By Adam Silverstein
Many of the filmmakers in the 2026 Sundance Film Festival lineup are returning to Park City with new work. These are directors whose voices audiences previously encountered here — filmmakers who’ve sparked conversation, provoked thought, and taken risks that stick with you long after the credits roll.
This year’s alumni films hit nearly every corner of the program, from U.S. and World Cinema competitions to Premieres and Midnight. There are documentaries that dig deep, narratives that twist expectations, and projects that push at genre, politics, and personal truth — all unmistakably shaped by the sensibility that first brought these artists here.
Below is a look at the 2026 feature lineup from returning filmmakers, followed by shorts made by alumni whose work has previously screened at the Festival.
FEATURES
Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild]
Directors: Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil
Section: NEXT
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.
The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist
Directors: Daniel Roher, Charlie Tyrell
Section: Premieres
A father-to-be tries to figure out what is happening with the AI insanity, exploring the existential dangers and stunning promise of this technology that humanity has created.
Director: Tamra Davis
Section: Midnight
Immersive POV camera footage reveals electric performances, candid interviews, and intimate backstage life with Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Pavement, Rancid, Beck, The Amps, and Bikini Kill — an all-access view inside an era-defining moment in music.
Director: Alexandria Stapleton
Section: Premieres
Explores the circumstances that led to Brittney Griner playing basketball outside the U.S. despite being one of the best players in the sport, including her harrowing detainment, unwavering determination to secure her freedom, and her advocacy for the release of other wrongful detainees.
Directors: Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard
Section: Spotlight
A portrait of the inimitable singer, songwriter, and icon Marianne Faithfull.
Director: Makoto Nagahisa
Section: NEXT
When runaway teen Ju-Ju is embraced by a tribe of misfit youths in Kabukicho, she finds belonging for the first time — until betrayal and despair twist her haven into a prison, and she’s left with one way to take back control.
Director: Rachel Lambert
Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition
A divorced doctor’s carefully constructed life in Cleveland is upended when his daughter’s debate aspirations and the unexpected return of a past love force him to confront his own choices and embrace a second chance.
Director: Josephine Decker
Section: Premieres
After losing both her job and boyfriend, Jamie retreats to her small Texas hometown, where friends and flings from a fateful high school summer turn her life upside down.
Director: Michał Marczak
Section: World Cinema Documentary Competition
After his teenage son goes missing, Daniel scours the depths of the Vistula River, torn between the dread of a fatal leap and the hope that his son may still be alive.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass
Director: David Wain
Section: Premieres
Midwestern bride-to-be Gail Daughtry has a “free celebrity pass” agreement with her fiancé — who uses it. With her relationship in crisis, Gail sets out on an epic journey through Hollywood to even the scales.
Director: Cathy Yan
Section: Premieres
A desperate gallerist conspires to sell a dead body at Art Basel Miami.
Director: Valerie Veatch
Section: NEXT
The untold origins of artificial intelligence lie not in machines but in power, revealing the fantasies behind the hype that got us here and where we go next.
Director: Liz Garbus (with Elizabeth Wolff)
Section: Premieres
World champion tennis trailblazer Billie Jean King has had a game-changing impact on culture and sports. Rare archive and candid interviews with Billie Jean and those closest to her reveal how one woman put changing the world ahead of saving herself.
Director: Myrsini Aristidou
Section: World Cinema Dramatic Competition
11-year-old Iris learns her estranged father, Aris, is back in town for his own father’s funeral. Determined to know him, Iris tracks him down to a dilapidated shipyard, where he’s been keeping to himself. What begins as a stubborn attempt to reconnect slowly unfolds into a fragile bond.
Director: Suzanne Andrews Correa
Section: World Cinema Dramatic Competition
In the border city of Juárez, Mexico, where violence against women is perpetrated with impunity, an unlikely defender emerges with a desperate call for change. Inspired by true events.
Director: Gregg Araki
Section: Premieres
When fresh-faced Elliot lands a job with artist and provocateur Erika Tracy, his fantasies come true as she taps him to become her sexual muse. But Elliot finds himself out of his depth as Erika takes him on a journey into a world of sex, obsession, power, betrayal, and murder.
Director: Walter Thompson-Hernández
Section: NEXT
Twelve-year-old Lil Ant struggles to connect with his father when he begins to see surreal, almost spectral visions of boys drifting around his neighborhood. Their presence reveals a link between father and son, laying bare the threads that bind family, legacy, and place.
Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie
Director: Alex Gibney
Section: Premieres
Previously unseen footage captured by Salman Rushdie’s wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, documents his journey. Following not just his physical rehabilitation, but also the restoration of his spirit and optimism. Inspired by Rushdie’s memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.
Director: Olive Nwosu
Section: World Cinema Dramatic Competition
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.
Director: Amir Bar-Lev
Section: Premieres
The race to grab the last great prize in mountaineering, K2 in winter, left five dead. It exposed deep fault lines in alpinism today: pressures from commercialization, toxic effects of social media, and long-brewing tensions between those who’ve been marginalized and those who’ve always basked in the sport’s glory.
Director: Wregas Bhanuteja
Section: World Cinema Dramatic Competition
In a town where pleasure equals being possessed by spiritual beings, Bayu aspires to be the shaman of a trance party so he can fundraise enough money to prevent an impending eviction.
The Oldest Person in the World
Director: Sam Green
Section: Premieres
A decade-long global journey chronicles the ever-changing record holders of the title of oldest person alive. What begins as a portrait of longevity becomes a meditation on the passage of time, the randomness of fate, and the joy and profound human experience of being alive.
Director: William Greaves (with David Greaves)
Section: Premieres
A decade after his death, genre-defying filmmaker William Greaves has one last trick up his sleeve with what he considered the most important event he captured on film: a 1972 party he engineered with the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance.
Director: Rory Kennedy
Section: Premieres
A Hungarian girl dreams of conquering international men’s chess. After a 15-year battle against world champion Garry Kasparov, Judit Polgár revolutionizes the sport’s patriarchal culture to become one of the greatest chess prodigies in history and the greatest woman chess player of all time.
Director: Natalie Erika James
Section: Midnight
Hana, a lovelorn medical student, becomes terrorized by a hungry ghost after taking part in an obscure weight loss craze: eating human ashes.
Director: Jay Duplass
Section: Premieres
With the help of his family, a comedy writer battles PTSD after the tragic death of his sister.
Director: Sharon Liese
Section: U.S. Documentary Competition
When the small town of Marion, Kansas, is thrust into the international spotlight after a police raid on the Marion County Record and the death of its 98-year-old co-owner, a fierce debate ignites about the abuse of power, journalistic ethics, local journalism, and the United States Constitution.
Director: Visar Morina
Section: World Cinema Dramatic Competition
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.
Director: Macon Blair
Section: Premieres
When two unqualified bozos are hired to transfer a rich teen to rehab, their straightforward gig quickly spirals into dangerous mayhem.
Director: J.M. Harper
Section: U.S. Documentary Competition
From deep behind enemy lines, a hidden chapter of American military history is uncovered, prompting the question of whether reckoning with the past can bring peace to those who lived it. The Vietnam War’s first Black special operations team reunites to tell their story.
Director: Liz Sargent
Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition
Anna, a 38-year-old Korean adoptee with a cognitive disability, cares for her aging parents in a fragile balance of meeting one another’s needs. When a Florida heat wave shatters their family and Anna’s routine, her future is uncertain until she creates a world where she can thrive.
Director: William David Caballero
Section: NEXT
After 20 years of chronicling his Puerto Rican family, a director and his mother face devastating losses. Through tears and laughter, they craft animations that bring their loved ones back to life, discovering that every act of creation is also an act of letting go.
Director: Sara Dosa
Section: Premieres
Facing the death of his country’s glaciers and the loss of his beloved grandparents, Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason turns his archives into a time capsule to hold what is slipping away — family, memory, time, and water.
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Section: Premieres
The struggle against apartheid is recounted through Nelson Mandela’s own voice, drawn from recordings he made while writing his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.
Director: Daniel Roher
Section: Spotlight
A gifted piano tuner with a unique auditory condition discovers an unexpected aptitude for cracking safes, turning his life upside down.
Director: Dawn Porter
Section: Premieres
In 1983, author Ta-Nehisi Coates learned that a 14-year-old boy was murdered in his Baltimore middle school. Upon revisiting the case, he uncovers the truth: Three innocent teenagers were wrongfully convicted and spent 36 years in prison — creating a lasting impact on the accused, the witnesses, and their community.
Directors: Eleanor Wilson, Alex Huston Fischer
Section: Premieres
A fisherwoman asks a basketmaker to weave her a husband.
Director: Kogonada
Section: NEXT
In Hong Kong, a young woman haunted by visions of her future self meets a stranger who changes the course of her night — and possibly her life.
SHORTS
Director: Amandine Thomas
Section: Short Film Program 5
Maria, burdened with caregiving for her sick husband, gets invited to a party.
The Baddest Speechwriter of All
Director: Ben Proudfoot (with Stephen Curry)
Section: Documentary Short Film Program
Now 93, Martin Luther King Jr.’s lawyer and speechwriter reflects on the personal cost and surprising truths of making history, offering an intimate insider’s view of the Civil Rights Movement.
Director: Samuel Suffren
Section: Short Film Program 2
Marianne and Pétion, living in Haiti, await a call from their son who has left in pursuit of the American dream.
Director: Matthew Puccini
Section: Short Film Program 5
Max arrives home to find that his boyfriend has booked a callback. All hell breaks loose.
Director: Nash Edgerton
Section: Short Film Program 1
A young girl thinks a man in the candy bar line looks like her dad.
Going Sane: The Rise and Fall of the Center For Feeling Therapy
Director: Joey Izzo
Section: Documentary Short Film Program
A 1970s Los Angeles therapy collective rises with utopian promise before devolving into a business-minded cult built on control and abuse.
La Tierra del Valor (The Home of the Brave)
Director: Cristina Costantini
Section: Short Film Program 1
During a summer of grief and fear brought on by immigration raids in Los Angeles, one small act of bravery gives a community hope.
Director: Stephen P. Neary
Section: Short Film Program 1
After 50 years of marriage, John must care for his wife while learning to live alongside her vivid hallucinations.
Director: Liza Mandelup
Section: Documentary Short Film Program
When Luigi Mangione is charged with murder, he becomes the subject of fevered obsession. Through letters, fantasies, and conspiracies, strangers turn Luigi into a cultural sensation and a canvas for their rage, desire, and misplaced hope.
Director: Gabriela Ortega
Section: Short Film Program 4
In the wake of Selena Quintanilla’s murder, Marga’s life takes an unexpected turn at 21 weeks pregnant during a surprise visit to Mexico City.
Director: Ana A. Alpizar
Section: Short Film Program 5
A girl’s long-distance romance with an older Norwegian man promises to pull her and her mother from their austere life in Cuba, but her dreams are shaken when she realizes he isn’t as ideal as he seems.
Director: JJ Adler
Section: Short Film Program 1
When an atheist psychiatrist hypnotizes his con artist patient, a message from his long-dead twin emerges. It could be the perfect con, or it could be proof that reality is far stranger than he would like to admit.
Director: Don Hertzfeldt
Section: Animated Short Film Program
A life, seen through paper.
Director: Gregory Barnes
Section: Short Film Program 2
A Mormon couple ties the knot.
Director: Nieto
Section: Midnight Short Film Program
The bird people have fallen into violent chaos and are prey to a disturbing phenomenon: Their eggs seem to be haunted by demonic faces. Their hatching appears to herald an imminent catastrophe.
Director: Lovisa Sirén
Section: Short Film Program 3
Forced to leave her baby daughter with the child’s father, young mother Esther is caught in desperation and longing. Through the night she chases touch and comfort, seeking ways to hold onto whom she loves the most.
