35 Must-See Movies at the Sundance Film Festival 2026

The Sundance Film Festival 2026 returns to Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah, running from January 22 to February 1, with an online screening window from January 29 to February 1, making it accessible both in person and at home. One of the most important festivals for independent cinema, Sundance 2026 once again brings together urgent documentaries, bold debuts, and star-driven premieres across clearly defined sections like U.S. Documentary Competition, U.S. Dramatic Competition, World Cinema Documentary and Dramatic Competitions, Spotlight, Next, Midnight, Family Matinee, and Premieres.

This year’s lineup features politically engaged nonfiction like American Doctor, intimate portraits such as Barbara Forever, and global stories including Closure and To Hold a Mountain. On the fiction side, expect major names like Chris Pine, Jenny Slate, Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Natalie Portman, Olivia Colman, Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan, Dustin Hoffman, and Charli xcx, alongside exciting new filmmakers and breakout performances. Whether it’s Midnight titles like Rock Springs, crowd-facing Premieres like The Invite, or adventurous Next picks like zi, the range is wide and deliberate.

Please note: The festival has a dedicated Short Film Program made up of 54 films from around the world in fiction, nonfiction, and animation. These shorts are grouped into curated blocks that screen in person during the festival dates and many are also available online in the at-home portion of Sundance.

This article streamlines the most important titles across categories so the festival cinephiles can plan smartly, build a watchlist that fits their taste, and squeeze in as many essential films as possible during a packed Sundance schedule. Here’s all the titles that you can check out for Sundance Film Festival 2026.

U.S. Documentary Competition:

1. American Doctor

Runtime: 92 min | Language: English, Arabic

When three American doctors — Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian — enter Gaza to save lives, they find themselves caught between medicine and politics, risking everything to expose the truth.

The war in Gaza has deeply involved another country: the United States. As the attacks intensified in Gaza and medical expertise and capabilities were decimated, American doctors felt a professional and moral obligation to act. Making the difficult but necessary triage decisions after an attack, caring for suffering children, and concerned for their own personal safety, the three physicians in American Doctor are impressive individuals from different backgrounds and experiences, unified in their desire to ease suffering and raise their voices as citizens to demand action from their own government. From Gaza hospitals to the halls of American power, director Poh Si Teng unflinchingly depicts a terrible reality and also shows a path forward to engage on such a difficult issue with humanity and collective action.

2. Birds of War

World Cinema Documentary Competition:

1. Closure

Runtime: 105 min | Language: Polish

After his teenage son goes missing, Daniel scours the depths of the Vistula River, torn between the dread of a fatal leap and the hope that his son may still be alive.

The Vistula River is hauntingly transformed into a purgatory for grieving father, Daniel, as he painstakingly scours each of its winding turns, pulled between the uncertainty of life and death in his search for any trace of his missing son, Krzysztof. Director Michał Marczak intuitively lets his camera drift between the placid surface of Poland’s longest river and the murky secrets of its depths, mirroring the stoic façade and inner tumult of a father torn between hope and grief. As weeks stretch into months and years, Daniel’s search slowly expands beyond the physical realm, and into the digital world, when he begins to chart the darkened halls of his son’s online footprint in an effort to understand how systems of connectivity can lead a generation to the abyss of isolation.

Check Out Our Entire Sundance Film Festival Coverage (So Far)

2. To Hold a Mountain

Runtime: 103 min | Language: Montenegrin

In the remote highlands of Montenegro, a shepherd mother and daughter proudly defend their ancestral mountain from the threat of becoming a NATO military training ground, stirring memories of the violence that shattered their family.

Gara, To Hold a Mountain’s guiding light, is living proof that not all heroes wear capes. She spends long days herding sheep, making cheese, and fighting to protect her favorite place in the world — all while ensuring that young Nada grows up kind, capable, and empowered. In To Hold a Mountain, co-directors Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić craft a tender, visually stunning portrait of a remote mountain community of women driven by strenuous work and grassroots resistance. Despite their daily hardships and the lasting effects of generational trauma, they remain loving and dignified, nurturing not only one another, but also the animals they rely on for sustenance. The film powerfully captures the significance of love and persistence at a time when the past haunts and the future feels under attack.

World Cinema Dramatic Competition:

1. Big Girls Don’t Cry

Runtime: 100 min | Language: English

Over one transformative summer in rural New Zealand in 2006, 14-year-old Sid Bookman discovers desire, identity, and the internet as she imitates the people she longs to be loved by.

Paloma Schneideman, mentored through Jane Campion’s film program, crafts an artful coming-of-age portrait of queer adolescence that beautifully inhabits the liminal space between youth and adulthood, desire and experience — a time when we’re conscious of everything, but lacking language for any of it. With aching recognition, we’re inescapably drawn into Sid (newcomer Ani Palmer in a stellar breakout performance) — her trying on of identities, mimicry, feigning of maturity, shame, and longing for acceptance — as she endears herself to a group of older teens, the first generation for whom sexual curiosity is entwined with the internet. Schneideman’s voice is fresh and vibrant, her intimate, shallow-focus photography drawn to faces and bodies, full of precarity and vulnerability and perfectly attuned to these young people. The film breathes with specificity and authenticity, ironically rendering so sharply an interior life that is, by its nature, so obscure.

2. Extra Geography

Runtime: 94 min | Language: English

In an English girls boarding school, two teenage best friends grapple with the challenges of girlhood — friendship, boys, studies, and growing up — and embark on their school project, falling in love.

In her thoroughly funny, stylish debut feature, Molly Manners (In My Skin, One Day) offers a wry, poignant story about best friendship. Brought to life through standout debut performances from Galaxie Clear and Marni Duggan, Minna and Flic exist entirely in each others’ worlds — their perfectly synchronous thoughts and movements playfully accented by Manners’ visual style. Charming, adorably self-centered, codependent, and snide, they audition together for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (despite Shakespeare being rubbish) and — knowing that love makes one “worldly” — decide their school project will be to fall in love with the first person they see: their geography teacher (Alice Englert). They hatch a plan, enamored of their own cleverness (“We should probably dream about her.”), but their synchronicity soon falters. Extra Geography offers a bittersweet lesson in unsinkable friendship: in life, love, and Shakespeare, someone always gets upstaged.

3. How to Divorce During the War

Runtime: 108 min | Language: Lithuanian, English, Russian, Ukrainian

In Vilnius in 2022, Marija has a revelation that she wants to divorce her husband, Vytas, right before Russia invades Ukraine. Forced to confront their crumbling relationship, they navigate the process of divorce as it collides with the ongoing war.

Writer-director Andrius Blaževičius creates a sensitive and timely film that delicately inflects a compelling domestic drama with insight about the complicated experience of navigating daily life in an increasingly war-torn world. Just as they are dissolving their union, Marija and Vytas find that many of the values on which they’ve built their safe and comfortable lives feel in danger of crumbling. They are forced to juggle their anger and fear over a war igniting on their doorstep; a desire for normalcy for themselves and their clear-eyed daughter, Dovile; and the need to be on the side of right. While focused on the separating couple’s precarious path forward, Blaževičius’ script also sharply illustrates the myriad ways the Russian invasion impacts the entire cast of complex, believable characters who cross into the film’s frame.

4. The Huntress (La Cazadora)

Runtime: 95 min | Language: Spanish

In the border city of Juárez, Mexico, where violence against women is perpetrated with impunity, an unlikely defender emerges with a desperate call for change. Inspired by true events.

Writer-director Suzanne Andrews Correa, an award-winning Sundance Film Festival shorts alum, returns to the Festival with a harrowing portrait of one woman pushed to extremes by an oppressive culture of violence, intimidation, and silence. Adriana Paz (Emilia Pérez) delivers a charged performance as Luz, a woman haunted by damage done to herself, her co-workers, and friends, who is desperate to protect her teenage daughter. Correa’s electric direction and Maria Sarasvati Herrera’s disorienting cinematography reinforce Luz’s constant, propulsive fear and evoke a sense of the stalking dangers that surround her as she carries out her transgressive acts of defiance. Veteran actor Teresa Sánchez adds texture and nuance as Ximena, who leads the search for the disappeared and murdered, offering her own hard-fought resistance to the stifling, violent misogyny that envelopes their community.

Read More: The 20 Best Spanish Thriller Movies of All Time

5. Shame and Money

Runtime: 130 min | Language: Albanian

After losing their livelihood in a village, a Kosovar family is forced to move to the capital in pursuit of a place in a hypercapitalist society.

Shame and Money is a finely crafted portrait of hardworking people striving for a decent life while navigating relentless pressures and chronic instability. Shaban, a traditional head of the household, wants to be the provider, yet his mother’s savings keep the family afloat, and accepting help from a wealthy brother-in-law comes with additional challenges. With his pride steadily bruised and dignity slipping out of reach, Shaban drifts closer to an unseen edge — raising the question of how much more he can possibly endure. Director Visar Morina (Exile, 2020 Sundance Film Festival) approaches this complex story with great precision and confidence. Shame and Money is a masterclass in nuanced performances, especially from leads Astrit Kabashi and Flonja Kodheli, who inhabit Shaban and his wife, Hatixhe, with grace, empathy, and deep humanity.

U.S. Dramatic Competition:

1. Carousel

Runtime: 105 min | Language: English

A divorced doctor’s carefully constructed life in Cleveland is upended when his daughter’s debate aspirations and the unexpected return of a past love force him to confront his own choices and embrace a second chance.

Noah (Chris Pine) is firmly entrenched in his life, which might be a bit lonely but allows him to care for his anxious daughter and his family medical practice. One night, though, he learns his old high school girlfriend Rebecca (Jenny Slate) has returned to town. Now with different life experiences, but the same attraction and shared history of heartbreak, they wonder if love is worth the inevitable pain and complications. Writer-director Rachel Lambert returns with a story told in a pitch-perfect winsome tone, with a sharp eye that captures essential truths, like to love is to lose. Featuring wonderful performances from Pine, Slate, and others, Carousel is a film about lovers, family, getting older — but maybe not growing up — and how change is the only constant in life.

2. Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!

Runtime: 122 min | Language: Japanese, English, Spanish

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.

3. Hot Water

Runtime: 97 min | Language: English, Arabic, French

After he’s kicked out of his Indiana high school, an American kid and his Lebanese mom hit the road west.

Ramzi Bashour’s lyrical debut feature is a rippling reflection on westward motion. Expansive landscapes literally and narratively unfurl epic canvases large enough to hold this duo’s dual exploration of home. Lubna Azabal (Strangers, 2008 Sundance Film Festival) and Daniel Zolghadri (Lurker, 2025 Sundance Film Festival) deliver remarkably connected central performances and are joined by Festival familiar Dale Dickey (Winter’s Bone, 2010 Sundance Film Festival). A personal story tracing the impact of a longitudinal experience of this country — its variety and the unusual circumstances under which any person traverses it — grapples with definitions of home, histories of diaspora, and the disruptive but good work of education. An allegory about the way forward motion often leads to return, Hot Water brings beginnings and endings into insightful alignment.

4. Josephine

Runtime: 120 min | Language: English

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.

5. Run Amok

Runtime: 96 min | Language: English

A teenage girl stages an elaborate musical about the one day her high school wishes it could forget.

In her striking debut feature, writer-director NB Mager boldly wades into the thorny aftermath of a school tragedy with thoughtfulness and a refreshing recentering of the young people most directly affected. Working tonal miracles in her script’s balance of dark humor and heartbreak, Mager brings us front and center into the absurdist reality many students in America know all too well — one where adults’ empty promises, reactivity, and platitudes obscure genuine emotional processing. At the heart of it all is a breakout performance from Alyssa Marvin, who embodies Meg in all her layered complexity and affecting persistence as she looks to heal from the impossible. A tender testament to the power of theater told with unconventional charm, Run Amok presents a singular vision that subverts catharsis and honors the lingering lack of answers.

Also Check: The 10 Best Movie Musicals in Cinema

6. Take Me Home

Runtime: 99 min | Language: English

Anna, a 38-year-old Korean adoptee with a cognitive disability, cares for her aging parents in a fragile balance of meeting one another’s needs. When a Florida heat wave shatters their family and Anna’s routine, her future is uncertain until she creates a world where she can thrive.

Liz Sargent’s intimate debut drama examines the shifting demands placed on a unique — and uniquely vulnerable — family in a Florida suburb. Working with a terrific ensemble, the writer-director details the struggles of Anna (newcomer Anna Sargent, the director’s sister), fellow adopted sibling Emily (Ali Ahn), and devoted father Bob (Victor Slezak), who is succumbing to dementia. Expanded from Sargent’s acclaimed short (2023 Sundance Film Festival), Take Me Home exposes the indignities of the American health care system and the structural challenges faced by disabled people. The film also gently and imaginatively traces a path for Anna’s independence and connection to a community of chosen family. By turns quietly devastating and bracingly optimistic, Take Me Home confronts us with an impossible situation, while holding out hope for Anna’s future.

7. Union County

Runtime: 97 min | Language: English

Assigned to a county-mandated drug court program, Cody Parsons embarks on the tenuous journey toward recovery amid the opioid epidemic in rural Ohio.

Director Adam Meeks stays close to home in his debut feature, setting this recovery story in his hometown. His roots plunge this film to a subterranean depth, operating with an authenticity that gives great dignity to this portrait of a community engaged in profound struggle. Lending gravitas to the cyclical patterns of recovery brings the audience into the quietude and frankness of the battleground with addiction, illuminating the triumphs and failures that unfold daily in the fight to stay alive and the even more audacious struggle to live fully. This groundedness is supported by incredibly deft performances by Will Poulter (Glassland, 2015 Sundance Film Festival) and Noah Centineo. The leads embedded themselves in the community they portray for months and are joined on screen by local nonactors — a uniquely honest approach that lays bare consummately intimate truths.

8. Bedford Park

Runtime: 119 min | Language: English

Haunted by an abusive childhood, Audrey, a Korean American woman in her 30s, faces her emotional past. When her mother’s car accident brings her back to her parents’ home, she meets the man responsible for the accident. Their relationship builds, passions ignite, and they form a loving connection.

Audrey and Eli are very different people, but they are haunted by their past in a similar way. Having lived through difficult times as children of immigrant parents, they carry their hurt and isolation in their adulthood with the accompanying confusion of how to care for family and themselves. Actors Moon Choi and Son Sukku sparkle as two people who find each other amid all the guilt, anger, and “han,” and, in doing so, find a way to heal. In her feature debut, marked with great vulnerability, writer-director Stephanie Ahn beautifully articulates the complicated emotional landscape of immigrant children who are now all grown up. Bedford Park is a heartfelt expression of human experience not often seen on screen. It is a film so many have been waiting for.

Similar to Sundance Film Festival 2026: 10 Great Movies about Making a Fresh Start

Next:

1. Burn

Runtime: 103 min | Language: Japanese

When runaway teen Ju-Ju is embraced by a tribe of misfit youths in Kabukicho, she finds belonging for the first time — until betrayal and despair twist her haven into a prison, and she’s left with one way to take back control.

An extreme juxtaposition of formal radiance and narrative dread, Makoto Nagahisa’s latest feature is a transcendently colorful gut punch. Following We Are Little Zombies (2019 Sundance Film Festival) and his most recent short, Pisko the Crab Child is in Love (2024 Sundance Film Festival), Nagahisa executes his signature hypervibrance and unique character direction with finesse. Nana Mori bravely embodies Ju-Ju, pendulating between the embrace of a decadent Tokyo street-kid culture and the call of her ambition toward saviorhood. Nagahisa taunts us with an urban world that’s beautifully rotten and addictive — a twisted labyrinth for both character and viewer, at the center of which is an expansive darkness that’s impossible to shake. A one-of-a-kind, energetic approach to generational trauma and youth culture, BURN exhibits a brand of nihilism that’s challenging, and rewarding, to experience.

2. zi

Runtime: 99 min | Language: English, Cantonese, Mandarin

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.

3. Night Nurse

Runtime: 93 min | Language: English

As a series of perverse scam calls unsettles an idyllic retirement community, a starry-eyed nurse becomes entangled with her mysterious patient.

Waiting to begin her first-day orientation for her new night nurse job at a luxury retirement community, Eleni notices an energy in the geriatric exercise pool. There’s something unexpected about how the bodies are coming together in the water, the mental energy, the tone of conversation, and the way her new client turns around, out of the blue, to stare straight into her eyes. Debut director Georgia Bernstein’s atmospheric, psychosexual thriller palpably explores how emotion, deception, and sexual obsession can come together in the liminal space between caregivers and the people they care for. Night Nurse is a bold and visually luscious film that delivers a tense, clever ride that keeps the viewer in constant precarious balance, guessing what is madness and what is a dangerously scintillating manipulation.

4. The Incomer

Runtime: 101 min | Language: English

On a remote Scottish isle, siblings Isla and Sandy hunt birds and talk to mythical beings while fighting off outsiders. Their lives change when Daniel, an awkward official, arrives to relocate them.

Relocating a pair of siblings is easier said than done in Louis Paxton’s delightful, uproariously funny, heartwarming first feature. A comedic inflection of Scottish island folklore, The Incomer draws us into its eclectic vision through sublime deadpan humor, formal inventiveness, a sprinkling of animation and fantastical creatures, and the charm of its oddball characters. Having lived in isolation and mistrustful of mainland folk, Isla and Sandy (brilliantly played by Gayle Rankin and Grant O’Rourke) initially try to toss Daniel (Domhnall Gleeson) off the island — literally. But several days and one initiation ritual later, there’s a thaw. The siblings share their lore and Daniel speaks of mainland virtues, like avocados and the internet. Their interactions are fresh and funny, but there’s also a poignant exchange around belonging. These three people — who have experienced isolation, loss, and loneliness — lower their guard and embrace human connection.

Midnight:

1. Rock Springs

Runtime: 96 min | Language: English

After the death of her father, a grieving young girl moves to an isolated house in a new town with her mother and grandmother, only to discover there is something monstrous hidden in the town’s history and the woods behind their new home.

Writer-director Vera Miao’s ambitious, potent feature debut explores the legacy of generations of immigration and racism through a distinct and original genre lens. Spanning centuries, Miao draws from a real-life historical atrocity and Chinese beliefs about the nature of the afterlife to compose a singular portrait of inherited trauma and a stirring ode to the persistence and resilience of diasporic communities. Kelly Marie Tran grounds the film with her portrayal of a mother’s desperate concern for her child, while Benedict Wong’s visceral performance brings the terror and tragedy of the past to the forefront with dreadful clarity. A sense of foreboding engulfs the film, as Heyjin Jun’s seamless cinematography amplifies the aura of suspense, suggesting the unhealed wounds of these characters and their world. As the goings turn increasingly supernatural, so too grows the specificity of Miao’s vision.

2. undertone

Runtime: 93 min | Language: English

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.

Premieres:

1. Chasing Summer

Runtime: 90 min | Language: English

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.

2. Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass

Runtime: 93 min | Language: English

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.

3. The Gallerist

Runtime: 94 min | Language: English

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.

4. I Want Your Sex

Runtime: 90 min | Language: English

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.

5. The Invite

Runtime: 108 min | Language: English

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.

6. The Moment

Runtime: 103 min | Language: English

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.

7. The Only Living Pickpocket in New York

Runtime: 88 min | Language: English

When a theft goes awry, a veteran pickpocket is sent on a mission through New York to reclaim the stolen goods.

Harry is a classic native New Yorker, an old-school hustler who has moved through life lubricating palms with pickpocket cash since the 1980s. He stays smooth, continually sharpening his skills, but times are changing for Harry. Now it’s 2025, and the daily take from the streets? Fancy trackable phones. Cashless wallets full of credit cards. Gym bags holding cryptocurrency and guns.The Only Living Pickpocket in New York is a nostalgic portrait of a hustler getting lapped by today’s digitally networked world, who now must prepare for the final act of his life. Director Noah Segan’s modern metropolis is powered by the ephemera of a time gone by, with OG street action brought to radiant life by a terrific cast — led by John Turturro’s exceptional turn as Harry.

8. The Shitheads

Runtime: 100 min | Language: English

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.

9. The Weight

Runtime: 112 min | Language: English

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.

10. Wicker

Runtime: 105 min | Language: English

A fisherwoman asks a basketmaker to weave her a husband.

In their audacious and delightful follow-up to 2020’s Save Yourselves!, Sundance Film Festival alums Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer adapt and expand Ursula Wills’ beguiling short story about envy, commitment, and the trappings of societal norms. Wilson and Fischer bring this medieval oddball village to life with an all-star cast and generous helpings of wry wit. Olivia Colman’s sardonic fisherwoman flies in the face of expectations and assuredly unravels tradition as she fights for the relationship she wants and the treatment she deserves from Alexander Skarsgård’s enigmatic and composed wicker man. Part fable, part historical comedy, and fully eccentric, Wicker invites us to reconsider and even set alight the stories we’ve told ourselves about marriage, creating space for true romance to unfold.

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