Sundance Film Festival: Buzziest movies we’ll be keeping an eye out for this year
Sundance has launched beloved films and big stars, and these are the seven movies that had tongues wagging from this year’s festival.
Every January, film stars, cinephiles and Hollywood movers-and-shakers gather in a snowy small town in Utah to sit together in silence and watch some movies.
The Sundance Film Festival started in 1978 and became to be greatly associated with one of its founders, Robert Redford, even named after his iconic character from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
This year was the first without Redford, who died in September, and also the last time it would be held in Park City. From next year, it will makes Boulder in Colorado its new home.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.The festival has always been renowned for discovering indie films and up-and-coming artists, and has over the years been the launchpad for the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Ryan Coogler and Steven Soderberg who made their debuts, Reservoir Dogs, Fruitvale Station and Sex, Lies and Videotapes respectively, at Sundance.
Among the films to have premiered there include The Blair Witch Project, Clerks, Napoleon Dynamite, The Squid and the Whale, Little Miss Sunshine, Call Me By Your Name, Get Out, Hereditary, Memento and The Farewell.
Some Sundance movies would go on to be Oscar contenders, such as Rose Byrne’s performance in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, which debuted in Park City this time last year. Others would go on to be beloved entries of the movie lover canon, especially those who want more than a studio blockbuster or franchise film.
With Sundance wrapped for another year, here’s a look at some of its buzziest 2026 movies which will hopefully be coming to a cinema near you in the next 12 months.
THE INVITE
This film is Olivia Wilde’s third time in the director’s chair, and she’s working from a script by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack. A four-hander comedy starring Wilde, Seth Rogen, Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz, it’s centred on two neighbour couples, one happy, the other less so.
A remake of a Spanish film, The People Upstairs, it starts with a dinner party where awkward topics come up, like how one couple can hear the other’s very loud sex through the walls. You can guess where it might go next. The movie has already been acquired by A24.
WICKER
Wicker was a big conversation point in media coverage from those on the ground at the festival, and not just because of its starry cast including Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgard, Peter Dinklage, Richard E. Grant and Australian Elizabeth Debicki.
Colman plays someone credited as just “fisherwoman”, an outcast in a village who commissions the local basket-maker for a husband made out of wicker. The fantastical paramour comes in the form of Skarsgard.
THE ONLY LIVING PICKPOCKET IN NEW YORK
A play on the title of the Simon and Garfunkle song, this is actor and frequent Rian Johnson collaborator Noah Segan’s directorial debut, and stars John Turturro as the eponymous character, as well as Giancarlo Esposito, Tatiana Maslany and Steve Buscemi.
The pickpocket in question is an old-school guy, who lifts small things and sells to a pawnbroker. His life is relatively simple, until he steals from the son of a crime family. Ooops. Wrong mark.
JOSEPHINE
Written and directed by Beth de Araujo, Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan play the parents of Josephine, an eight-year-old girl who witnesses a sexual assault in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
After the horrific encounter she doesn’t understand, she struggles to deal with the violence she saw, and the film explores her loss of innocence and the loss of safety. The film won the Grand Jury Prize for Drama.
HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY
The winner of the directing award in the US drama competition at Sundance, this film stars Rinko Kikuchi, who you might remember from Babel and Kumiko the Treasure Hunter. She plays Haru, whose greatest passions are ballroom dancing and husband.
When something happens that rips them both from her life, her friends try to pull her out of her grief by convincing her to put her dancing shoes back on. But letting go is complicated, especially when there’s a steamy infatuation with a new instructor involved.
LEVITICUS
This Australian movie, a debut feature from writer-director Adrian Chiarella, got a lot of attention in Sundance, proving that, once again, when the Americans love horrors from down under. Leviticus was scooped by indie company Neon for US distribution.
The film stars Joe Bird, Stacy Clausen and Mia Wasikowska, in a coming-of-age story about LGBTQ+ experiences set in a small town crammed with religious fanatics prone to conversation therapy and cursing people. An ominous mix.
GAIL DAUGHTRY AND THE CELEBRITY SEX PASS
That it’s directed by the man behind Wet Hot American Summer, and co-written with one his stars from that goofy romp, Ken Marino, should give you an idea about the vibes for this comedy.
It stars Zoey Deutch as a woman who discovers her long-time sweetheart and fiancé has cashed in on his celebrity sex pass when she finds him getting it on with Jennifer Aniston in a bookshop bathroom. To even the score, she heads to LA in search of hers: Jon Hamm.
