Most Anticipated Films of the Sundance Film Festival 2026

Sundance Film Festival 2026 officially announced its lineup on December 10 and the reveal already feels weighted with more significance than usual. This will be the festival’s final year in Park City before it relocates to Boulder—a move that ends decades of proximity to the epic Wasatch slopes and closes the chapter on a place that helped define Sundance’s identity as much as the films themselves. It also arrives in the shadow of Robert Redford’s passing. As the festival’s founder and longtime steward, Redford shaped the trajectory of American independent cinema. His absence gives the 2026 Sundance festival a real end-of-an-era energy.

I personally have been attending Sundance since 2014 when I walked into the world premiere of Whiplash and immediately understood why people freeze in the Utah winters to come here each year. And then I discovered the joys of skiing in and out of movie premieres. I was hooked. In the decade since, Sundance has introduced me to more eventual year-end favorites than any other festival I cover. It is the place where films and filmmakers seem to appear out of nowhere fully formed. As a critic, Sundance remains one of the clearest reminders of why I continue to love doing this whole critic thing.

American Doctor

Three American doctors — Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian — enter Gaza to provide medical relief and run up against the political realities shaping their work, in a documentary from director Poh Si Teng.
Section: U.S. Documentary Competition (available online)

Carousel

Chris Pine and Jenny Slate star in Rachel Lambert’s drama about a divorced Cleveland doctor whose carefully ordered life is upended by his daughter’s debate dreams and the reappearance of an old flame.
Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition (available online)

Frank & Louis

Kingsley Ben-Adir and Rob Morgan lead this Swiss–U.K. drama about a man serving a life sentence who takes a prison job caring for elderly inmates with dementia, forging a bond that reshapes his sense of responsibility.
Section: Premieres

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass

Zoey Deutch, Jon Hamm, and John Slattery (in a Mad Men reunion!!) headline David Wain’s comedy about a Midwestern bride-to-be whose fiancé actually uses their “free celebrity pass,” sending her on a retaliatory quest through Hollywood.
Section: Premieres

The Gallerist

Natalie Portman stars alongside Jenna Ortega, Sterling K. Brown, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph in Cathy Yan’s story of a desperate Miami gallerist who conspires to sell a dead body at Art Basel.
Section: Premieres

Hanging by a Wire

Director Mohammed Ali Naqvi chronicles the tense, hours-long rescue attempt after a cable car carrying six schoolboys and two adults snaps high above a ravine in the Himalayan foothills.
Section: U.S. Documentary Competition (available online)

The History of Concrete

John Wilson brings his dry, analytical sensibility to a documentary about concrete, framed by his attempt to apply a Hallmark-movie storytelling formula to the subject.
Section: Premieres

In The Blink of An Eye

Andrew Stanton’s live-action feature stars Rashida Jones, Kate McKinnon, and Daveed Diggs in a centuries-spanning narrative that intercuts three storylines to explore connection and the cycles of life.
Section: Premieres

I Want Your Sex

Gregg Araki directs Olivia Wilde, Cooper Hoffman, Mason Gooding, Chase Sui Wonders, Daveed Diggs, and Charli XCX in a story about a young assistant pulled into the erotic and psychological orbit of a provocative artist.
Section: Premieres

The Incomer

Domhnall Gleeson and Gayle Rankin anchor this U.K. feature about siblings on a remote Scottish isle whose quiet, myth-infused life is threatened when an official arrives to relocate them.
Section: NEXT (available online)

The Invite

Olivia Wilde directs and co-stars with Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton in a dinner-party film where a couple on thin ice hosts their upstairs neighbors and watches the evening steadily collapse.
Section: Premieres

The Musical

Gillian Jacobs and Rob Lowe star in this U.S. Dramatic entry about a frustrated middle-school theater teacher who plots to derail his principal’s shot at an academic award.
Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition (available online)

Rock Springs

Kelly Marie Tran, Benedict Wong, and Jimmy O. Yang star in Vera Miao’s supernatural drama about a grieving girl who moves with her mother and grandmother to an isolated town, only to discover something lurking in the woods behind their home.
Section: Midnight (available online)

Run Amok

Alyssa Marvin leads a cast including Patrick Wilson, Margaret Cho, Elizabeth Marvel, and Molly Ringwald in a story about a teenager staging a musical about the worst day in her high school’s history.
Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition (available online)

Saccharine

Midori Francis and Danielle Macdonald star in Natalie Erika James’ horror film about a lovelorn medical student terrorized by a hungry ghost after joining an ash-eating weight-loss craze.
Section: Midnight

See You When I See You

Cooper Raiff, David Duchovny, Kaitlyn Dever, Hope Davis, and Lucy Boynton headline Jay Duplass’ drama about a comedy writer working through PTSD and grief with the help of his family.
Section: Premieres

The Shitheads

Dave Franco, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Mason Thames, Kiernan Shipka, Nicholas Braun, and Peter Dinklage star in Macon Blair’s story of two unqualified escorts hired to transport a rich teen to rehab as things quickly spin out of control.
Section: Premieres

Union County

Will Poulter and Noah Centineo lead this rural Ohio drama about a young man navigating a county-mandated drug court program amid the ongoing opioid crisis.
Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition (available online)

The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist

Directors Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell, with producers Daniel Kwan and Jonathan Wang, follow a father-to-be trying to make sense of the “AI insanity,” weighing its existential risks and potential.
Section: Premieres

zi

Kogonada’s Hong Kong–set feature stars Michelle Mao, Haley Lu Richardson, and Jin Ha in the story of a young woman haunted by visions of her future self and a stranger who alters the course of her night.
Section: NEXT (available online)

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