Sundance 2026 is in full-swing in Park City, Salt Lake City, and — beginning on January 29 — online

The metaphors run hot and heavy in this down under horror story about the trauma of gay awakenings. Still, small abandoned conservative towns, spooky religion, and the overwhelming potency of teenage lust remain creepily effective tools when deployed this stylishly.

It takes a village of personalities to rescue eight passengers dangling nearly thousand perilous feet above a remote Pakistani valley in a cable car, and one action-styled documentary to make you question whether to ever set foot in a gondola again.

Sundance 2026 is in full-swing in Park City, Salt Lake City, and — beginning on January 29 — online. We’ll be updating this journal with short reviews and reactions throughout the festival.

Sundance 2026 is in full-swing in Park City, Salt Lake City, and — beginning on January 29 — online

Cherien Dabis traces one family’s journey through pivotal time points: a businessman’s expulsion from Jaffa an internment in a forced labor camp in 1948, his son’s life as an idealistic teacher in a refugee camp in 1978, the teen’s life a decade later in 1988, and beyond.

Opening with a spectacular shot of a massive tree falling in the woods (shot from the perspective of the tree) in the late 1800s and spanning decades into the twentieth century, Train Dreams was one of the major premieres to emerge from this year’s Sundance. Ahead of its theatrical release, it plays next week as a special presentation by the Seattle Film Critics Society.