Category Archives: Sundance Film Festival

Shame and Money Wins World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance

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shame-and-moneyVisar Morina’s Shame and Money was awarded the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, marking a major moment for the filmmaker following his earlier Sundance entry Exile.

Set between rural Kosovo and the capital, the film follows a family forced to rebuild their lives after losing their livelihood, tracing how pride, financial pressure, and quiet desperation shape everyday choices. Morina approaches the story with restraint, letting tension build through small moments rather than spectacle.

The film stars Astrit Kabashi and Flonja Kodheli, whose performances anchor the story with emotional clarity and lived-in realism. Shame and Money represents Germany and Kosovo and continues its festival run following its Sundance win.

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2026 Sundance Film Festival Announces Award Winners

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sundance-2026The 2026 Sundance Film Festival revealed its award winners during a ceremony at The Ray Theatre in Park City, Utah, honoring standout films across U.S., international, documentary, and NEXT categories ahead of the festival’s final weekend.

Top Grand Jury Prizes went to Josephine (U.S. Dramatic Competition), Nuisance Bear (U.S. Documentary Competition), Shame and Money (World Cinema Dramatic Competition), and To Hold a Mountain (World Cinema Documentary Competition). The festival’s NEXT Innovator Award, presented by Adobe, was awarded to The Incomer, while TheyDream received the NEXT Special Jury Award.

Audience Awards reflected strong viewer engagement across categories. Josephine also claimed the Audience Award for U.S. Dramatic, alongside American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez for U.S. Documentary. International audience honors went to HOLD ONTO ME (Κράτα Με) and One In A Million, with Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild] taking the NEXT Audience Award.

This year’s festival showcased 97 feature-length projects and 54 short films, selected from more than 16,000 submissions, underscoring Sundance’s continued role as a launchpad for emerging voices and bold storytelling. Award-winning films remain available online nationwide through February 1, with select titles screening in person for passholders.

The 2026 edition also marks one of the final Sundance gatherings in Utah, ahead of the festival’s planned move to Boulder, Colorado in 2027.
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Guillermo del Toro Returns to Sundance With Cronos Restoration

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Director Guillermo del Toro at Sundance 2026

Guillermo del Toro made a low-key appearance Tuesday night at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival for a Park City Legacy screening of Cronos, his 1994 debut feature, at The Ray Theatre in Park City. The screening coincided with the presentation of a newly restored 4K version of the film, more than 30 years after it first premiered at Sundance.

The Academy Award winning director, appeared in good spirits and posed for photographers during a press line ahead of the screening.

Originally released in the early 1990s, Cronos follows an antique dealer who discovers an ancient device promising eternal life, setting off a quiet but unsettling chain of consequences.

The film has long been viewed as an early blueprint for del Toro’s recurring themes: mortality, monstrosity, and tenderness existing side by side.

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Time and Water Premieres January 27 at Sundance in Park City

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Time and Water premiered on Tuesday, January 27, 2026, at the Park City Library Theater as part of the Premieres section of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

The screening was preceded by a press line attended by director Sara Dosa and Icelandic writer and subject Andri Snær Magnason, along with producers Shane Boris, Jameka Autry, and Elijah Stevens.

The documentary centers on Magnason as he confronts parallel forms of loss, the disappearance of Iceland’s glaciers and the fading presence of family memory. Using personal archives, photographs, writing, and folklore, the film approaches climate change through intimacy rather than scale, grounding global urgency in lived experience. The atmosphere surrounding the premiere reflected that tone, measured, quiet, and reflective rather than overtly ceremonial.

The Sundance screening marked the film’s first public presentation. Time and Water continues its festival run with additional in-person and online screenings through February 1.

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Broken English Brings Marianne Faithfull Tribute to Sundance Spotlight Premiere

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Broken English co-directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard

Broken English co-directors Iain Forsyth and Jane PollardBroken English made its Sundance Film Festival debut on Sunday, January 25, with a Spotlight screening at Eccles Theatre in Park City. The North American premiere was preceded by a red carpet press line, where filmmakers, producers, and performers gathered ahead of the evening’s screening.

Directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Broken English is a documentary portrait of singer, songwriter, and cultural icon Marianne Faithfull. The film blends archival material, staged sequences, and performance, presenting Faithfull’s life and career through a stylized and unconventional lens rather than a traditional retrospective format.

Forsyth and Pollard attended the red carpet alongside producer Beth Earl and executive producers Victoria Steventon, Julia Xu, Julia Stier, and Miranda Bailey. Performers Norah Jones and Rufus Wainwright were also present ahead of their post-screening tribute performances, which followed the film’s premiere and added a live element to the evening’s celebration.

The Sundance appearance follows the film’s earlier world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival. At Sundance, Broken English screened as part of the festival’s Spotlight section and was presented in person only, drawing a full house and a noticeably attentive crowd.

The night felt less like a standard documentary premiere and more like a shared moment of remembrance, fitting for a film centered on legacy, memory, and artistic refusal to conform.

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Sundance Producers Celebration Honors Apoorva Guru Charan and Dawne Langford

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sundanceThe 2026 Sundance Film Festival Producers Celebration took place January 25 in Park City, bringing together filmmakers and industry guests to recognize producing excellence across this year’s festival lineup. Presented in partnership with Amazon MGM Studios, the event was held at The Park and centered on the Sundance Institute Producers Awards.

Two producers were honored with $10,000 grants during the ceremony. Apoorva Guru Charan received the Fiction Producers Award for Take Me Home, premiering in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, while Dawne Langford was awarded the Nonfiction Producers Award for Who Killed Alex Odeh?, debuting in the U.S. Documentary Competition. Both films are part of the 2026 Sundance program.

The celebration also featured a keynote from producer Shane Boris, whose recent work includes Navalny and Fire of Love. Boris spoke about collaboration, uncertainty, and the often unseen role producers play in sustaining creative work. The event highlighted producers as connective forces within independent filmmaking, emphasizing long-term relationships and shared risk rather than outcomes or accolades.

The Producers Celebration is an annual Sundance tradition, offering a moment to pause amid premieres and screenings to spotlight the behind-the-scenes work that brings films to the festival.

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Big Girls Don’t Cry Premieres at Sundance World Cinema Dramatic Competition

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Big Girls Don’t Cry premiered Saturday, January 24, at the Sundance Film Festival, screening at The Ray Theatre in Park City as part of the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. The afternoon screening was preceded by a red carpet press line, where the film’s creative team gathered for photos and interviews ahead of the first public showing.

In attendance were writer-director Paloma Schneideman, lead cast members Ani Palmer, Rain Spencer, and Noah Taylor, along with producers and executive producers connected to the project. The atmosphere reflected the film’s debut status, with the team marking its introduction to festival audiences following its New Zealand production.

Set in rural New Zealand in 2006, Big Girls Don’t Cry follows 14-year-old Sid Bookman over the course of a formative summer as she navigates early desire, shifting friendships, and the influence of the early internet. The film centers on observation rather than spectacle, placing its young protagonist in everyday situations that quietly shape her sense of identity and belonging.

The premiere screening in Park City was the film’s first stop at the festival, with additional in-person and online screenings scheduled as Sundance continues through the end of January.

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Merata Mita and Graton Fellows Honored at Sundance 2026 Native Forum

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Merata-Mita-and-Graton-sundanceThe Sundance Institute recognized this year’s Merata Mita and Graton Fellowship recipients during the Native Forum Celebration at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The annual gathering brings together Indigenous filmmakers, artists, and alumni during the festival to spotlight new voices and ongoing work.

Masami Kawai was named the 2026 Merata Mita Fellow. A Ryukyuan filmmaker based in Oregon, Kawai’s work often explores identity, history, and Indigenous experience, and she has previously participated in Sundance’s Directors and Screenwriters Lab. The fellowship supports an Indigenous woman-identified filmmaker developing a feature project.

The 2026 Graton Fellows are Isabella Madrigal and Tsanavi Spoonhunter. Madrigal, a writer-director and actor, is developing her first feature, expanding a story rooted in Indigenous community performance and cultural memory. Spoonhunter, a nonfiction filmmaker and journalist, is based in Northern Nevada and focuses on documentary storytelling through her independent media company, Mahebe Media.

The Native Forum Celebration took place during the festival as a moment to recognize Indigenous-led projects across Sundance programs and to acknowledge the broader creative community gathered in Park City throughout the week.

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Independent Film Company and Shudder Acquire Natalie Erika James’ Saccharine Ahead of Sundance Premiere

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SaccharineIndependent Film Company and Shudder have acquired North American and UK rights to Saccharine, the latest feature from filmmaker Natalie Erika James, ahead of its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

Written and directed by James, Saccharine is described as a supernatural body horror film and marks her third feature following Relic and Apartment 7A. The film stars Midori Francis, Danielle Macdonald, and Madeleine Madden. It is slated for a theatrical release before streaming on Shudder later in 2026.

The story follows Hana, a medical student whose involvement in an extreme weight-loss trend leads to increasingly disturbing consequences after she consumes human ashes. The film continues James’ interest in horror rooted in psychological and physical transformation.

Saccharine was produced by James alongside Anna McLeish and Sarah Shaw, with financing from Screen Australia in partnership with XYZ Films, IPR.VC, Stan, and VicScreen. XYZ Films handled the sale, which was finalized ahead of the film’s Sundance debut.

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Extra Geography Premieres at Sundance 2026 in World Cinema Dramatic Competition

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Extra Geography premiered Friday, January 23, at the Sundance Film Festival, screening at The Library Theatre in Park City as part of the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. The screening was preceded by a red carpet appearance from director Molly Manners and members of the cast, marking the film’s first public showing.

The debut feature, written by Miriam Battye, centers on two high-achieving students at a British girls’ boarding school whose tightly controlled routines are disrupted by a self-imposed summer project to fall in love.

The film stars Marni Duggan and Galaxie Clear, with Alice Englert and Aoife Riddell also appearing. Extra Geography is Manners’ first feature following her work in television, including the Netflix series One Day.

Following its premiere night in Park City, the film continues its Sundance run with additional public screenings in Park City and Salt Lake City through February 1, giving festival audiences multiple opportunities to catch the film during the final days of the festival.

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