From a sure-to-be-controversial sex comedy to a look at Courtney Love\u2019s comeback \u2014 our picks for the must-see movies at this year\u2019s Sundance Film Festival<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n\tGoodbye, Park City, and thanks for all the memories. <\/p>\n
\n\tBack in 1978, when Robert Redford first established what was then known as the Utah\/U.S. Film Festival, this modest little affair was based in Salt Lake City; the initial idea was simply to attract more filmmakers to the region. Then, in 1981, Redford moved the fest to Park City, a quaint ski-resort town where he owned property. And for the past 45 years, that\u2019s where this event \u2014 which would be rechristened the Sundance Film Festival, after one of the actor\u2019s most famous roles, in 1991 \u2014 took place. Film lovers, industry bigwigs, indie-cinema movers and shakers, A-list celebrities, wannabe auteurs, and legions of corporate sponsors and lookie-loo tourists and paparazzi flocked to this hamlet in the snowy Utah mountains every January to make deals, establish careers, debate the future of the art form, and, above all, to see movies. Lots and lots and lots of movies.<\/p>\n
\n\tNow, with a relocation to Boulder, Colorado, on the horizon, Sundance is ready to say farewell to its longtime home. When the 2026 edition of the festival kicks off Jan. 22, it will be its final go-round in Park City, and its first without its late, great founder. We\u2019d be lying if we said we weren\u2019t a little misty-eyed about bidding adieu to the place where we\u2019d seen so many memorable, occasionally life-changing films. But damned if Sundance is not exiting its former base of operations without one last big bang. This year\u2019s lineup looks to be one of its strongest in years, and we\u2019ll be reporting on the highs and lows of the fest throughout its 11-day run. But here\u2019s a look at some of the hotter, buzzier titles that seem poised to set Park City on fire (metaphorically speaking). From Charli XCX\u2019s white-hot meta-fiction about Brat Summer to a white-knuckle Ethan Hawke survivalist thriller, a warped midnight movie from an Adult Swim legend to a doc about the life, times, and comeback of Courtney Love \u2014 here, in alphabetical order, are 22 movies we can\u2019t wait to see at Sundance 2026.<\/p>\n
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\u2018Antiheroine\u2019<\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Edward Lovelace\/Courtesy of Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\tEveryone has an opinion on Courtney Love \u2014 her history, her artistry, her marriage, her persona, her problems, and the undeniable force of the music she made with her seminal 1990s band Hole. Ms. Love is well aware of what folks might think about her \u2014 and she\u2019s ready to set the record straight on a few things. Documentarians Edward Lovelace and James Hall give the former girl with the most cake a stage from which to tell her own story in her own words, covering everything from her tumultuous youth to her early brushes with fame and everything that happened after. We\u2019ve been waiting for this for a long time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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\u2018The Best Summer\u2019<\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Tamra Davis\/Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\tIt was the summer of \u201995, and Australian music promoter Stephen \u201cPav\u201d Pavlovic was putting together a traveling Down Under music festival he dubbed Summersault. The lineup included the Beastie Boys, the Foo Fighters, Sonic Youth, Bikini Kill, Rancid, Pavement, Beck, and a host of James Lavelle\u2019s Mo\u2019 Wax crew. Fresh off of directing the cin\u00e9ma du Sandler classic Billy Madison, Tamra Davis was following the traveling circus, camera in hand; she\u2019d end up recording a number of performances, along with a handful of interviews with the musicians. Cut to January 2025, when Davis was evacuating her house during the Palisades fires. She happened to come across a box of tapes filled with her old Summersault footage \u2014 and now we get this oral history-cum-mixtape of a once-in-a-lifetime fest that captured a moment of live Nineties music in full feedback-soaked bloom.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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\u2018Broken English\u2019<\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Amelia Troubridge\/\/Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\tWhen we were forced to bid farewell (on this plane of existence, at least) to Marianne Faithfull <\/a>in January of last year, it wasn\u2019t just one more cascade of tears going by \u2014 the loss of both a Sixties icon and a genuinely timeless iconoclast felt like a true end of an era. Documentarians Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard (no strangers to iconoclasts, having made the Nick Cave portrait 20,000 Days on Earth) revisit the life and times of the singer via something called the Ministry of Not Forgetting, where Tilda Swinton interviews the lady herself and digs into the who, what, where, and when of it all. Nick Cave, Courtney Love, Beth Orton, and Suki Waterhouse occasionally drop by to sing a song or three. Having played festivals in Venice, London, and Taipei, this singular take on the music doc makes its U.S. premiere here at Sundance. The Faithfull faithful on these shores may now commence rejoicing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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\u2018Buddy\u2019<\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Worry Well Productions\/Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\tThe program note for this festival selection consists of a single sentence: \u201cA brave girl and her friends must escape a kids television show.\u201d Pretty vague. And yet! There may not be another movie in Sundance\u2019s Midnight sidebar that we\u2019re looking forward to seeing more than this one, due to the fact that it comes courtesy of writer-director Casper Kelly, the gent who gave us those demented Adult Swim Yule Loge videos, the instant classic \u201cToo Many Cooks,\u201d<\/a> the TV show Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell, and a number of other brain-melting, psychotronic shorts. Also check out the cast: Cristin Milioti, Michael Shannon, Patton Oswalt, Keegan-Michael Key, Topher Grace, and If I Had Legs I\u2019d Kick You\u2018s kid actor Delany Quinn. Something tells us this one is going to generate some chatter. And probably some vomiting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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\u2018Carousel\u2019<\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\tNoah (Chris Pine) is a doctor, a divorc\u00e9, and a dad who\u2019s determined to make a modest medical practice in Cleveland enough to sustain both a close proximity to his daughter and his sense of well-being. He\u2019s content to be on his own. Then an old high-school flame named Rebecca (Jenny Slate) returns, and suddenly, his carefully constructed life is upended. We\u2019re fans of filmmaker Rachel Lambert\u2019s previous Sundance entry, the oddball Daisy Ridley vehicle Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023), so we\u2019re excited to see what she does with a similar story of self-imposed isolation and second chances.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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\u2018Chasing Summer\u2019<\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Eric Branco\/Summer 2001 LLC\/Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\tComedian Iliza Shlesinger wrote and stars in this dramedy about a woman who, having found herself unexpectedly single and unemployed, retreats to her hometown in Texas. Once back in the Lone Star state, she finds her past catching up to her and naturally gets caught up in a host of angst-fueled shenanigans. Shlesinger\u2019s stand-up specials are a hoot, and if you\u2019ve seen her supporting turn in 2020\u2019s Pieces of a Woman,<\/a> you know she has chops. Add in the fact that she\u2019s enlisted Jospehine Decker (Madeline\u2019s Madeline, Shirley), and you\u2019ve got something that sounds like more than just another millennial coming-of-age story.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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\u2018The Disciple\u2019<\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\tFrom the moment that he heard the Wu-Tang Clan\u2019s seminal debut album Enter the 36 Chambers, Tarik Azzougarh became a ride-or-die fan. The Dutch-Moroccan kid quickly put together his own hip-hop crew in his Netherlands hometown of Tilburg, and ended up slinging verses onstage next to Ol\u2019 Dirty Bastard when the group played in Amsterdam. Taking the name Cilvaringz, Azzougarh would become a Wu \u201caffiliate\u201d and end up booking a world tour for RZA. He\u2019d also began conceiving and producing a project that would eventually be called Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, and, well\u2026 you know what happened next. Oscar-winning filmmaker Joanna Natasegara chronicles how a kid obsessed with the Staten Island collective ended up collaborating with heroes \u2014 and how what was supposed to be a major addition to the Wu legend ended up becoming one of the most controversial album \u201creleases\u201d of all time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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\u2018The Gallerist\u2019<\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: MRC II Distribution Company L.P.\/Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\tAfter catching Cathy Yan\u2019s debut Dead Pigs at Sundance 2018, we immediately pledged allegiance to the sui generis filmmaker. (Not even a detour into superhero I.P., 2020\u2019s Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, could dampen her sharp wit or her idiosyncrasies.) So we\u2019re especially jazzed that she\u2019s back at the fest with one of the buzziest screenings of this year\u2019s edition \u2014 it nabbed the prime Saturday-night-at-the-Eccles slot \u2014 about a gallery owner (Natalie Portman) trying to catch the attention of an art-world tastemaker (Zach Galifianakis) before Art Basel Miami kicks into full gear. Let\u2019s just say that a corpse becomes a key part of the equation. It\u2019s fair to call this particular satire \u201cstar-studded\u201d: In addition to Portman and Galifianakis, the cast includes Jenna Ortega, Da\u2019Vine Joy Randolph, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Sterling K. Brown.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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\u2018Ghost in the Machine\u2019<\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Stefan Berin\/Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\tNo surprise that AI is a hot doc topic at this year\u2019s fest, with not one but two nonfiction takes on the tech boom that\u2019s causing existential dread among us flesh-and-blood types. The Premieres section\u2019s The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist is Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell\u2019s big-picture look at the ins and outs of artificial intelligence as filtered through the lens of fatherhood. And then there\u2019s this entry in the fest\u2019s more experimental, odds-and-sods NEXT sidebar, from documentarian Valerie Veatch (Love Child). Ghost in the Machine takes a more essayistic approach to the history of human advancement through technological advances, and how the combination of utopian ideology, dystopian nightmares, and good old-fashioned exploitation are playing into what could happen next with AI.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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\u2018The History of Concrete\u2019<\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: John Wilson\/Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\tIf you\u2019ve seen John Wilson\u2019s brilliant HBO series How to With John Wilson, then you know this one-of-a-kind documentarian has a knack for turning the mundane into the magnificent, not to mention mining B-roll footage for maximum irony. His feature debut picks up where his TV show left off, with Wilson asking a simple question: What is the history of that substance that paves our sidewalks and provides our structures with a strong foundation? His attempt to find an answer will lead him everywhere from a screenwriting class that teaches you how to write a Hallmark movie to a marathon that requires runners to run around a single block for 3,100 miles. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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\u2018I Want Your Sex\u2019<\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Lacey Terrell\/Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\tHe (Cooper Hoffman) is a young Angeleno who just scored a plum gig as an artist\u2019s assistant. She (Olivia Wilde) is his new boss, who\u2019s also decided that her new hire will become her \u201csexual muse.\u201d Considering this cockeyed exploration of intimacy, consent, power dynamics and hot \u2018n\u2019 heavy kink comes courtesy of director, co-writer, and New Queer Cinema icon Gregg Arraki (The Living End, The Doom Generation, Mysterious Skin), expect a post office\u2019s worth of envelopes to get pushed before the end credits roll. Charli XCX, Daveed Diggs, The Studio\u2018s Chase Sui Wonder,s and Scream\u2018s Mason Gooding co-star.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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\u2018In the Blink of an Eye\u2019<\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\tPixar legend Andrew Stanton (WALL-E, Finding Nemo) has spent the last decade directing episodes of top-shelf TV series (Stranger Things, Better Call Saul, For All Mankind). Now he steps back into the world of live-action features \u2014 his first since 2012\u2019s John Carter \u2014 with this trilogy of tales that spans the prehistoric era, the present day, and our distant future. A family of cave dwellers fights to survive the harsh terrain. An anthropology grad student (Rashida Jones) starts a relationship with a peer (Daveed Diggs) while studying the remains of early humans. And an astronaut (Kate McKinnon) roams the galaxy many, many light years from now, trying to ward off a threat to the ship\u2019s in-house ecosphere. Chances are good that there will be numerous similarities among all of these tales, which will lead folks to believe that time sure passes\u2026 well, see the title.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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\u2018The Invite\u2019<\/h2>\n
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![\"Olivia](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/The-Invite-Sundance.jpg?w=300\")
\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\tOlivia Wilde isn\u2019t just at the festival as an actor for hire (see: I Want Your Sex). The hyphenate is also bringing her latest directorial effort, her first since 2022\u2019s Don\u2019t Worry Darling \u2014 yeah, yeah, we know<\/a>, quiet down now, people \u2014 which centers on two couples gathered together for what\u2019s supposed to be a nice, civil dinner party. Quicker than you can ask who\u2019s afraid of Virginia Woolf, the evening devolves into an airing of marital grievances that that threatens to go nuclear. Wilde and Seth Rogen play one of beleaguered duos; Edward Norton and Pen\u00e9lope Cruz play the other. Very curious about this one, in a sort of Bill-Hader-as-Keith-Morrison<\/a>-chomping-popcorn-meme kind of way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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\u2018The Moment\u2019<\/h2>\n
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![\"Charli](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/the-moment-sundance_e72a66.jpg?w=300\")
\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: A24\/Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\tRemember how Charli XCX and \u201cBrat Summer\u201d dominated 2024? The singer-songwriter is now ready to give you a firsthand look at what it was like to be in the eye of that pop-superstar storm, via a cheeky metafictional comedy! Director, co-writer, and longtime Charli collaborator Aidan Zamiri has described this faux-chronicle of the hitmaker on tour as an \u201calternate history of the Brat era<\/a>\u2026 if she\u2019d made all the wrong choices.\u201d Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd plays the hottest director in town, who\u2019s been hired to document everything. Rachel Sennott, Kate Berlant, Rosanna Arquette, Jamie Demetriou, and Hailey Gates co-star. We assume the premiere will shock Sundance like a defibrillator.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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\u2018Once Upon a Time in Harlem\u2019<\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: William Greaves Productions\/Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\tIn 1972, the late, great filmmaker William Greaves (Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One) sent out an invite to the last living creators and emissaries of the Harlem Renaissance: Come to Duke Ellington\u2019s apartment on the corner of West 157th and St. Nicholas Avenue for a night of cocktails and conversation. Greaves proceeded to document a who\u2019s who of songwriters, authors, poets, theater bigwigs, journalists, movers, and shakers sitting around and reminiscing. The footage remained virtually unseen \u2014 until now. Thanks to David Greaves, William\u2019s son (who was also operating one of the cameras on that fateful night), we now get to be a fly on the wall as a host of legends detail how they made history and changed American art forever.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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\u2018Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story\u2019<\/h2>\n
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