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January 27, 2026 — 3:15pm
The Sundance Film Festival has a long history of featuring some of Australia’s best independent cinema, from Shine to Talk to Me. But this year has proven one of the best on record for Australian talent, with seven homegrown films selected for the 2026 line-up.
This year also marks the festival’s last in Utah and the first without its legendary founder Robert Redford, who died in September. But while attendees celebrate Redford’s legacy and the films on show, ICE protests and real-world politics have brought a sombre note to Park City’s Main Street.
Five feature films and two shorts from Australia made it into this year’s line-up. This is close to the record set in 2019 (six), though those were notably all feature films. At that time the record hadn’t been broken since 1997, when five Australian features were selected.
Two of the 10 documentaries competing in Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Competition are Australian. Sentient, Tony Jones’ searing examination of animal testing, and Silenced, which looks at the weaponisation of defamation laws in the post-#MeToo era, are in the running.
Other local fare includes two shorts – Nash Edgerton’s Candy Bar and Tom Noakes’ The Worm – and the Taika Waititi-starring family film Fing! Two Australian horror features, Leviticus and Saccharine, also made the cut. In fact, Saccharine (directed by the Australian-American Natalie Erika James) was one of the few early sales at Sundance this year, having been acquired by horror streamer Shudder.
Major stars attending Sundance have spoken out against recent raids carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol agents in the US. Meanwhile, a mass protest was staged in Park City at the weekend in response to the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood attended the protest, which was named “Sundancers Melt ICE” and took place on Park City’s Main Street on Sunday afternoon (Utah time). Wood told Deadline: “The folks who have been unlawfully gunned down in Minnesota – it’s awful. Here we are at this film festival that is about bringing people together; it’s about telling stories from all over the world. We’re not divided here, we’re coming together.”
Natalie Portman, who stars in the Sundance-selected film The Gallerist, wore “ICE Out” and “Be Good” pins while appearing at the festival. “What the federal government, Trump’s government, [US Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi Noem, ICE – what they’re doing is really the worst of the worst of humanity,” Portman told Deadline.
Director Olivia Wilde, whose film The Invite features in this year’s line-up, told Variety she was “appalled and sickened” by recent incidents. “If we can do anything out here to support the movement to cast ICE out, to de-legitimise this unbelievably criminal organisation, then that’s what we should be doing.”
This year’s festival selection has proven solid for female representation, with many highlighting female voices in front of and behind the camera. Of the films competing in the US Dramatic Competition this year, 63.6 per cent are directed by women, according to a study from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.
This includes Bedford Park, Stephanie Ahn’s feature debut, which follows two lonely individuals in the Korean-American community, and Josephine, Beth de Araujo’s drama starring Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan.
The line-up also features Wilde’s The Invite, a relationship dramedy she also stars in, alongside Penelope Cruz and Seth Rogen; The Gallerist, Cathy Yan’s satirical art-world comedy starring Portman and Jenna Ortega; and James’ horror Saccharine.
Pop star Charli XCX also pervades this year’s festival. She features in three of the selected films: Gregg Araki’s campy comedy I Want Your Sex; The Moment, a mockumentary in which she plays an exaggerated version of herself; and The Gallerist.
The star, who released the chart-topping Brat album in 2024, has featured in film before (Erupcja; Sacrifice) but The Moment marks her first lead role. The singer was photographed all over Park City last week, with many deeming Sundance “Bratified”, but she hopes the festival heralds the end of the cultural phenomenon.
“I’m really wanting Brat to stop,” she said during a Sundance Q&A. “That’s not because I don’t love it. It’s just because I think, for all of us as artists, you want to challenge yourself and … totally switch the creative soup that you’re in and go and live in a different bowl for a while and feel enriched by that.”
Sundance 2026 runs until this Sunday, February 1.
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