Skip to main content

Festival coverage

Sundance Film Festival

22 January – 1 February 2026

Latest reviews

  • The Invite
    Review preview for The Invite

    Wilde's direction is assured, there's some gorgeous framing and frequent Rogen collaborator Adam Newport-Berra's camera makes the most of what's in front of it.

    Andrew Robertson · 3.5 out of 5
    Joe and Angela are on thin ice, and tonight might be when it all falls apart. Unfortunately, their upstairs neighbours are about to arrive for dinner, and everything that can go wrong goes worse.
  • American Doctor
    Review preview for American Doctor

    A fourth doctor, unsuccessful in his efforts to get to Gaza, helps in whatever ways he can. This enables the film to move between intense scenes within Gaza itself, and the US, where it’s easier to breathe.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    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.
  • Aanikoobijigan
    Review preview for Aanikoobijigan

    This is not the first documentary to explore the issue of colonial looting, but its unique angle makes it stand out.

    Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
    Trapped in museum archives, Ancestors bend time and space to find their way home. History, spirituality, and the law collide as tribal repatriation specialists fight to return and rebury Indigenous human remains, offering a revealing look at the still-pervasive worldviews that justified collecting them in the first place.
  • Saccharine
    Review preview for Saccharine

    The complex interaction of desire and disgust is expressed through the textures of indulgent, luxurious foods juxtaposed with similarly textured body parts in a way that is both sensual and grotesque.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    A lovelorn medical student is terrorised by a hungry ghost after taking part in an obscure weight loss craze: eating human ashes.
  • Jaripeo
    Review preview for Jaripeo

    The documentary is attentive to contradiction without flattening its subjects into symbols.

    Edin Custo · 3.5 out of 5
    A journey to Michoacán’s hypermasculine rodeos descends into the subconscious of memory, queer desire, and longing, leading to a reckoning with the wounds and beauty of a home left behind.
  • Barbara Forever
    Review preview for Barbara Forever

    What emerges over the course of O’Connor’s feature is not a saintly monument but a vibrant, difficult, funny, and unsentimental person.

    Edin Custo · 4 out of 5
    An archive-driven exploration of the life, work, and legacy of iconic, pioneering lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer.
  • Filipiñana
    Review preview for Filipiñana

    Sociopolitics spritzes delicately, like the water from the club's sprinklers, over the whole affair.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    Tee girl Isabel feels strangely drawn to Dr. Palanca, the president of the country club where she works. However, after piecing together a violent picture of what lies beneath the club’s pristine surface, she realizes that what began as an innocent infatuation is actually rooted in a sinister shared history.
  • Lady
    Review preview for Lady

    While the film has political and sociological themes, it ultimately succeeds because it’s about the true spirit of the people.

    Jeremy Mathews · 4 out of 5
    In the sprawling African metropolis of Lagos, a fiercely independent young cab driver meets a band of radiantly reckless sex workers whose sisterhood pulls her into danger and joy, setting her on a journey toward her own transformation.
  • Shame And Money
    Review preview for Shame And Money

    The title may seem a bit on the nose, but it certainly emphasises the themes, calling attention to them in both subtle and overt moments

    Jeremy Mathews · 3.5 out of 5
    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.
  • Frank & Louis
    Review preview for Frank & Louis

    If both stars aren’t mentioned in awards talk next year, it will be a travesty.

    Amber Wilkinson · 5 out of 5
    Frank, serving a life sentence, takes a prison job caring for ageing inmates with Alzheimer’s and dementia. What begins as a self-interested bid for parole becomes a profound, transformative bond with fellow inmate Louis, offering Frank a glimpse of redemption in an unforgiving place.

A–Z of Sundance Film Festival 2026 reviews

Features

News