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Concrete, Bikini Kill and Bad Grandpas: 11 Films to Catch at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival
The History of Concrete, courtesy of Sundance Institute. This year’s Sundance Film Festival promises a somewhat elegiac atmosphere. For starters, this is the last time the festival will take place in snowy Park City, Utah, its home since 1981. (Next year, Sundance will take up residence in similarly snowy Boulder, Colorado.) Adding to the mournful vibe is the still fresh loss of Robert Redford, the festival’s founder and presiding spirit, who died in September. Another devastating loss came with the passing of Tammie Rosen, Sundance’s dedicated Chief Communications Officer, who died in December after a lengthy battle with cancer.
Amid these many lamentations, it’s heartening to see that the spirit of Sundance seems steadfast. This year’s “legacy” slate, highlighting films that broke out in previous years, feels particularly emblematic of Sundance’s identity, one that champions indie stalwarts, supports budding filmmakers and, wherever possible, touts celebrity connections. Celebrating 20th anniversaries are (Oscar-)winning indies Little Miss Sunshine and Half Nelson; marking 35 years since its Park City premiere is Barbara Koppel’s landmark doc American Factory; and festival favorite Gregg Araki presents a 4K restoration of his transgressive coming-of-age drama Mysterious Skin.
Araki, who’s been Sundance royalty since his New Queer Cinema gem The Living End bowed back in 1992, also returns this year with the much-anticipated I Want Your Sex, his first project since his (also Sundance-premiering) 2019 episodic venture Now Apocalypse. This time, Araki’s penchant for sexual provocation manifests in an age-gap affair between characters played by Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde. Cathy Yan, whose debut Dead Pigs made quite a stir at the festival when it debuted in 2018, also boasts an overdue comeback with The Gallerist, an art world satire about a grifter who hopes to sell a dead body during Art Basel. With supporting roles in both of these films is Charli xcx, whose Aidan Zamiri-helmed Brat-era mockumentary The Moment is, arguably, the buzziest title of the 2026 lineup. (Or maybe I’m just projecting as someone who, according to my 2025 Spotify Wrapped, ranks among her top 1% of listeners).
All of that is to say that despite the many transitions that define its 2026 edition, the essential tenets of Sundance remain intact: legacy independent voices, ever-rising talent, celebrity spectacle—check, check, check! Of course, one of the festival’s most vital components, that of discovery, is the onus of the audience. While the below list of recommendations may feature a wealth of familiar names, the aim is to also amplify films that, 45 years from now, might be synonymous with this era of Sundance, which has a particular responsibility to respond to the country’s mounting horrors: displacement, authoritarianism, inequity. Above all, it’s clear that Sundance remains undaunted in proclaiming that the raw power of human connection can bridge even the most severe of divides—familial, political, cultural. But can this sentiment successfully seep off the screen and into our material reality?
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
When legendary experimental filmmaker William Greaves died in 2014, it appeared that his lifelong passion project perished too. Intending to supplement the archival elements of his Harlem Renaissance documentary From These Roots, Greaves and his son, David, shot footage during an August day in 1972 when aging “living luminaries” of this movement gathered for a daytime soiree at Duke Ellington’s stately apartment. The footage never did make its way into the film, but Greaves always hoped to craft a separate documentary with it. Now, David Greaves has fulfilled his father’s vision, and the two men share co-directing credits. The recordings are radically raw—cameras shift and shake, lenses zoom in and out, framing is abruptly readjusted—in order to capture the extensive dialogue among these elder partygoers. They rehash debates and drama from 50-odd years ago while pondering the legacy of this seminal cultural and political movement. “I believe that nothing dies because I am a historian,” one man opines. Indeed, the legacy left behind by Greaves and the founding figures of this period—whose stories can teach us a lot about our own era of intense repression—feels indomitable.
The Oldest Person in the World
Another non-fiction examination of elders arrives from Sam Green, who spent years chronicling several record-holders for oldest living person in the world. It’s a title that changes hands quite often, a reality that begins to permeate the fabric of Green’s documentary. As he profiles subject after subject, existential questions arise concerning the human condition, the swift sands of time, and the unique privilege (or perhaps great cost?) of living a long, long life. Arriving after the sonic meditation of 32 Sounds, which won acclaim at Sundance back in 2023, The Oldest Person in the World promises an equally ruminative approach, this time concerning human longevity.
Night Nurse
In a drastic departure from the previous two titles, Georgia Bernstein’s directorial debut examines an exploitative, yet tensely erotic, relationship between an elderly dementia patient (Bruce McKenzie) and his titular caretaker (Cemre Paksoy). It’s best to go into this gonzo psychosexual thriller, which premieres in the festival’s boundary-pushing NEXT section, knowing as little as possible. In brief, the premise involves landline scams, sexual schemes and schisms of personality. Of all the projects I sampled during Poland’s U.S. in Progress showcase, this was one of my favorites. It’s also one of the wildest films I’ve encountered out of this year’s Sundance so far.
Saccharine
Admittedly, I’ve yet to screen the third feature from Natalie Erika James, but the delightfully grotesque premise and the strength of her feature debut, Relic, make this a shoo-in on my personal “most anticipated” list. Like Night Nurse, James’s previous film features a dementia-addled senior whose behavior goes from disconcerting to downright deranged. While many filmmakers would lazily create a unilaterally evil crone to maximize terror, James trains a humanizing gaze not only on the daughter and granddaughter who must care for their aging matriarch, whose agency slips further away each day, but also on the matriarch herself. James synthesizes scares and sensitivity expertly, which is why Saccharine, which focuses on a weight-obsessed woman whose newest crash diet involves eating human ashes, seems so scintillating. Cheap shots at eating disorders will certainly not be tolerated here.
Filipiñana
A few days ago, celebrated Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke—whose self-referrential, 22-year spanning Caught By the Tides dominated critics’ “best of” lists in 2024—boarded Rafael Manuel’s Manila-set debut feature as an executive producer. The pair met as mentor and mentee during the two-year Rolex Mentor & Protégé Arts Initiative, where Manuel developed this short-turned-feature. Zhangke’s broader filmography and Manuel’s Filipiñana share a kindred cinematic spirit, both favoring a realist gaze, anti-globalist slant and minimal dialogue. Yet Manuel’s Filipino perspective and eye for movement are crystalline, with harsh reminders of the country’s severe class divide juxtaposed with several gorgeously choreographed dance sequences. Taking place during a single day at an exclusive country club, the film follows a tee girl named Isabel as she navigates a subconscious desire for the pompous Dr. Polanca, the club’s president. The quirky happenings on the sprawling estate, besieged by extreme heat, are swiftly deflated by a harrowing climax, leaving viewers with a barbaric image amid the landscape’s otherwise bucolic beauty.
Hot Water
Writer-director Ramzi Bashour previously appeared on Filmmaker’s 25 New Faces of Film list back in 2021, where he initially teased the concept of Hot Water, which now arrives as his first feature film. Starring Daniel Zolghadri (Funny Pages) and Lubna Azabal (Incendies), the premise involves a son and mother who take an impromptu road trip out West. The motivation behind this rambling journey is the son’s sudden expulsion from his Indiana high school after a violent altercation with a classmate. Left without recourse, his mother offers to shuttle him to his absentee father’s home, where he will live and re-enroll in school. Along the way, their indelible differences—immigrant versus first-generation American, academic versus slacker, strickler versus stoner—cause tensions to rise. Yet amid the incessant bickering, mother and son might actually learn a thing or two about themselves, each other, and where they ought to be.
The History of Concrete
A decade ago, John Wilson was featured as one of Filmmaker’s 25 New Faces. The following year, he was commissioned by Vimeo to document “a festival he can’t get into.” The resulting 6-minute short, Escape From Park City, is a hilarious commentary on Sundance’s exclusive vibe and inhospitable climate. Since then, he broke out with his HBO tutorial cum memoir show How To With John Wilson, which brought his trademark observational humor to a wider audience (i.e. I was able to get my dad to watch it). The series ran from 2020-23, and The History of Concrete, his first feature film, brings him back to the festival he once claimed to resent. It also cements Wilson’s observational wit as his calling card. In true Wilsonian fashion, the film investigates the origins and legacy of the literal building block of modern society. His journey leads him to a bizarre New York City marathon that takes place entirely within a city block, a Hallmark movie workshop and, inevitably, some kooky concrete conventions.
Josephine
While spotlighting filmmakers who’ve graced the 25 New Faces list, I’d be remiss not to include Beth de Araújo. Back in 2017, she discussed plans to make Josephine, which at the time was slated to be her feature debut. In the end, the 2022 one-take white supremacist thriller Soft & Quiet arrived as her first feature, but it’s exciting to see that the momentum behind Josephine never faltered in the interim. Loosely based on autobiographical details, the film charts the aftermath of a violent crime in Golden Gate Park witnessed by the young girl named in the title. The filmmaker re-teams with cinematographer Greta Zozula, whose meticulous commitment to continuity was key to the success of Soft & Quiet. As opposed to an extended oner, Zozula’s camera here provides Josephine’s singular POV, transferring the child’s vulnerability, frustration and fear onto the audience.
Jaripeo
The machismo inherent to Michoacan, Mexico’s rodeo scene conceals clandestine queer encounters in Jaripeo, the first feature from co-directors Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig. Part vérité portrait of these rural rodeos, part intentional homoerotic projection, the film, in part, aims to reveal “a little bit of what it’s like to be a young queer ranchero,” per Efraín. Premiering in the festival’s NEXT section, the film captures risky queer encounters within the hyper-masculine event, but also lingers on “acceptable” contact between heterosexual men and approximates it to tender caress—a radical confrontation of the delicate veil between acceptable and transgressive same-sex gestures.
The Musical
A middle school musical production arises out of pure spite in The Musical, directed by Giselle Bonilla from a script by Alexander Heller. The duo’s debut feature casts Rob Lowe and Gillian Jacobs as a middle school principal and his new date, who just happens to be theater teacher Doug’s (Will Brill) ex-girlfriend. Distaste for their union causes Doug to attempt to obliterate the principal’s shot at the Blue Ribbon of Academic Excellence. His plan? To stage a truly unhinged performance—enacted by middle school thespians—that would both humiliate his professional nemesis and earn praise from his contemporaries in one fell swoop. As it turns out, vengeance is best served without a side of belabored performativity.
The Best Summer
When filmmaker Tamra Davis (Crossroads, Billy Madison) evacuated her home during last year’s Palisades fires, she re-discovered a trove of footage she shot at Summersault, an Australian music festival, in 1995. Footage of Sonic Youth, Pavement, Bikini Kill, Beastie Boys, The Amps and several other iconic indie artists of the era laid in wait for 30 years, and Davis weaves these performances into a near-definitive capsule of this time and place. Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna interviews fellow performers—among them Kim Gordon and Dave Grohl—while Davis shoots bands from an incredible backstage vantage point.
