By Erik Adams
Take a look at any Sundance Film Festival lineup and you’ll find a tremendous variety in the types of stories being told. That applies within those types of stories, too: Just consider the Festival’s comedy offerings in 2026. Pitch-black satire and goofy flights of fancy sit comfortably with romantic comedies and showbiz send-ups; the latest from masters of the genre screen alongside filmmakers (and one of the biggest pop stars of the 2020s) taking their first stab at cracking an audience up. Even the Fest’s tribute to its Park City era makes room for House Party’s high-school hijinks.
Given the number of features, short films, and episodic works playing the Festival in 2026, it’d be impossible to catalog every comedy, dramedy, or comedy-adjacent project in the lineup. But if you’re looking to watch something laugh-out-loud funny in person or at home, you can’t go wrong with any of the following. And remember — Single Film Tickets go on sale January 14!
SHORT FILMS AND EPISODIC PROJECTS
BAIT (Episodic) — In this genre-bending series created by and starring Oscar- and Emmy-winning Festival alum Riz Ahmed (2010’s Four Lions, 2012’s My Brother the Devil, and 2015’s Daytimer), an actor’s shot at a big break is disrupted by four days of crises, chaos, and conspiracy. Available in person.
Balloon Animals (Short Film Program 5) — Writer-director Anna Baumgarten uses wacky voices and chocolate cake to break the ice between a pair of slacking-off grocery store employees (Angela Giarratana and Izzi Rojas) and the customer (Kelsi Roberts) who interrupts their closing routine with an urgent balloon order. Available in person and online.
Candy Bar (Short Film Program 1) — Interactions with strangers don’t come more awkward than this one, in which a young girl (Zumi Edgerton, daughter of Candy Bar director Nash Edgerton) lets a fellow moviegoer (Damon Herriman, who’s also the screenwriter) know that he’s the spitting image of her dead father. Available in person and online.
Crisis Actor (Short Film Program 4) — Sarah Steele is a riot as the titular thespian, who lives to manufacture chaos at home and on the job — but a more sincere and organic form of the stuff awaits her in writer-director Lily Platt’s debut short. Available in person and online.
FreeLance (Episodic Fiction Pilot Showcase) — The rough gigs and financial strain navigated by the group of creatives at the center of Julien and Justin Turner’s pilot ought to earn a chuckle of recognition from experienced and up-and-coming filmmakers alike. Heck, anyone with artistic ambitions should be able to relate to Spence Moore II’s on-screen escapades. Available in person and online.
Ivar (Short Film Program 4) — Marital grievance is embodied by lumpy, lively puppets and psychedelic animation in this short from director Markus Tangre and screenwriter Signe Dammann Anker, lending an extra bite and a delightful surreality to the narrator’s thoughts of her husband’s lousy friends, her sister-in-law’s yapping dog, and the cigar-chomping biker she wishes would whisk her away. Available in person and online.
The Screener (Episodic) — A comic nightmare that could only be envisioned by storytellers as fiercely independent as Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe (The Robbery, 2017 Sundance Film Festival): The leak of an indie director’s new film spirals into an ordeal that ensnares the director, the big-time talent agency she screened the movie for, and, eventually, local law enforcement. Available in person.
Soft Boil (Episodic Fiction Pilot Showcase) — There’s no filter to the way Lulu (Camille Wormser) speaks, meaning there’s zero way of guessing what words Wormser and co-writer Alec Goldberg will put in her mouth next. But even that level of unpredictability can’t prepare you for what Lulu finds when she shows up for her new job as a nanny. Available in person and online.
FEATURES
Chasing Summer (Premieres) — Writer and actor Iliza Shlesinger mines awkward reunions, familial strife, and unexpected romance for laughs as a relief worker trying to dig out from a personal catastrophe in the hometown she’s spent her entire adult life trying to avoid. Her crisis is illustrated with the visual ingenuity that director Josephine Decker previously displayed in Madeline’s Madeline (2018 Sundance Film Festival) and Shirley (2020 Sundance Film Festival). Available in person and online.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass (Premieres) — Longtime collaborators David Wain and Ken Marino return to the silly-smart sweet spot of Wet Hot American Summer (2001 Sundance Film Festival) and The Ten (2007 Sundance Film Festival) with this journey across Los Angeles, where simple Kansas hairdresser Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch) has but one goal: righting a “hall pass” arrangement gone wrong by sleeping with Jon Hamm. Available in person.
The Gallerist (Premieres) — There’s nothing inherently funny about a dead body. But a dead body becoming the talk of the town during one of the art world’s most prestigious events? You could find some giggles in that. Cathy Yan built her 2018 Sundance Film Festival breakout Dead Pigs around hog corpses, and here she uses a human one to skewer the pretension and corruption of a creative community portrayed by the likes of Natalie Portman, Sterling K. Brown, Jenna Ortega, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph. Available in person.
The History of Concrete (Premieres) — This is no dry documentary about commonplace building materials — though “dry” and “commonplace” certainly apply, in terms of director John Wilson’s wry observations and knack for capturing the absurd minutiae and coincidences of everyday life. Shot in the first-person, narrated in the second, and connecting multiple threads in surprising fashion, it’s the next feature-length evolution of the distinct comedic voice he honed on HBO’s How To with John Wilson. Available in person.
House Party (Park City Legacy) — Before it was a franchise-launching box office smash, Reginald Hudlin’s first feature was the runaway comic hit of the 1990 Sundance Film Festival. Kid’s (Christopher “Kid” Reid) outrageous odyssey from his house to the titular shindig at Play’s (Christopher “Play” Martin), the outlandish antics and intimidation tactics of the bullies played by Full Force, Kid’s father (Robin Harris) crashing the party and roasting the guests — it all had Festivalgoers rolling in the aisles at the dawn of the ’90s, and it’ll probably do the same in 2026. Available in person.
The Incomer (NEXT) — Domhnall Gleeson takes feeling like a fish out of water to new extremes in the role of the government worker charged with persuading a pair of siblings (Gayle Rankin and Grant O’Rourke) to trade their island home for one on the Scottish mainland. Culture-clash comedy ensues, as both parties attempt to understand one another better and writer-director Louis Paxton throws in a dash of the otherworldly. Available in person and online.
The Invite (Premieres) — Cringe comedy gets claustrophobic in the third feature directed by Olivia Wilde, who co-stars alongside Seth Rogen as a troubled couple pushed to the brink during a night in with their more free-spirited neighbors (Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton). Wilde swirls together uncomfortable truths and unspoken desires in the burbling cauldron of the film’s lone apartment set, where director of photography Adam Newport-Berra is adept at making the walls feel like they’re closing in (and creating some breathing room when necessary). Available in person.
The Moment (Premieres) — The larger-than-life phenomenon of brat summer is lampooned from the inside out, with Charli xcx playing an exaggerated version of herself preparing for the biggest tour of her career and getting pulled in a million, slime-green-colored directions by her “360” director, Aidan Zamiri, and a supporting cast that includes Rosanna Arquette, Alexander Skarsgård, Kate Berlant, and Jamie Demetriou. Available in person.
Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant (Midnight) — It’s right there in the name, isn’t it? New Zealand directing duo THUNDERLIPS expands their goopy short Help, I’m Alien Pregnant to feature length, layering more body-horror belly laughs onto the saga of Mary (Hannah Lynch), the extraterrestrial who impregnated her, and the confounded earthlings about to be showered in the ooze of an interplanetary bundle of joy. Available in person.
The Musical (U.S. Dramatic Competition) — Will Brill is a knockout as middle school drama teacher and failed playwright Doug Leibowitz, a powder keg of unrealized ambitions and romantic anguish who’s ignited when he learns his art teacher ex (Gillian Jacobs) is dating their school’s suave, sculpted principal (Rob Lowe). Director Giselle Bonilla is in impressive command of her debut feature’s tricky tone, turning in a caustic satire that’s a little bit The Producers, a little bit Election, and a little bit Fight Club for kids. Available in person and online.
The Shitheads (Premieres) — Director Macon Blair won the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival with I don’t feel at home in this world anymore., and here he lays out an entirely different comic gauntlet of epic proportions: The highways and byways that Mark (Dave Franco) and Davis (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) have to cross in order to deliver young, wealthy Sheridan (Mason Thames) to rehab. Available in person.
Wicker (Premieres) — Who better than Oscar winner and British sitcom veteran Olivia Colman and filmmaking duo of Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer (Save Yourselves!, 2020 Sundance Film Festival) to bring to life the village fisherwoman who asks a basketmaker (Peter Dinklage, similarly well-cast) to build her a husband? And who better than Alexander Skarsgård to play that creation of reed and willow, ideal in form and dimensions and remarkably rendered through woven textures, creaky sound design, and Skarsgård’s lumbering physicality? Available in person.
