Brat Summer lives on at Sundance Film Festival, where Aidan Zamiri’s The Moment starring Charli XCX will make its premiere. The film is based on an original idea by the musician and interrogates the layered complexities of pop stardom. Following “a rising pop star [that] navigates the complexities of fame and industry pressure while preparing for her arena tour debut,” it imagines how Charli’s blockbuster album era might have played out had she made different decisions.
Balancing out the metafiction of The Moment, Sundance 2026 will also see the premiere of Antiheroine, an “unfiltered and unapologetic” documentary about Courtney Love. Directed by Edward Lovelace and James Hall, a logline for the film reads, “Now sober and set to release new music for the first time in over a decade, Courtney is ready to reveal her story.”
More music history will be captured through the world premiere of Tamra Davis’ documentary The Best Summer, an “all-access view inside an era-defining moment in music” with behind-the-scenes footage featuring Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Pavement, Rancid, Beck, The Amps, and Bikini Kill. Davis previously helmed 2010’s Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, and directed Britney Spears in Crossroads. She also produced the Kathleen Hanna documentary The Punk Singer in 2013.
The singer and songwriter Marianne Faithfull, who died earlier this year at age 78, will see her story captured in Broken English. The film from Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth premiered at the Venice International Film Festival this summer, but will make its U.S. debut at Sundance. Broken English takes its title from Faithfull’s 1979 New Wave comeback album.
“Made with her full involvement, Broken English is an intimate and unflinching exploration of a fractured yet unbreakable life shaped by fame, creativity and relentless public scrutiny,” a description of the film reads. Broken English stars Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, Sophia Di Martino, Zawe Ashton, and Calvin Demba. It features appearances from Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Jehnny Beth, Courtney Love, Suki Waterhouse, and Beth Orton.
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Sundance 2026 will see director Joanna Natasegara make her documentary feature debut with The Disciple, which provides a look inside the making of Wu-Tang Clan’s supposedly one-of-a-kind album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. “It’s like the Mona Lisa,” RZA told Rolling Stone about the album in 2018. “It’s got its own folklore.”
“An outsider fueled by relentless determination works his way into the inner circle of the Wu-Tang Clan, where his ambition and creativity converge in the making of an album poised to ignite global controversy,” the logline for the release reads.
William Greaves will take the festival back to a different moment in time with Once Upon a Time in Harlem. The film, which as of this September was still incomplete, according to The New Yorker, surfaces footage from a 1972 reunion of figures from the Harlem Renaissance, which gathered passionate and creative minds with nuanced and critical insights into race, politics, art, and more. Greaves helmed the event and captured it all on film, but died in 2014 at the age of 87 without ever releasing the footage.
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His wife, Louise Archambault Greaves, chipped away at the project until her death in 2023. Once Upon a Time in Harlem was then passed on to the couple’s son David, who directed the version premiering next year. Figures that appeared at Greaves’s party, and made it into the film, include Eubie Blake, James Van Der Zee, Gerri Major, Jean Blackwell Hutson, Richard Bruce Nugent, and others.
Also premiering at Sundance 2026 is Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story. Directed by Judd Apatow and Neil Berkeley, the documentary builds on the comedian’s candid explorations of mental health. “Blurring the line between performance and personal crisis, comedian Maria Bamford turns her mental health journey into material that’s riotously funny and ultimately inspiring,” a description of the film reads. “What emerges is a portrait of an artist transforming vulnerability into creative strength through honesty.”
