Sundance 2026: Farewell to Park City with strong films and unexpected comedies

Kurt Soller, deputy editor of T Magazine, reported from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, on Jan. 28, 2026, saying the festival delivered notable films and unexpectedly comic fare as it staged its final edition in Park City before moving to Boulder, Colo. Soller wrote that the festival unfolded during a dark week in America, and attendees frequently mentioned the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and the assault on Florida congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost that occurred at a party in town.

He also described a sense of pre-emptive nostalgia as the dry mountains were unusually snowless. Comedy emerged as a standout strain. Soller highlighted Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s Wicker, with Olivia Colman, Peter Dinklage and Alexander Skarsgard, and noted Olivia Wilde’s strong comedies: she acts in Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex and directed The Invite, which stars Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton.

He also cited Charli XCX’s concert mockumentary The Moment and Natalie Portman’s Art Basel sendup The Gallerist, while noting some films were pointedly critical of contemporary artistic capitalism. Serious dramas also featured. Soller praised Beth de Araújo’s Josephine, a three-hander starring Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan and told largely from the perspective of an 8‑year‑old newcomer, Mason Reeves, whom the director said she found at a farmer’s market.

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