumstantial chaperones in charge of transporting the increasingly psychotic Sheridan (a brilliant Mason Thames). Phenomenal supporting turns from Nicholas Braun, Peter Dinklage, and Kiernan Shipka round out the ensemble cast, each more unexpected and bizarre than the last. Blair treats us to his signature absurdist sense of humor and douses it with gasoline and psychedelics, crafting an uncanny world where the worst intentions net the highest yields and the open road is full of Shitheads.

“Troublemaker”

The struggle against apartheid is recounted through Nelson Mandela’s own voice, drawn from recordings he made while writing his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.

Director Antoine Fuqua and anti-apartheid activist Mac Maharaj bring to cinematic life recently recovered interviews with Rolihlahla — a name that translates from Xhosa as “troublemaker,” and is the birth name of Nelson Mandela.

Fuqua crafts together Maharaj’s testimony, powerful archival footage, the evocative animation of Thabang Lehobye, and Mandela’s spoken words to offer this remarkably personal and anatomical recount of the anti-apartheid movement — from Mandela’s childhood grooming in the royal court, his rebellious elopement and politicization in Johannesburg, his historic presidency, and today’s enduring issues of liberation in South Africa.

As fascist white supremist movements proliferate violently around the world today, Troublemaker shines light on a movement that found its way to the winning side, and what value a troublemaker offers when there is strength in numbers and collective movement.

“undertone”

The host of a popular paranormal podcast becomes haunted by terrifying recordings mysteriously sent her way.

Strained by the responsibility of providing end-of-life care to her dying mother, Evy (Nina Kiri) seeks respite from the loneliness of her fragmented reality. Now living in a house full of sentimental keepsakes and memories, her sanity and structure lies within her work on a supernatural podcast, The Undertone. While she usually plays skeptic to the creepy (and often disturbing) audio files sent to her by co-host Justin (Adam DiMarco) for podcast fodder, the latest submission hits differently. A series of 10 unheard recordings from a young pregnant couple are unfurled one by one, each more ominous than the last. As Evy draws parallels to her current plight, hidden messages manifest, pushing her further toward madness.

Writer-director Ian Tuason’s debut feature is unsettling to say the least. Deceptively terrifying in its conceit, Evy’s solitude manifests itself as a visceral audio-visual landscape, where the ring of a cell phone creates just as much of a jump scare as any monster ever could.

“The Weight”

In Oregon in 1933, Samuel Murphy is torn from his daughter and sent to a brutal work camp. Warden Clancy tempts him with early release if he smuggles gold through deadly wilderness, but betrayal festers within the crew, and Murphy questions how far he’ll go to see his child again.

Padraic McKinley’s tense, atmospheric Depression-era crime drama follows a group of desperate convicts on a perilous journey through a physically and morally treacherous backcountry. Set against the stark beauty of the Oregon landscape, The Weight draws on the introspective action cinema of the 1970s, combining gritty survivalist set pieces with uncommonly intelligent dialogue and finely drawn characters. Although rich with period detail, The Weight is charged with elemental energy, fueled by brothers Latham and Shelby Gaines’ harrowing score and Matteo Cocco’s vivid cinematography. Ethan Hawke gives a muscular performance as the film’s reluctant but resourceful hero, while Russell Crowe is quietly menacing as his foil. Julia Jones brings dignity and defiance to her role as Anna, the sole woman in the group.

“zi”

In Hong Kong, a young woman haunted by visions of her future self meets a stranger who changes the course of her night — and possibly her life.

Kogonada plays with — and returns to — form in this sensitive cinematic poem. Held within a stylish jaunt through the streets of Hong Kong, zi is a film 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 carefully portray transitory misfits, grappling with a clever fusion of existential anxiety, romantic misgiving, and personal memory.

Somewhere between sci-fi and supernatural, a deep, easy warmth takes root. Following Columbus (2017 Sundance Film Festival), After Yang (2020 Sundance Film Festival), and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, Kogonada crafts a decidedly contained film, exploring a pervasive sense of unmooring, yet cultivating an unrelenting sense of peace. Through the igniting/smoldering embers of relationships lost/forming, zi is an invitation to surrender to Kogonada’s truly indie world of temporal fragmentation.