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This year’s Sundance Film Festival marked the final one in Park City, but the program stood out for other reasons. Over the years, Sundance has played less of a role in launching huge indie success stories like Little Miss Sunshine (which celebrated its 20th anniversary at the festival this year). Instead, like the current media landscape as a whole, Sundance has a more fragmented effect.
Standouts from this year’s lineup range from distinctive documentaries to international discoveries. It’s impossible to know which ones will continue to make some noise over the next year, but these highlights deserve all that and more. Read on for the 12 best movies of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.
Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild]
Adam and Zack Khalil’s eye-opening documentary follows the efforts of Michigan Anishinaabek Cultural Preservation and Repatriation Alliance as they focus on the repatriation efforts for the state’s tribes. In the process, the movie recaps the broader colonial history behind contemporary archeology and how it led to so many Native artifacts in the hands of institutions that don’t own them. Edited at a rapid-fire pace, Aanikoobijigan explores the cultural impact of such plundering (with clips from movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark included in a less-than-flattering light) as well as the modern-day efforts to set things right. The movie is essential viewing for any American yearning to better understand the travails of its original inhabitants as their modern relatives seek to preserve their heritage.
Closure
If you didn’t know that Closure was a documentary, it wouldn’t need to be seen in those terms. Polish director Michał Marczak has made a life-affirming drama that exists in a category of its own. Closure follows the travails of a troubled man named Daniel who spends sleepless days and nights searching for his missing teen son. In the process, Daniel questions his commitment, rediscovers his love of the outdoors, and learns to help other grieving parents like himself. The movie is riveting and remarkable for the way it taps into the grim uncertainty of Daniel’s quest until he finally uncovers a better path forward.
Filipiñana
The haunting first feature from Filipino director Rafael Manuel follows a young woman who works at a posh golf club, where she gradually becomes unsettled by the power dynamics in play. A slow, poetic work that takes place almost exclusively within the confines of the club, Filipiñana transforms its milieu into a critical study of colonialism and its reverberations in modern times. A mesmerizing debut from a filmmaker loaded with potential.
The History of Concrete
John Wilson’s docu-series How to With John Wilson ended in 2023, but the filmmaker behind that beguiling series never stopped filming his everyday life. The result is this deadpan documentary in which Wilson explores the aftermath of his successful show and his misguided attempt to make a whole movie about…you guessed it, concrete. This being Wilson, the subject is really just a starting point for more profound explorations of humanity and civilization, but you have to follow Wilson’s hilarious stream-of-consciousness style to grasp all of that. A total whimsical blast.
The Huntress
Another international highlight from a first-time director, Suzanne Andrews Correa’s Mexican thriller follows a determined mother (Adriana Paz, last seen in Oscar winner Emilia Perez) willing to take violent measures to protect her family. While The Huntress wrestles with unsettling misogynistic forces, it also showcases a growing sense of sisterhood as various characters join forces to do something about it. Shot against the backdrop of a tense desert town and the drab routines of factory life, The Huntress is a slow-burn feminist Western with an activist soul.
The Incomer
The most infectious, lighthearted discovery of this year’s Sundance, The Incomer explores what happens when living off the grid is no longer viable. Adult siblings Isla and Sandy (Gayle Rankin and Grant O’Rourke) have grown up alone on a remote Scottish island after their parents died. When a land management official (Domhall Gleeson) shows up and tries to kick them out, they initially reject his advances before seducing him into their way of life. Romance follows, but more officials are on the way, as the modern world constantly threatens to disrupt their solitary utopia. Writer-director Louis Paxton’s first feature echoes the bittersweet charm of Taika Waititi’s early work (think Eagle vs Shark) as well as traces of Martin McDonagh’s deadpan scenarios (the foggy island and its eccentric inhabitants recall The Banshees of Inisherin). More than that, though, The Incomer is a smart and funny crowdpleaser that invites debate about its sympathies: Through Isla and Sandy’s childlike commitment to protecting their lives, the movie both appreciates the mystical nature of provincial life and the value of moving past it. Above all else, it establishes Paxton as a significant new filmmaker to watch.
The Invite
Olivia Wilde directs and co-stars in this endearing cringe comedy, which sold to A24 in this year’s biggest deal. Wilde and Seth Rogen play a couple whose romance has faded when their neighbors (Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton) swing by for an awkward dinner party. Various sexual hijinks ensue as the group come to terms with their hangups and attempt to talk them through. At its best, The Invite calls to mind vintage screwball comedies, with its relentless dialogue driving home one funny exchange after another, and an undercurrent of serious relationship insight at its core. Set entirely within the confines of a San Francisco apartment, The Invite has a contained theatricality to it that brings the formidable talent of its small cast into sharp relief.
Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie
Veteran director Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) delivers the first closeup look at novelist Salman Rushdie’s recovery from a shocking knife attack that nearly took his life in 2022. While Rushdie went into hiding after a fatwa was issued against him in 1989 for his controversial book The Satanic Verses, he reentered public life a few decades ago in a bold effort to combat the censorship that had overrun his life. Knife recounts that story in Rushdie’s own profound, often darkly amusing words, while also documenting his dramatic recovery. Featuring intimate footage largely recorded by Rushdie’s wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Knife showcases the sheer danger of fighting for freedom of expression on a public platform, and the spirit of resilience necessary to keep it going at all costs.
Nuisance Bear
A lonely polar roams Manitoba in this transfixing, visually masterful achievement from directors Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman, which eschews the language of a traditional environmental documentary in favor of something far more poetic and complex. Set in the remote “Polar Bear Capital of the World,” the movie tracks the uneasy relationship that has developed between the animals and people in the area, who keep a close watch on the bears as they roam through town.
While tourists admire the animals from afar, Inuit locals see them as pests (and hunting targets) that demand constant attention. Set to a meditative score by Cristóbal Tapia de Veer (White Lotus) and loaded with entrancing visuals, Nuisance Bear hovers in ambiguity about the nature of the bear’s role in its remote ecosystem: At odds with a society that both fears its presence and relies on it for sustenance, the creature persists in a state of constant uncertainty, epitomizing the fragility of nature as a whole in the shadow of human civilization. A profound and provocative cinematic approach to the nature documentary, Nuisance Bear deserves an immersive theatrical setup to be fully appreciated. As the winner of the Grand Jury Prize for the U.S. Documentary Competition at this year’s Sundance, it stands a good chance of getting out there on the biggest screens possible.
The Oldest Person in the World
Thank god for documentarian Sam Green, who follows up his masterful 32 Sounds with The Oldest Person in the World, a charming and soulful look at supercentenarians. Green’s movie oscillates between interviews with many of the oldest people in the world and personal reflections about the confrontations with mortality in his own life, which includes a cancer diagnosis, family tragedy, and the birth of his young child. It’s a sensational portrait of what it means to keep living in the moment, regardless of what the future might provide, and a repudiation to more superficial pursuits. Elderly people are sacred beings, Green argues, and his lovely movie shows us exactly why.
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
In 1972, filmmaker William Greaves gathered many of the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance for a boozy hangout session at Duke Ellington’s apartment, where they hosted an extensive salon on the legacy of the era that catalyzed an explosion of Black art and culture in America. Greaves never finished putting the footage together before his death in 2014, but his son David has now completed the movie, and the world is much better for it. Greaves’ intimate camera brings us into the room alongside the likes of photographer James Van Der Zee, painter Aaron Douglas, and Ida Mae Cullen, the loquacious widow of poet Countee Cullen, who frequently interjects to make sure her husband’s contributions remain central to the conversation. Expect this one to make a lot of noise in the year ahead, as more and more audiences find their way into this incredible room. Talk about a rare opportunity.
The Shitheads
A stealth remake of Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail by way of the Farrelly brothers, The Shitheads marks the latest comedic undertaking of writer-director Macon Blair (The Toxic Avenger), and it’s a total lowbrow delight. Dave Franco and O’Shea Jackson star as a pair of deadbeats tasked with accompanying a spoiled teen troublemaker (Mason Thames) to rehab, only to lose track of him in the midst of a chaotic road trip. Various slapstick hijinks ensue, including bad drug trips and a scatological joke that dares you not to laugh, but at its core the movie is a sincere look at the desperation of social outcasts trying to make something of themselves…and failing miserably. Their loss is our gain.