Le Journal

Sundance Film Festival is wrapping up its storied run in Park City, Utah, just a few months after founder and frequent festival emcee Robert Redford died. Sundance is bringing a chapter to a definitive close, preparing to start anew in Boulder, Colorado in 2027, perhaps becoming a less isolated and dense collision of indie film nerds, industry players, out-of-place marketeers, and unflappable skiers. But regardless of what that move brings, 2026’s festival offers a familiar selection of documentaries with dry descriptions, dramas from some of the smallest filmmaking communities in the world, and Hollywood talent striving to make their tiny film stand out amid the packed program. The A.V. Club‘s most anticipated movies of Sundance 2026 count bleeding-edge genre films and long-gestating lost films alike as we unearth the hidden gems among the 90 feature films that made the cut. While we’ll be covering Sundance 2026 from Chicago, publishing dispatches and features throughout the festival’s run from January 22 to February 1, we’ll still be watching as much as the poor parka-clad souls standing in line one last time in Utah. As the festival begins, our preview can help prepare prospective ticket-seekers for what’s in store, ranging from timely immigration documentaries, insightful artist biographies, searing Japanese delinquent dramas, and the greatest party of Black luminaries ever held. Barbara Forever Barbara Hammer’s prolific work already put her life front-and-center, and Brydie O’Connor’s documentary about the pioneering lesbian experimental filmmaker completes the referential cycle, making Barbara Forever into a visual biography run through with Hammer’s aesthetic and ideological fascinations. That means it’s very gay and very naked—body-based and poetic in its focus as opposed to the structural filmmakers that made up the majority of her avant garde contemporaries in the ’60s and ’70s. Her early projects feel like a filmed sexual awakening; her final films find beauty and energy in the end of life. With her spiky dandelion hair, addiction to cameras, and unrepentant openness (a prime example is her doing a version of Subway Takes decades and decades ago), Hammer offers something rare to a nonfiction filmmaker: An electrically watchable subject who was constantly documenting her own life. The resulting archival assemblage is therefore more than just her life story, but her life story viewed in a similar fashion as she perceived it, full of loving relationships, professional slights, artistic triumphs, and great sex. Big Girls Don’t Cry A charmingly contained Kiwi coming-of-age drama, Big Girls Don’t Cry sees writer-director Paloma Schneideman capture a moment on the cusp—a teen encountering her own queerness for the first time, exploring the shadier elements of the internet, and trying to grow up too fast. The posturing of puberty bleeds into the anonymity of being online—Sid (Ani Palmer, an excellent newcomer) plays at being one of the cool kids in person, while catfishing through instant messenger and Omegle. She’s got no real safety net, either. Her drunk single dad (Noah Taylor, perfectly scuzzy) is ill-equipped and her big sister brought a flirty exchange student home to stay with them. This small-scale collision drives Sid to some questionable decision-making, captured with an understated yet evocative style. Reminiscent of Cate Shortland’s Somersault and 2024’s Sundance charmer Dìdi, Big Girls Don’t Cry is both bittersweet and nostalgic, filled with memories that might dance around your mind as you lie awake at night. Burn A visually chaotic and inventive runaway saga smackdab in the Kabukicho red-light district in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Burn is like a nightmarish, Requiem For A Dream take on a side quest from the Yakuza games. Plenty of silly humor interrupts the harrowing story of the stuttering Ju-Ju (Nana Mori) and her gang of eccentric street kids, but writer-director Makoto Nagahisa fills Burn with bright, pink,…

De Mozart à Franz Schmidt, voici Semyon Bychkov jouant du piano avec les sœurs Labèque (dont Marielle, son épouse), dirigeant aussi bien le répertoire symphonique (Mendelssohn, Mahler) que les opéras (Wagner, Richard Strauss)

La jeune compositrice Anne Castex a composé pour le trio KDM en 2024, une suite qui s'inspire des figures d'un jeu de cartes pour suggérer en musique des relations entre les classes d'une société.

Aujourd’hui, nous mettons à l’honneur une nouvelle génération de pianistes. A l’affiche, Nour Ayadi, Rodolphe Menguy, Jonathan Fournel, Nathalia Milstein, Marie-Ange Nguci, et Jean-Paul Gasparian.

Sortie le 6 mars 2026 sous le label Outhere Music (Alpha Classics).