Sundance Film Festival 2026 opens for its last yr in Park City, Utah. Here are a few of the highlights. | USAEMALL.com

The Sundance Film Festival, America’s leading showcase for independent narrative and documentary films from the United States and around the world, opens its 2026 edition on Thursday. This year’s festivai presents nearly 100 features through Feb. 1, in-person in Utah and online.

This year’s program includes dramatic films with stars including Natalie Portman, Channing Tatum, Dustin Hoffman, Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Chris Pine, Ethan Hawke, Keegan Michael-Key, and Charli XCX. There’s also a lineup of documentaries whose subjects include singers Courtney Love and Marianne Faithfull, tennis legend Billie Jean King, author Salman Rushdie, and topics like artificial intelligence, summitting K2, and children competing to sell the most Girl Scout cookies.

The festival’s screenings will be held in-person in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah, while online screenings will be accessible for audiences across the country beginning Jan. 29. There will also be short film programs, experimental and episodic works, and conversations and panel discussions with filmmakers and Sundance alumni. [Click here for ticket information.]

This year’s Sundance Film Festival is the last to be held in Park City. The festival — which originated in 1978 as the United States Film Festival, before being taken over by the Sundance Institute — has outgrown its location and will be held next year in Boulder, Colorado. 

This also marks the first festival to be held since the passing of Robert Redford, who helped shape the festival into a champion for independent filmmakers and creatives from marginalized communities.

Amanda Kelso, acting CEO of the Sundance Institute, said, “The 2026 Sundance Film Festival will be a truly pivotal and memorable moment as we celebrate artists and their visionary works, honor our Sundance Institute founder, Robert Redford, and his transformative vision, and show our gratitude to Utah by commemorating our collective journey.”

Part of that commemoration is through retrospective screenings of some of the biggest hits to have come out of Sundance, from “Little Miss Sunshine” to “Half Nelson,” starring Ryan Gosling.

As a sign of how far the festival has come, this year’s program was selected from more than 16,200 submissions, including 4,255 feature-length films, from 164 countries or territories. Jury prizes will be awarded in the categories of domestic and international narrative and non-fiction films, shorts, and the NEXT sidebar (which promotes innovative approaches to storytelling). 

There are also Audience Awards, which in the past have gone to such films as “sex, lies and videotape,” “Hoop Dreams,” “Whale Rider,” “Hustle & Flow,” “Once,” “Searching for Sugar Man,” “Fruitvale Station,” “Whiplash,” “CODA,” and “20 Days in Mariupol.”

The following is a small selection of the festival’s offerings, most of which are premieres, and many of which are still seeking theatrical distribution.

Documentaries

Among the nonfiction offerings at Sundance this year are profiles of author Salman Rushdie, and how he survived a 2022 assassination attempt (“Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie”); singer, songwriter and actress Courtney Love, who prepares for her first new music release in a decade, in “Antiheroine”; chess prodigy Judit Polgár (“Queen of Chess”); and centenarians and the always-changing titleholder of “The Oldest Person in the World.”

“Broken English” is a genre-twisting tribute to Marianne Faithfull, who died a year ago, and features Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, Nick Cave, Suki Waterhouse and others painting a portrait of the singer-songwriter.

Justice, civil rights and equality are the themes of “Who Killed Alex Odeh?” about the search for truth in the 1985 California bombing that killed a prominent Palestinian American activist; “Everybody to Kenmure Street,” in which hundreds of residents in a Scottish neighborhood fight off a deportation raid affecting their neighbors; “Soul Patrol,” a history of the first Black special operations team of the Vietnam War; and “Sentient,” an investigation into laboratory research on primates. 

“Troublemaker” draws on recordings of Nelson Mandela to recount the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. In “When a Witness Recants,” author Ta-Nehisi Coates revisits a 1983 Baltimore murder case and discovers that three teenagers were wrongfully convicted. In “American Doctor,” three doctors from the U.S. enter Gaza and are caught between medicine and politics. International human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson fights the use of defamation laws to silence survivors of sexual abuse in “Silenced.”

“Ghost in the Machine” examines the origins of artificial intelligence. In “The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist,” co-directors Charlie Tyrell and Daniel Roher (the Oscar-winning director of “Navalny”) explore the existential dangers and promised benefits of artificial intelligence. 

Environmental stories include “The Lake,” about a looming toxic catastrophe emerging from Utah’s Great Salt Lake; and “Nuisance Bear,” about a polar bear whose habitat is threatened by human expansion. In “Time and Water,” Iceland’s disappearing glaciers are but one measure of family history, memory and the elements for Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason.

In “To Hold a Mountain,” a single mother and her teenaged daughter, shepherds in Montenegro, fight to protect their ancestral home from becoming a NATO military training ground, while also adjusting to changing dynamics in their relationship. Shot over 10 years, Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes’ “One in a Million” follows a girl navigating war and heartbreak as she travels from Syria to Germany, and later returns to Aleppo.

Art and media are the focus of several films: “Public Access” traces the history of the development of public access television, as it grew from a legally-required offering on New York City cable TV in the early 1970s, to a controversial battleground for free speech. “Seized” recounts the story of a newspaper in the small town of Marion, Kansas, that was raided by police, unearthing a deeper story about abuse of power, community journalism, and the fact that “deleted” text messages aren’t necessarily gone forever.

“Once Upon a Time in Harlem” brings to life footage captured by the late filmmaker William Greaves when he documented a 1972 gathering of the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance. Mark Cousins’ “The Story of Documentary Film” looks at the evolution of non-fiction cinema.

There are also profiles of Chicano filmmaker Luis Valdez (“American Pachuco”); pioneering lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer (“Barbara Forever”); and comedian Maria Bamford, whose mental health journey became part of her performances (“Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story,” directed by Judd Apatow and Neil Berkeley).

Sports documentaries include profiles of basketball star Brittney Griner in “The Brittney Griner Story,” which also documents her detention in Russia; and tennis great Billie Jean King in “Give Me the Ball!”

“Cookie Queens” follows four Girl Scouts as they embark on their mission: to be the top-seller of Girl Scout cookies. 

In the foothills of the Himalayas, a wire on a cable car snaps, leaving eight passengers, including several schoolchildren, dangling 900 feet above a ravine awaiting rescue before the remaining cable fails. “Hanging by a Wire” captures the rush to save them. “The Last First: Winter K2” traces the fatal outcome of a race to climb the world’s second-highest mountain at the worst possible time of year.

And under less-deadly circumstances, John Wilson (the dryly satirical voice behind HBO’s “How To with John Wilson”) goes through the process of trying to sell a documentary about building materials in “The History of Concrete.”

Narrative features

Pixar veteran Andrew Stanton (“WALL-E”) directs the live-action “In The Blink of an Eye,” a trilogy of stories spanning thousands of years, from the lives of cave dwellers, to an astronaut light-years from Earth. With Rashida Jones, Kate McKinnon, Daveed Diggs, Jorge Vargas and Tanaya Beatty. 

In Stephanie Ahn’s “Bedford Park,” two first-generation Korean Americans (Moon Choi, Son Sukku) develop a tender relationship while maneuvering their messy and constricting family dynamics. Chris Pine stars in “Carousel,” about a divorced doctor who is reunited with a past love.

Natalie Portman, Zach Galifianakis and Da’Vine Joy Randolph star in the art world satire “The Gallerist.” In Gregg Araki’s “I Want Your Sex,” Cooper Hoffman takes a job as an assistant to provocative artist Olivia Wilde. With Chase Sui Wonders, Daveed Diggs, and Charli XCX (who also stars in “The Moment,” a mockumentary about an up-and-coming pop star preparing for her first big arena tour).

In “The Friend’s House Is Here” (which was filmed in Iran and then smuggled out of the country), two young women protect each other as they enter Tehran’s underground art scene and become targets. In “Josephine,” an 8-year-old girl (Mason Reeves) witnesses a crime in Golden Gate Park, and her parents (Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan) must help her overcome her fear and trauma.

“Chasing Summer,” from director Josephine Decker (“Madeline’s Madeline”), stars Iliza Shlesinger as a millennial who returns to her Texas hometown to reassess herself after losing both her boyfriend and her job. With Lola Tung (“The Summer I Turned Pretty”) and Garrett Wareing (“The Long Walk”). 

In the comedy “The Incomer,” siblings on a remote Scottish island find an official (Domhnall Gleeson) who has come from the mainland to relocate them. Will Brill, Gillian Jacobs and Rob Lowe star in “The Musical,” about a playwright-schoolteacher who seeks revenge when his ex begins dating his school’s principal. In “Wicker,” adapted from an Ursula Wills short story, a fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) asked a basket maker (Alexander Skarsgård) to weave her a mate.

Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde (who also directs), Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton star in “The Invite,” about a dinner party that goes south. Director David Wain (“Wet Hot American Summer”) returns with “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass,” an L.A caper in which a bride-to-be looks to cash in on her “free celebrity pass” once she learns her fiancé has already claimed theirs. With Zoey Deutch, Jon Hamm and John Slattery.

Coming-of-age stories include, from the U.K., “Extra Geography,” in which two girls at a boarding school challenge themselves to fall in love with a teacher; and “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” from New Zealand, in which a 14-year-old girl undergoes a transformation of self-awareness during one summer. In “Hold Onto Me,” the debut feature from Cypriot filmmaker Myrsini Aristidou, an 11-year-old girl seeks to reconnect with her estranged father. A teenager stages a musical representing her worst high school memory in “Run Amok,” with Alyssa Marvin, Patrick Wilson, Margaret Cho and Molly Ringwald. 

The criminal underworld is the setting for “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” (starring John Turturro as a nimble-fingered hustler finding it harder to make do in a cashless world), and “The Tuner,” (starring Dustin Hoffman and Leo Woodall), in which a piano tuner discovers his auditory gifts come in handy cracking safes. In “The Weight,” starring Ethan Hawke, a prisoner at a work camp in 1930s Oregon is offered early release if he agrees to smuggle gold.

Will Poulter stars in “Union County,” about the difficulty of recovery in the midst of rural Ohio’s opioid epidemic. In the psychosexual thriller “Night Nurse,” a new caregiver at a luxury retirement community discovers some unsettling behaviors there. In “Zi,” a cross between science fiction and the supernatural from Hong Kong filmmaker Kogonada, a young woman’s life is transformed by her encounter with a mysterious stranger.

Based on true events, “The Huntress (La Cazadora)” stars Adriana Paz (“Emilia Perez”) as a woman fighting for justice in Juárez, Mexico. In Lagos, a female taxi driver develops a sisterhood with sex workers, leading to her own transformation, in “Lady.”

Midnight

The festival’s Midnight sidebar of genre films includes “Buddy,” a horror film in which a young girl and her friends try to escape a children’s television show. ‘Nuff said? How about a cast featuring Keegan-Michael Key, Michael Shannon and Patton Oswalt? 

The title of “Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant” pretty much tells you what’s in store from the New Zealand directing pair of Sean Wallace and Jordan Mark Windsor (a.k.a. THUNDERLIPS). Natalie Erika James (“Relic”) directs the body horror flick “Saccharine.”

While evacuating the Palisades Fire last year, Tamra Davis uncovered recorded footage she’s made of a 1995 rock festival in Australia called Summersault, featuring such artists as Beastie Boys, the Foo Fighters, Sonic Youth, Bikini Kill and Beck. “The Best Summer” captures the performances and backstage drama of that time.

Events

Among partner events are panel discussions on such topics as “The New McCarthyism: Why Authoritarians Fear Storytellers” (Jan. 22); “Reimagining Rural America Through Storytelling” (Jan. 23); “After the Pitch – A Look Inside Developing a Studio Project” (Jan. 23); “The Future of Environmental Film” (Jan. 23); “The Art of Casting for Independent Film” (Jan. 23); and “How AI Is Evolving Storytelling with Flow from Google” (Jan. 23).

The festival also includes retrospective screenings and restored presentations of movies, many of which first found their audience at Sundance, including “Little Miss Sunshine”; “Half Nelson,” with Ryan Gosling; “Cronos” (followed by an extended Q&A with director Guillermo del Toro); Barbara Kopple’s “American Dream”; Reginald Hudlin’s “House Party”; and Gregg Araki’s “Mysterious Skin.” Sundance will also present an archival print of one of Robert Redford’s earliest hits, “Downhill Racer” (co-starring another legend we lost last year, Gene Hackman).

More

Visit the Sundance Film Festival site at festival.sundance.org for more information about additional features, short films and other events, as well as purchasing in-person or online tickets.