This year’s bittersweet edition of the Sundance Film Festival—the first without late founder Robert Redford and the last held in Park City, Utah, before its move to Boulder, Colorado—was a melancholic affair. There were legacy screenings like Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton’s 2006 dark comedy “Little Miss Sunshine” and Guillermo del Toro’s 1992 horror “Cronos” honoring the festival’s history. There was the nostalgic Redford tribute video that preceded each and every film. The whole event felt like a teary-eyed farewell before turning the page toward an unknown future.
Change is in the founding ethos of the independent film mecca, with Redford himself having kicked off many a Sundance emphasizing the importance of staying open to new pastures. Still, there is one constant: a rich offering of movies. Among the 50 feature-length titles I screened throughout, here are nine performances that cinema lovers need to look out for in 2026.
Kingsley Ben-Adir and Rob Morgan, “Frank & Louis”
It’s impossible to pick the better performance in Petra Biondina Volpe’s two-hander about a prison program—based on a real initiative in California—that enlists incarcerated men to care for older inmates with cognitive problems. Ben-Adir brings a sense of silently simmering frustration and vulnerability to his role as Frank, a caregiver who’s also wrestling with the high stakes of an upcoming parole hearing. As the mean and often lost Louis who’s dealing with a worsening case of dementia, Morgan is both volatile and fragile. Throughout the film, the two men slowly learn how to co-exist within a respectful steadiness. It’s a poignant drama free of cheap sentimentality, made even more elegant with the grace notes that Ben-Adir and Morgan provide.
Courtesy Sundance Institute/Rob Baker Ashton
Rinko Kikuchi, “Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!”
Josef Kubota Wladyka’s film has such a feather-light touch that you might mistake Kikuchi’s gentle performance for something underpowered. But Kikuchi is studiously understated, even quietly shattering as a grieving widow in Tokyo, unable to cope with the aftermath of her husband’s sudden death. Her Ha-Chan is a dancer who gives up on her studio, at least until her loyal friends drag her back into the scene (and, as a result, a possible new romance). Sporting a disarmingly old-fashioned curly do, Kikuchi rises to the occasion with verve, both as a frisky dancer and surreal dreamer. In the end, she gifts us an imperfectly lovable character whose happiness and “Dirty Dancing” enthusiasm we root for.
Courtesy Sundance Institute | photo by Daniel Satinoff
Olivia Wilde, “The Invite”
Wilde had double duty at Sundance this year. She promoted both Gregg Araki’s sexy satire “I Want Your Sex” (in which she plays a predatory art world bigwig in a cutting and hilarious performance) and “The Invite,” her third directorial outing, in which she stars alongside Penélope Cruz, Seth Rogen, and Edward Norton. The latter film—a dark-humored marital strife dramedy that channels the spirit of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”—is where Wilde had the more complex challenge. Following two couples over the course of a hectic night, “The Invite” finds Wilde at her most vulnerable and exhausted, slowly recognizing her own unmet needs in life and love. It’s explosively funny until it turns heartbreaking, a tonal shift Wilde acutely navigates both in front of and behind the camera.
Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo c/o The Invite
Mason Reeves, “Josephine”
There is usually that one movie everyone talks about at Sundance—this year, it was “Josephine,” writer-director Beth de Araújo’s heart-wrenching drama about a little girl’s emotional survival after witnessing a brutal rape. Loosely based on de Araújo’s own memories, the perfectly calibrated film introduces Reeves in the eponymous role—across from Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan as her parents—through a sophisticated performance well beyond her young age. Given the tough topic and difficult scenes, it is safe to assume that some of what goes on in the story was filmed away from Reeves’ eyes. And yet, she still delivers a deeply lived-in portrayal of a child in emotional turmoil. Reeves will be one to watch this year once “Josephine” lands distribution.
Courtesy Sundance Institute | photo by Greta Zozula
Alexander Skarsgård, “The Moment” and “Wicker”
Few are having more fun building a wide-ranging career these days than Skarsgård, who follows up Harry Lighton’s terrific BDSM dom-com “Pillion” (out Feb. 6) with two equally agile and amusing roles. In Aidan Zamiri’s music mockumentary “The Moment,” a fictionalized version of Charli XCX’s rise to fame, he plays an out-of-his-depth director-producer with perfect comic timing. Whereas in Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s “Wicker,” he is the basketweave husband of an outcast (Olivia Colman) living in a hysterically horny medieval community. For the entirety of this wonderfully weird fable, Skarsgård shoulders the demands of the film’s practical effects with ease; while he is quite literally a wicker man drowning in rattan, the romantic humanity of his character miraculously comes alive and touches our hearts.
“The Moment” Courtesy A24
Will Poulter, “Union County”
There might be even more shades we haven’t seen yet to the versatile Poulter, if his subtle, pitch-perfect character work in Adam Meeks’ sensitive drama is any indication. As Cody Parsons, an addict navigating the ups and downs of his recovery journey, Poulter is quiet, reflective, and gradually gut-wrenching—emotional registers he patiently builds toward as his character learns to take it one day at a time. Poulter convinces you that he’s done the emotional and physical homework on a subject that could easily be cheapened in the wrong hands; that’s why he feels as organic as the various real-life individuals featured throughout the movie, who generously share their own stories.
Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Stefan Weinberger
Julia Jones, “The Weight”
Led by Ethan Hawke, the entire cast of Padraic McKinley’s Depression-era survival thriller—about a gold heist gone wrong—is terrific. But as Anna, Jones brings something further to the ensemble, not just as the only woman of the pack who’s more than a match for the demands of the treacherous trek, but also as the most watchful and emotionally sturdy participant. Jones’ performance especially soars in quiet moments when Anna savvily observes more than she lets on. She is a classic heroine, a shrewd life-saver with reserves of inner strength.
Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Mat teo Cocco