The 2026 Sundance Film Festival is nearly here, but what films should you be keeping an eye on? Here are 10 movies to watch at the festival!
The Sundance Film Festival has often set the tone for what cinema has to offer each year, and it appears that trend will continue thanks to the promising 2026 film lineup. The festival will take place from January 22 to February 1 in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah (for the last time before moving to Colorado next year), but attendees are already sorting out which movies to watch. Whether you’re among that crowd or want to mark a film down for when it comes near you later in the year, Iwe’ve hand-picked 10 movies that you should be on the lookout for!
These aren’t the only films we look forward to seeing, but they encapsulate the variety of genres, tones, and human backgrounds for which Sundance is known. We’ve got a mix of potential mainstream hits with popular actors, international standouts, fascinating debuts and smaller works that could sneak up on people, and some plain weird ideas to shake things up. So, keep on reading for 10 movies to watch at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, and be sure to stick around for our review coverage starting near the end of the month!
1. American Doctor
U.S. Documentary Competition
Director: Poh Si Teng
Countries: United States/State of Palestine/Malaysia/Qatar
We’re kicking off with a documentary, and an urgently topical one at that. American Doctor is about three… well, American doctors, but of different descent: Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian. These differences are secondary, though, to their unified goal of saving lives in Gaza during the ongoing war while navigating its practical, political, and personal dangers. There’s sadly still a lot to unpack with this ongoing war, and watching three doctors plunge in headfirst will no doubt expose us to some of the most horrific emergencies imaginable. But hopefully that will also come with the uplifting acknowledgement that there are people wanting to do as much good as possible, coming together through a war hellbent on ripping everyone apart.
2. Buddy
Midnight
Director: Casper Kelly
Cast: Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Topher Grace, Keegan-Michael Key, Michael Shannon, Patton Oswalt
Country: United States
And now to shift gears, here’s a movie that just sounds darkly entertaining. All we know about Buddy’s plot is that it’s about a group of friends who must escape a kids’ television show. The cast certainly looks great, including Cristin Milioti (the co-lead of Palm Springs), Topher Grace, Keegan-Michael Key, Michael Shannon, and Patton Oswalt. Plus… just look at the image above. Children mascots going berserk isn’t the most original concept out there, but this one looks poised to add its own stylistic retro flair that will enhance the surreal madness. It’s at least gotta be better than whatever Five Nights at Freddy’s has been doing.
3. Carousel
U.S. Dramatic Competition
Director: Rachel Lambert
Cast: Chris Pine, Jenny Slate, Abby Ryder Fortson, Sam Waterston, Katey Sagal
Country: United States
Carousel captured my attention not so much for the premise but for who’s involved in it. Chris Pine (Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) is a father caring for an anxious daughter. His somewhat lonely life is interrupted by the return of his old high school girlfriend (Jenny Slate, It Ends with Us). This, of course, raises questions of how much has truly changed around, between, and within them, and whether all that change is worth the impact it has on them. Not only is this a talented main duo, but director Rachel Lambert has a talent for highlighting little truths that not many people notice, having made a similarly standard setup very meaningful in Sometimes I Think About Dying. So, I look forward to seeing if something fresh is brought to this too.
4. Frank & Louis
Premieres, Fiction
Director: Petra Biondina Volpe
Cast: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Rob Morgan, René Pérez Joglar, Rosalind Eleazar, Indira Varma
Countries: Switzerland/United Kingdom
At their best, prison films can be real emotional powerhouses, which looks to be the fate of Frank & Louis. Frank (Kingsley Ben-Adir, Bob Marley: One Love) is serving a life sentence but takes a job caring for other aging inmates with Alzheimer’s and dementia. One of them is the frail Louis (Rob Morgan, Don’t Look Up), with whom Frank forms an unexpectedly tender connection that confronts him with his past guilt and regrets. And if those regrets are as conceptually heavy as everything else in the movie, Frank & Louis has all the potential to be one of the best films at Sundance 2026, or maybe a super early favorite of the year as a whole.
5. The Gallerist
Premieres, Fiction
Director: Federico Cesca
Cast: Natalie Portman, Jenna Ortega, Sterling K. Brown, Zach Galifianakis, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Catherine Zeta-Jones
Country: United States
We again shift gears to something much more fun. Gallerist Polina Polinski (Natalie Portman, May December) arranges for an art influencer (Zach Galifianakis, Lilo and Stitch) to review the work of emerging artist Stella Burgess (Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers). Somehow, this leads to Polina trying to sell a dead body. You figure that one out, because I’ve only got a shred of an idea. But that just makes me want to see what sounds like a deranged satire of art and approval even more. Especially since this is director Cathy Yan’s follow-up to Birds of Prey (the Harley Quinn movie), an addictively chaotic ride that seems perfectly in line with whatever she’s doing here. She definitely has a hilarious cast, which also includes Jenna Ortega and Sterling K. Brown, to back her up once more.
6. Hanging by a Wire
World Cinema Documentary Competition
Director: Mohammed Ali Naqvi
Countries: United States/United Kingdom/Pakistan
Hanging by a Wire would sound like an indie thriller if it wasn’t a documentary about a true event. In northern Pakistan in 2023, a cable car’s wire snapped, leaving a group of kids dangling 900 feet above the mountains. This documentary shows the ensuing rescue through drone footage, eyewitness coverage, and reenactments by the actual participants, all to bring you the full picture of what unbelievably happened on that harrowing day. It also seems to be selling itself on the questions and issues around the incident, including the reasons why it happened in the first place and how people of certain classes are wrongfully ignored. You can make as many statements about such subject matter as you want but Hanging by a Wire is apparently showing why they matter firsthand.
7. Josephine
U.S. Dramatic Competition
Director: Beth de Araújo
Cast: Mason Reeves, Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan, Philip Ettinger, Syra McCarthy, Eleanore Pienta
Country: United States
Josephine is my personal most anticipated film at Sundance 2026… as well as my most feared. The story is about 8-year-old Josephine (Mason Reeves) who witnesses a terrible crime in Golden Gate Park. Her parents – played by Channing Tatum (Roofman) and Gemma Chan (Eternals) – try their best to help their traumatized child as she struggles to comprehend what she’s seen, but Josephine’s own perspective seems to be the focal point of the film. The director is Beth de Araújo, whose previous film was the devastating, deeply disturbing, criminally overlooked Soft & Quiet. With bigger names attached to this follow-up, I hope she delivers a film that’s just as effective but more widely recognized. It’s one of the few fictional films whose Sundance page directly warns should not be viewed by underage audiences… Yeah, that tracks.
8. Levitating (Para Perasuk)
World Cinema Dramatic Competition
Director: Wregas Bhanuteja
Cast: Angga Yunanda, Anggun, Maudy Ayunda, Bryan Domani, Chicco Kurniawan
Countries: Indonesia/Singapore/France/Taiwan
All this grounded reality is fine and good, but I refuse to go without something strange alongside it. How does the Indonesian tale of a town where pleasure comes from being possessed by spirits sound? That’s what Levitating sets up, with the young spirit channeler Bayu (Angga Yunanda) using his flute to channel such spirits into dancers at trance parties, all while modern distractions and environments threaten his power. Yup, that’s my kind of odd, especially when the film also promises to be a celebration of music, dance, and shared joys in a community. A specific community that’s foreign to us in the States, sure, but one we’re still invited to connect with and relate to as human beings. It sounds psychedelic, esoteric, and uplifting all in one go. What’s not to look forward to?
9. Take Me Home
U.S. Dramatic Competition
Director: Liz Sargent
Cast: Anna Sargent, Victor Slezak, Ali Ahn, Marceline Hugot, Shane Harper
Country: United States
Take Me Home is an expansion of director Liz Sargent’s short of the same name. It’s about Anna (Anna Sargent, the director’s sister), a 38-year-old Korean adoptee with a cognitive disability. She’s caring for her aging parents – one of whom has dementia – while also balancing her own difficulties, which is made even harder after a severe Florida heat wave. What draws me to this film is pretty straightforward: it’s a great combination of potent subject matter like chosen family, codependence, disabilities, and broader systemic difficulties like healthcare and the environment. Sargent clearly feels strongly about all these issues to have revisited them after her short, and feature-length time certainly gives her the breathing room to really explore them. Take Me Home won’t be the flashiest Sundance film, but it could easily be one of the best.
10. zi
Next
Director: Kogonada
Cast: Michelle Mao, Haley Lu Richardson, Jin Ha
Country: United States
Kogonada is one of the most interesting directors out there right now. Even his mixed bags like last year’s A Big Bold Beautiful Journey have an imaginative, spiritual aspect that makes them consistently interesting. zi seems no different, with a story about a Hong Kong woman (Michelle Mao) who’s haunted by visions of her future self. She also meets a stranger (Haley Lu Richardson, After Yang) who could change the course of her life. Sundance’s categorization and description imply these two women’s connection is to be romantic, nicely adding queer sensibilities to the pool of mysterious, supernatural, poetic elements. There’s currently more to speculate about the experience than what will actually happen in the movie, but it’s the kind of experience that, if done well, could be one of the festival’s most creative offerings.
More Movies to Watch at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival:
- Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild]
- Antiheroine
- Broken English
- Chasing Summer
- Everybody to Kenmure Street
- Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass
- Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!
- Hold Onto Me (Κράτα Με)
- I Want Your Sex
- If I Go Will They Miss Me
- In the Blink of an Eye
- Jaripeo
- LADY
- Leviticus
- Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant
- Run Amok
- The Musical
- Sentient
- Tell Me Everything
- undertone
The 2026 Sundance Film Festival will take place on January 22–February 1, 2026 both in Utah and online.
Header Credits: Posters for the 2026 Sundance Film Festival (Atelier Choque Le Goff)